The Maths of Ancestry
"Dad?"
"Yes Son?"
"We"re my ancestors famous a long, long time ago?"
"Your ancestors? .......Which ones?......You have loads of them!"
"Well, most of them Dad. Today at school our history teacher, Mr. Luttrell, was telling us about Richard de Clare leading the Normans into Ireland in the twelfth century and he looked at me with a great big dirty scowl on his face and said that I had the same name as him. I'm sure he thinks I am related to him Dad".
"I had the same problem myself when I was at school and so did my father....Don't worry about it......we are all related somehow"
"How do you mean?"
"Well, first let's calculate how many ancestors you could have had. You were born in the 1990s and let's suppose that there is a new generation born every twenty-five years. That means that a century ago you had 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 ancestors born in the 1890s"
"How many is that?"
"16 actually but with big calculations it is easier to say it as 24"
"And a century before that Dad?"
"Another four generations, with your number of ancestors doubling as we go back each additional generation"
"You'd multiply by two, four more times...is that right?"
"Yes son...and that would give you?"
"28, two multiplied by itself eight times?"
"Yes and that would take you to the year 1790. How about 1690?"
"212 I think Dad?."
"And what is 212, approximately?"
[Silence]
"Can't do that in my head either son – time to use your scientific calculator"
"212 is 4096 Dad"
"Yep. About 4,000 ancestors born in 1690. Now let's take it back to 1490 - eight more generations. 212 times 2, eight more times is?"
"220"
"Right again and back to 1240 – an additional ten generations?"
"230"
"Yes ....bang that one out on the calculator."
"That's over a billion Dad."
"Excellent!.... But bear in mind that there were only 400 million people on the planet in 1240....so what is going on?"
[Silence]
"Well you are obviously descended from lots of different lines but not all of them are totally unique blood lines ...a lot of your distant cousins married each other at various times in fact. In other words your calculations assume there were fresh people coming into the mix when in actual fact a sort of recycling went on"
"I sort of get that Dad. So does that mean I'm descended from everybody that lived in 1240? Are they all my ancestors?"
"Ah not quite! Remember some people that lived way back then have no descendents living today at all. Also very little mixing went on between Europeans and races outside of Europe. That means that most Europeans living in the south or eastern shores of the Mediterranean at the time and much of the British Isles back then are connected to you in some way"
"So when I read about the history of Medieval Europe, I should think that everyone's my ancestor?"
"Yes and William the Conqueror and many of his knights including Richard de Clare, if his bloodline survived, should be considered an ancestor."
"What – You mean my history teacher Mr. Luttrell will also be descended from them as well?"
"Yep – even Mr. Luttrell!"
Go back to Cleere Origin Index
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