re: Everyone alive today has had a living ancestor at every point in history

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You guys are completely missing the entire point. You had sixteen great great grandparents alive roughly around the same time in the same generation. Before that, you had 32 great great great grandparents alive at roughly the same time in the same generation. It doubles each generation all the way back. Get it?

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That's not how any of this works. It's not an inverted pyramid going all the way back... think diamond.

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At some point, that upside down pyramid flips and becomes a diamond.

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This. You ignore cousin fricking and other variables.

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if they die without reproducing they don't have any ancestors.

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Esteemed Scientist Karl Pilkington, ladies and gentlemen.

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But the entire population of Earth then was only about half that. How can this possibly be?

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It be, because you no understand the world.

FTR though, there are key men in history that fathered 100s to even 1000s of babies. It is said the Genghis Khan is a relative to 8% of Asia. Which is equal to about the entire population of the USA.

There was another guy (Moulay Ismail ibn Sharif, ruler of Alaouite dynasty, Morocco (1634 - 1727)) that sired close to a 1000 kids. 4 wives and 500 concubines.

There was also another man in Europe that is common to most whites, forget his name. He was a busy man though.

I see what you're saying. You're exactly right. That's amazing.

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Yeah, and they're mostly unpleasant. War, plague, rape, floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, human sacrifice, infant mortality, gelding, genocide, etc. It goes on and on.

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None of that has anything to do with it. The entire answer is pedigree collapse from turd fegusons post. That's some amazing shite.

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Calls me a retard after saying:

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you'd have had 1,073,741,824 living ancestors on Earth in 1418. 


And if you're going to say "I meant only if they could all be alive," then state that in the post. Don't expect everyone else to read something dumb and know you didn't mean it to be dumb.

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No, he called you a retard because 30 generations back, assuming you have no inbreeding or adultery, you DO have 1,073,741,824 people in that single generation. See, if he were counting ALL of the ancestors, it would be 2^30+2^29+2^28+...+2^0. But he's talking one generation. 2^30.

Start with yourself. That's 2^0. 1. Now, how many ancestors do you have in your parents' generation, one generation back? 2^1. That's two. How many in your grandparents' generation, two back? 2^2. That's 4. 30 generations back? 2^30. 1,073,741,824. That large number is not a sum. It's a single generation.

Exponentiation: Multiplication's tricky friend.

An Irishman with possibly 3 million descendants:

LINK

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Up to three million men around the world could be descended from a prolific medieval Irish king, according to a new genetic study. It suggests that the 5th-century warlord known as “Niall of the Nine Hostages” may be the ancestor of about one in 12 Irishmen, say researchers at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. Niall established a dynasty of powerful chieftains that dominated the island for six centuries.

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But when you think about it statistically, you realize we're more or less all related.

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If you go back far enough there have to be a select few common ancestors. Then like someone pointed out, throughout history there have been men who have fathered a thousand children and their DNA is still being passed down.

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Maybe. But he said they'd be alive in 1418 so that's not true.

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I missed that "alive in 14whatever" part.

Math, I've got. Reading comprehension, not so much. THere would be that many people in that generation, but they'd likely not all be alive at the same time. Also, as Terd pointed out, they'd likely all be a lot of the same people.