Roots 2.0
On Internet, it became very easy to find one’s cousins living in other continents, relatives’ pictures published on various Social Network sites and even ancestors in every country. The work of the genealogists is now really easier than before the era of Internet…
Recently, the press announced that they found President Obama’s ancestors in France, Switzerland, Germany and on the British Islands. There was a big buzz around these news and everybody in the world may feel more or less related to the newly elected president of the USA.
Actually, it’s no need to use the Internet to prove that all men in the world have the same ancestors. The number of direct ancestors for a [wo]man born in 2000 is very easy to calculate. Assuming a generation is about twenty five years, and multiplying each generation by two ancestors (two parents, four grand-parents, eight rear-grand-parents, etc.), a very simple Excel sheet shows that:
- Everybody has got more than eight millions direct ancestors in 1425, which is more than the population of England at this date;
- Everybody has got more than sixteen millions direct ancestors in 1400, which is more than the population of France at this date;
- Everybody with some European gene has the whole population of Europe as direct ancestors in 1300;
- … of course the same conclusion could be done for the whole humanity, providing some genetic hints are present in the person’s DNA!
Figure: The paradox of common ancestors.
Its indeed a real paradox: The more we dig in the past, the more ancestors we’ve got… but the less the number of human beings living at the same time. Don’t forget that they were only two at the beginning (Genesis). But men have always tried to find their roots and Luke and Matthew wrote Jesus' genealogy, two thousand years before I’m writing this post.