Geneology question

[mark vincent]

If I have 2 parents and 4 grandparents ect and i go back 100 generations how many ancestors would I have?

 

[conny]

This reminds me of the grains of rice on a chess board question.

Basically you have to square the grains of rice on each square successively.
i.e. first square = 1 grain,
second square = 2 grains
third square = 4 grains, (2x2)
fourth square = 16 grains, (4x4)
fifth square = 256 grains, (16x16)
sixth square = 65536 grains, (256x256)
et al until you have covered the 64 squares on the board.

You will have to take this further, up to 100 so away you go.
Get calculating!

 

[joinerjohn]

Assuming a mean average of 25yrs between generations, your also going back 2500 yrs. You could be related to Noah.

 

[gasbanni]

Only a tosser would ask a question like that !

 

[gasbanni]

How come you can have a name like that and I cant post it !

 

[Mw Roofline]

tosser

I clicked on the thread as I quickly read it as gynecology

 

[mark vincent]

I was asking a serious question. I think the answer works out at trillions but that is clearly impossible as that many people have never lived

 

[raebhoop]

Having gone back through a few generations and discovered the early deaths of some of my ancestors.It has brought home to me the pure chance of my being here on the planet should one of them have been in direct line to me.

Strange that the death of a hunter by a rampaging mammoth thousands of years ago could have changed history.

No Hitler,Blair,Stalin...or maybe the birth of others that would have been a damn sight worse.

 

[longdogs]

No Blair eh? Quick get me that spiked club

 

[UriBentMySpoon]

By going back 2 parents, 4 grandparents... etc you soon run into impossible numbers. The reality is in the past cousins, sometimes closer relations than that married so given a particular timespan we are all, to a degree, the product of incestuous behaviour.

 

[StephenW]

1,267,650,600,228,229,401,496,703,205,376 apparently (2 to the power of 100). But of course you don't because as you go back further two or more of your ancestors will have come from a single source.
Whatever your own interpretations of human origin it is likely that we are all descended from one male and one female, in one interpretation for example, Adam and Eve. So your family tree can't be a triangle that gets wider as you go back in time because it ends with just two. So is it diamond shaped?

 

[mark vincent]

By going back 2 parents, 4 grandparents... etc you soon run into impossible numbers. The reality is in the past cousins, sometimes closer relations than that married so given a particular timespan we are all, to a degree, the product of incestuous behaviour.

So are you saying that once we go back past a certain point our ancestors become our incestors.

 

[joinerjohn]

Almost certainly t****r. In the bible though, it does say that Adam and Eve had children who then went off into the desert to begat themselves wives. So ,,, if there were only Adam and Eve to start with,, where did their sons begat themselves wives from ???

 

[joe-90]

Adam and Eve are apocryphal, not absolute.

 

[Whitespirit66]

The reality is in the past cousins, sometimes closer relations than that married so given a particular timespan we are all, to a degree, the product of incestuous behaviour.

Just ask him outright if his lineage is likely to be from Norfolk.