Ye are all so insignificant

GhostInTheRuins

I wanted to work out how many descendants I have since the year 0 (as you do).

Let's say that on average each generation is about 25 years (which I think is probably generous because people had children much younger in the past) and lets just say 2000 years ago for simplicity's sake.

So 2000years/25 = 80 generations.

So two parents, each having two parents, each having two parents etc all the way back 80 generations:

2^80 = 1208925819614629174706176 :eek:

So every person on earth has about 1208925819614629174706176 direct descendants (not including brothers, sisters, aunts uncles and cousins) since just the year 0.

Correct me if I'm wrong please, just because.

im invisible

you've been busy

kylith

Antecedents or ancestors.

Descendents are people descended from you, not people you're descended from.

Redzer7

Get a job you hippy!

Captain Havoc

No that's wrong. There hasn't been that number of people alive throughout the history of man kind.

yuppies

the further back you go, the more often you find ancestors "doubling up"... eg. a great^10 grandfather on you fathers side could be a great^9 grandfather on your mothers side...

what's more, I think i read that the most recent common ancestor of everyone alive today lived between about 2,000 and 5,000 years ago, and the most recent time when every human alive was either the ancestor of everyone alive today, or left no descendants, was about 13,000 years ago (and would be less were it not for people who lived in isolated parts of the world for thousands of years)

GhostInTheRuins

Captain Havoc wrote: »

No that's wrong. There hasn't been that number of people alive throughout the history of man kind.

Yeah, that's what I thought myself, but I can't think of anything that's wrong with the numbers. How else can you work it out?

Fromthetrees

Roughly 6% of every human who has ever lived is alive today.

Might be obvious but I found it interesting

yuppies

GhostInTheRuins wrote: »

Yeah, that's what I thought myself, but I can't think of anything that's wrong with the numbers. How else can you work it out?

criss-crossing lines of ancestry!

Rhys Essien

OP,you are wrong.

According to this,the total amount of people that have lived on Earth is 107 Billion.

http://www.prb.org/Articles/2002/HowManyPeopleHaveEverLivedonEarth.aspx

Temptamperu

Yes we are insignificant, look at the size of the universe, then look at the size of you.

GhostInTheRuins

yuppies wrote: »

the further back you go, the more often you find ancestors "doubling up"... eg. a great^10 grandfather on you fathers side could be a great^9 grandfather on your mothers side...

Even so, that wouldn't affect the numbers any significant amount!

Kylo Ren

You forgot to carry the 7. Always carry the 7.

Phill Ewinn

We're all related bro

Sunnyisland

Where,s me calculator ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

Are you counting twins to.

Chuck Stone

We came from monkeys actually... chimpanzees to be precise.

Chimpanzees are our ancestors.





Trollface.

yuppies

GhostInTheRuins wrote: »

Even so, that wouldn't affect the numbers any significant amount!

Somebody alive 200 years ago who had 5 or 6 children who survived to adulthood could easily be the ancestor of hundreds of the individuals who live today. That same individuals' brother could have a similar number of descendants if they had 5 or 6 kids also. so there could be say 1000 people alive today, most of whom go about their days not knowing they are distantly related to each other. If each of those 1000 people followed the same exercise as in your op, their family trees would all include the father of those two guys from 200 years ago ie. nobody has a unique family tree to themselves going back through history.. everybody is sharing the same relatively small number of ancestors.

Temptamperu

Chuck Stone wrote: »

We came from monkeys actually... chimpanzees to be precise.

Chimpanzees are our ancestors.





Trollface.

You nearly got me there :pac:

galwayrush

Did you factor in any possible incest in your family line OP?

Chuck Stone

Temptamperu wrote: »

You nearly got me there :pac:

Did you know that our ancestors, the Chimpanzee, have the strength of about 40 men?

Yep. A really angry Chimpanzee escaped from a zoo in the US, picked up a bus full of screaming school children and threw it about 100 meters down the highway.

Amazing but completely true.

galwayrush

Captain Havoc wrote: »

No that's wrong. There hasn't been that number of people alive throughout the history of man kind.

That proves my incest post.....:pac:

daddydick

I always said it, there is a bit of a traveller in us all

Pherekydes

Chuck Stone wrote: »

We came from monkeys actually... chimpanzees to be precise.

Chimpanzees are not monkeys.

Now go and post in the "Most incorrect thing I was taught" thread.

bnt

I'm guessing the OP hasn't read 2001: A Space Odyssey (by Arthur C Clarke), which has the following as the very first line in the book:

Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living. Since the dawn of time, roughly a hundred billion human beings have walked the planet Earth.

The book (and film) came out in 1968: the BBC podcast More Or Less looked in to that claim a couple of months ago. The consensus: at that time, Clarke had it very close to spot-on, but the ratio is now more like 15:1 (107:7 billion)

arse..biscuits

Ha ha, you're inbred

Chuck Stone

Pherekydes wrote: »

Chimpanzees are not monkeys.

Here's what this chimpanzee thinks.

:pac:

Victor

Fromthetrees wrote: »

Roughly 6% of every human who has ever lived is alive today.

Might be obvious but I found it interesting

You mean there are zombies that are just arms or maybe lower legs? :eek:

Logical Fallacy

GhostInTheRuins wrote: »

I wanted to work out how many descendants I have since the year 0 (as you do).

Let's say that on average each generation is about 25 years (which I think is probably generous because people had children much younger in the past) and lets just say 2000 years ago for simplicity's sake.

So 2000years/25 = 80 generations.

So two parents, each having two parents, each having two parents etc all the way back 80 generations:

2^80 = 1208925819614629174706176 :eek:

So every person on earth has about 1208925819614629174706176 direct descendants (not including brothers, sisters, aunts uncles and cousins) since just the year 0.

