I live in Des Moines and work in Grinnell. There is often not much to do driving over on Mondays. Sometimes I think about stuff like this:
Each of us has had
2 parents
4 grandparents
8 great grandparents
16 great great grandparents
32 great great great grandparents.
In doing that exercise we have gone back five generations to account for one person’s 32 great great great grandparents. My grandson in the left photo below can claim two of my great grandparents (the two people front and center) in the second photo below as 2 of his 32 great great great grandparents.
If you go back 5 generations in your family, that is 32 people from whom you are directly descended. If you go back 10 generations, it is 1024. If you go back 15, it is 32,768. If you go back 20 generations, that’s a million people. About the time Columbus landed (20 generations at 25 years each), a million of your ancestors were gathering the DNA that is part of you today.
Pretty great, eh? Thirty-two ancestors to make one child in 5 generations; a million to one in 20!
Guest Writer: James G. Lindberg (Jim) is the Purple Wren’s sweetie and is a visiting chemistry professor at Grinnell College and retired from Drake University.
[tags] Iowa, Des Moines, Central Iowa News, Ancestors, Population[/tags]
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Hi Jim, Your article is just terrific. How clever of you to work out the number–and how surprising that they are so huge how a comparatively short time. I also enjoyed the pictures. Your great-grandson looks like some of the folks in that picture. Congratulations on a really interesting posting.
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