Re: Quantifying distant ancestors (and descendants)

On Aug 25, 3:47 pm, "Leo van de Pas" <leovd...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Dear Christopher,

In a way, you could ask how long is a piece of string. The theoretical
number of ancestors you can work out, 2 parents, four grandparents and so
on. After a number of generations they _must_ be intermarriage, reducing the
actual number of ancestors, and this differs for every person.

Do you know one of my favourite books, with the dreary title of "Your family
Tree"? In one of the forewords they talk about every adult twentieth-century
descendant of Isabel de Vermandois had in her time, the twelfth century, the
theoretical number of 67,108,862 ancestors.

Further down in this foreword:
"This, however, has led us to figures manifestly impossible in view of the
fact that the total population of England in 1100 did not exceed two
millions, and that probably not one-tenth of these, beset as they were by
war and pestilence, left permanent lines of descendants."

Two million, ten percent is 200,000 and those 200,000 have produced, is it
68 million today in England?

The population of England today, though, is far more than the number
produced by those whose ancestors were actually in England in 1100.
The various colonies around the globe have contributed tens of
thousands (or more?) to the modern population, not to mention
immigrants from places not colonized by England. Best, Bronwen

.

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