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From: "Janice A. Frank" <>
Subject: Re: Number of Ancestors
Date: Mon, 06 Dec 1999 06:06:18 -0500


I cannot offhand crunch the numbers but I have read about this
phenomenon - take William the Conquerer, for an example of someone who
lived about 1000 years ago. It can be shown statistically,
probablistically, that everyone of Anglo-Saxon descent is descended from
him. The only difference between Queen Elizabeth for example, and the
rest of us, is that she can prove the details (sort of).

This is just an example; if you are not of Anglo-Saxon descent you may
not be descended from him but whoever you are descended from that was
around at that time, so are an enormous number of other people. There
were simply not enough people living then to provide separate ancestors
for everybody. You also need to consider things like the Black Death,
which dramatically reduced the population of Europe. All of us are
descended from the survivors.

Jan

wrote:
>
> Relative to the "number of ancestors" posts:
>
> It's obvious that an exponential growth such as would be the case cannot
> continue infinitely.Given the average length of a generation as 33 years or
> so, it seems to me that sometime around the beginning of this milennium
> (1000) each living person's ancestors will exceed the population of Europe.
> This is is an excellent example of what we all know to be true: our
> interconnectedness. Of course, there were people in the world other than
> Europeans, but, just for the sake of illustration, are there any on the list
> who are willing and able to crunch the population/ancestors numbers?
>
> Joe Drumheller

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