Ancestry By The Numbers

the population of the planet earth is less than 7 billion and as far as we know none of these cousins have left to colonize new

worlds we have a problem here.

This suggests that there was intermarrying between cousins and there would probably have to be quite a lot of it, which if

there weren’t we’d have much more of a population problem on our hands. 1815 is roughly the generation when the number

of relatives exceeds world population. Our assumption of 5 relatives gives us 1,280,000,000 (1.28 billion) cousins in the year

1815 when the world population was closer to 1,050,000,000 (1.05 billion)

Now alternatively we could assume that of our 32,768 ancestors back in 1640 and the 81,920 offspring they produced for

Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations:

generation 1665 these children only married others from this pool and each subsequent generation also did this, meaning we

ask thy father, and he will shew thee; thy elders, and they will tell thee.

would divide by two each generation like we did for the ancestors we knew married each other. Since we are multiplying by 5

- Deuteronomy 32:7

every generation and dividing by 2, we are actually multiplying by 2.5 each generation, so we can write 16,384 times 2.5^15.

This gives us 15,258,789,062.5 or a little over 15 billion. This would actually be a complete minimum with the 5 children

for every two parens,, it does assume that all of your ancestors have married someone who is descended from the same ances-

This book traces my wife’s family back at least 400 years – to 1600 – and farther, if the available information was interesting

tor pool in 1640, so the true number is probably larger. So anyway there is your range: at lowest we probably have around 15

enough to me – and mine back as far as I could go: 200 years – and then makes a leap (or faith) into the Old Testment and traces

billion cousins – three times the entire population of the earth.

it farther back to Adam and Eve..

The total number of possible calculated by Kevin is at the same time both impressive and impossible. Perhaps I overestimated Sixteen generations brings our families back to 1600 at 25 years per generation: back to a time when our daughters Dorothy the average number of children most couples had. Perhaps childhood mortality was higher than I imagine (with 10 children noted and Anya could have found 131,072 grandmothers and grandfathers inhabiting the planet.

for many colonial families, a 50% mortality is still depressing). Perhaps – as is likely– I am so far out of my element when I try 150 “Founding Families”on my wife’s side alone are delineated here.

to deal with the numbers, I have no idea what I am talking about.

The odds are very slim than any of my ancestors met any of my wife’s– except under less than amicable circumstances…

There is another possibility.

say, on their way to the Crusades, burning some Jews along the way just to practice what they wanted to do to the Muslims if they Most of our ancestors were related to each other. Experts on the subject claim no person alive today is less than a 16th cousin made it all the way to Jerusalem It’s a lucky thing that Jung was wrong and that there is no such thing as an ancestral memory, of any other. For example, my great grandfather married his first cousin. Inez’ family tree has many “repeats” in it – even though because if he had been, even if my wife and I had met in Philadelphia, we never would have married.

they might be 100 or more years distant from one another. There are “duplicates” and “threefers,” and entire clans who have (I’m peculiarly unforgiving about anti-Semitism. Think what you want, but do not do anything against a individual or a group intermarried with associated families - both in the old world and the new - for at least 400 years.

based on race, creed, culture, etc. etc. and so forth. Admittedly, it may be a constant internal battle. We all have our prejudices.) By 1650 the majority of my wife’s ancestors had arrived in America; at this time her list of possible grandparents could have The population of Europe in 1600 is estimated at around 70 million – barely a third of what the population of the United totaled 8,192 (our daughters’ ancestors would have been double that number), although my ancestors - who could have been equal States today; this mean that our daughters total ancestry at this time represented two percent of the entire European population in numbers - still had 250 years of European misery to endure before they stumbled on the idea of shaking off their chains, head-

(with the exception – of course – of their ancestors who were not European).

ing for a seaport, and booking passage westward.

This was sixteen generations ago, when the European population of what is now the United States was close to 0 (with

In 1650 also, the population of the American colonies was 50,000, of whom 18,000 were residing in Virginia where most the exception of some few Spanish soldiers in our southern extremities) . But no matter where they were living, our daugh-of my wife’s ancestors appear to have come. This means that almost one half of the Virginia population in 1650 were my wife’s ters’131,072 ancestors in 1600 could by now have produced 15 billion cousins for them – if each couple gave birth to an average direct ancestors or their relations – which included the families of most of our early presidents.

of only five children.

By 1750, our daughters had 4,096 grandparents alive in America – again, mostly in Virginia, although Maryland, Pennsylvania, 15 billion people represent more than three times the population of the Earth today.

North Carolina, and possibly Connecticut, New Jersey, and Massachusetts still harbored some of them. But as far as the gene Dorothy and Anya’s first cousin – and my nephew, Kevin Liftig, a Mathematics teacher and numbers whizkid, parsed it thusly: pool is considered on their mother’s side, the lid was about to cover the melting pot. German, English, French, Welsh, German,

If we say a generation is about 25 years then 15 generations back is roughly 1640ish which sounds close to the ball-

Danish, Scots, Irish, and American Indian ancestors had formed into a fairly homogeneous group of second “Founding Fathers”

park you are looking for. since one generation back you have two ancestors (parents) and two generations back you have

before they even thought about heading West over the Appalachian mountains.

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