Tuesday, January 19, 2021

How many persons contributed to our being?

 

So how many grandparents do we have? or How many persons contributed to our being here? 

To find out, you are a single person and you most probably will have 2 parents (a father and a mother)

Your 2 parents will have 2 more parents each. That’s 4 grandparents for you

Going further 4 grandparents will have 8 parents (thats 8 great grandparents)

Further down, 8 great grandparents will have 16 parents (i.e 16 great great grandparents)

Likewise if we go until 10 generation back (around 300 years ago) that’s by taking 30 years in average for each generation) we would have 1024 tenth generation ancestors, assuming none of the them are related. This number would reduce if cousins marry, as they will have common ancestors.

                                YOU

                              2 PARENTS

                           4 GRANDPARENTS

                        8 GREAT-GRANDPARENTS

                     16 GREAT-GREAT-GRANDPARENTS

                  32 GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GRANDPARENTS

               64 GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GRANDPARENTS

            128 GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GRANDPARENTS

         256 GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GRANDPARENT

      512 GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GRANDPARENTS

   1024 GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GRANDPARENTS

But if we go on further to 20 generations (around 600 years ago, in the year 1420) we will have 1,048,576 ancestors. If we combine all ancestors from your parents to 20 generation ancestors together we would have 2,097,150 ancestors in total.

Now if we go even further to 30 generation (900 years ago, 1120) the number is really huge that’s 1,073,741,824 ancestors, that’s even larger than the number of people who lived on the planet at that time, which was about 400 million at that time.

Watch the video on same topic here:



                         https://youtu.be/eWjRc6u8x-4

So, in reality, families often have same ancestors and they appear in multiple places in our family tree. We know there were marriages among cousin after few generations, and that fair enough. Due to this common ancestors, one theory claims that everyone must related, which looks quite true.

Keeping all these aside, if we really want to know the number of ancestors we have, then the answer depends on how many generation do we wana go?

Even if we go up to 10 generation deep, that’s 300 years ago to 1720, then any one of us would have 1024, 9th grand parents. But if we combine all grandparents then it would be 2047 ancestors in total.

Thats the number of persons who has contributed to our being, here today, if they were not related at all.

Now think, even with 2046 ancestors in total,

How many unique, life stories, amount of hardships, war, famine, disease, crime, did our ancestors had to face and possibly overcome for us to exist today.

If anything, had happened even to one ancestors, someone else would be here, instead of us.

So, if you are reading this article now, then by now you know you are a result of massive history.

So feel lucky…

 

Table of calculation used by me:




 

 


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