Correct me if I'm wrong please, just because.

Not sure how that makes you feel insignificant.

If 1208925819614629174706176 people had to exist throughout history just to get to me that makes me feel pretty damn ball-tinglingly epic.

Duiske

Chuck Stone wrote: »

Here's what this chimpanzee thinks.

:pac:

That's no Panzee. That's an Orangutan. Oh, and is that guy stroking his lad with his foot ?

Odelay

And there was me feeling lonely......

kincsem

yuppies wrote: »

the further back you go, the more often you find ancestors "doubling up"... eg. a great^10 grandfather on you fathers side could be a great^9 grandfather on your mothers side...

what's more, I think i read that the most recent common ancestor of everyone alive today lived between about 2,000 and 5,000 years ago, and the most recent time when every human alive was either the ancestor of everyone alive today, or left no descendants, was about 13,000 years ago (and would be less were it not for people who lived in isolated parts of the world for thousands of years)

Correct.

When you go back a few generations you find inbreeding i.e. common ancestors on male and female sides of your family tree. Prince Charles is a good example. Afaik there is an ancestor in Prince Phillip's tree that is a full sibling of an ancestor in Elizabeth Windsor's tree about three generations back.

My 140,000 thoroughbred horse pedigree database can give you the family tree to twenty generations plus for all horses running today. The OP thinks you need a database of 2^20 = 1,048,576 to give the pedigree of one horse -140,000 horses is more than enough. I find that for horses about 70% of ancestors are duplicates at about 12 generations, and the further back you go the higher the percentage.

Think of it this way. Before cars were invented, and only rich people owned horses, who did you marry? Probably someone within walking distance.

Seaneh

There is only been about 49,000,000,000 people born, ever.

DEFTLEFTHAND

I'm an O'Connor, Irish royalty. My ancestor once ruled this land. I plan on taking this nation once again and acquiring my rightful seat on Tara.

Odelay

DEFTLEFTHAND wrote: »

I'm an O'Connor, Irish royalty. My ancestor once ruled this land. I plan on taking this nation once again and acquiring my rightful seat on Tara.

Feckin blue blood. (give me some land)

DEFTLEFTHAND

Odelay wrote: »

Feckin blue blood. (give me some land)

Patience peasant you'll get your land when I get power.:pac:

DB21

42 is the answer

BeerWolf

Your numbers probably ignoring the fact that people would be pairing up with probably long distant relatives a few to dozens of generations away.

So that girlfriend you're currently with ? She's probably related to you off her great (x30) grand mother.

unknownlegend

Genghis Khan. That is all.

Cillian13

http://htwins.net/scale2/scale2.swf?bordercolor=white

^^^ That will make you feel insignificant

Omackeral

Cillian13 wrote: »

http://htwins.net/scale2/scale2.swf?bordercolor=white

^^^ That will make you feel insignificant

everyone do yourself a favour and look at this.... WOW...

Duiske

Duiske wrote: »

That's no Panzee. That's an Orangutan. Oh, and is that guy stroking his lad with his foot ?

Oh if only I could do the same - would leave my hands so free!

old_aussie

80

al28283

bnt wrote: »

I'm guessing the OP hasn't read 2001: A Space Odyssey (by Arthur C Clarke):

Generally it's not a good idea to take everything you read in a sci-fi novel as being true

Pherekydes

al28283 wrote: »

Generally it's not a good idea to take everything you read in a sci-fi novel as being true

He didn't. Read the bit you deleted out of his post.

looksee

My sister (in the UK) investigated her family tree and discovered that she and her husband had a common ancestor only about 3 generations back.

Neither of the families had any current links with the other, her and her husband's families were from counties a hundred miles or so apart, and given the size of the population in the UK, this was some coincidence.

al28283

Pherekydes wrote: »

He didn't. Read the bit you deleted out of his post.

Yea I did, it's not relevant to thinking the OP would know more if he had the the book, as the information about Clarke being somewhat correct wasn't it that book

Pherekydes

al28283 wrote: »

Yea I did, it's not relevant to thinking the OP would know more if he had the the book, as the information about Clarke being somewhat correct wasn't it that book

I'm not sure I get you, but you'll always know more if you read a book...

A lot of what Clarke predicted came to pass, or in the example given, was proven to be quite accurate.

usernamegoes

I find it interesting to think that life forms for the last, say 3 billion years, has lived long enough to have children or whatever you'd call it in early life forms, to end up with me. That's a long long unbroken line. A lot of pressure.

Victor

usernamegoes wrote: »

I find it interesting to think that life forms for the last, say 3 billion years, has lived long enough to have children or whatever you'd call it in early life forms, to end up with me. That's a long long unbroken line. A lot of pressure.

While not everything lived to reproduce, all our direct ancestors did.

General Relativity

GhostInTheRuins wrote: »

I wanted to work out how many descendants I have since the year 0 (as you do).

Let's say that on average each generation is about 25 years (which I think is probably generous because people had children much younger in the past) and lets just say 2000 years ago for simplicity's sake.

So 2000years/25 = 80 generations.

So two parents, each having two parents, each having two parents etc all the way back 80 generations:

2^80 = 1208925819614629174706176 :eek:

So every person on earth has about 1208925819614629174706176 direct descendants (not including brothers, sisters, aunts uncles and cousins) since just the year 0.

Correct me if I'm wrong please, just because.

Mathematics, you can't do it.

2^80 is 2x2x2x2... 80 times. You're looking for 2+2+2+2.. 80 times i.e.
80 x 2.

Pherekydes

General Relativity wrote: »

Mathematics, you can't do it.

2^80 is 2x2x2x2... 80 times. You're looking for 2+2+2+2.. 80 times i.e.
80 x 2.

You have 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great grandparents, etc.

See the trend?