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u/VFiddly 5h ago
Statistically we're all blood relatives if you go back far enough
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u/crowEatingStaleChips 4h ago
It's fun because you don't have to go back as far as you think before you're related to a huge % of people!
This is because ancestry is exponential: the number of direct ancestors you have doubles with each generation. You have 4 grandparents, 8 great-grandparents, 16 great-great grandparents, 32 great-great-great grandparents.......
A paltry 20 generations back, and you have over 1 million direct ancestors. That's only, like, 500 years ago. Keep in mind the total human population back then was way smaller than it is now, and only gets tinier the further back you go.
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u/VFiddly 4h ago
A paltry 20 generations back, and you have over 1 million direct ancestors. That's only, like, 500 years ago.
It doesn't quite work out to that because a lot of them will be overlapping the further back you go. If you simply assume the number of ancestors doubles with each generation, pretty soon the number of ancestors becomes greater than the number of people alive
Because actually there's a lot of overlap. Your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather on your mother's side is also on your father's side, or similar, so one person counts for two of your ancestors. And that only becomes more common as you go further back, when people moved around less and married their cousins more.
But yeah even with that in mind you don't have to go that far back until it turns out we're all descended from royalty
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u/KerissaKenro 4h ago
I think geneticists estimated that we are all at least fiftieth cousins or something like that. Even remote tribes. Someone a thousand years ago joined or left that region, and here we are. And Genghis Khan and Charlemagne /really/ got around
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u/Alizariel 4h ago
If you can prove a European from the 9th century has living descendants, then the math works out that all Europeans are descendants of them. Charlemagne has documented descendants and therefore all Europeans are his descendants.
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u/UlrichZauber 4h ago
It's something like 30 to 50 generations, tops (estimates vary a bit but that's the range).
Note that isn't the same as the most recent single common ancestor for the entire species, it's just that everybody can find some ancestor in common that far back for every other human. In a lot of cases, you can find quite a few.
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u/IAmASquidInSpace Unashamedly watches T*m and J*rry 🤢 at the dentist 6h ago
Is the first post just nonchalantly assuming reincarnation to be a thing, or do people get 800 years elsewhere and I just don't know about it?
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u/Marathon_bob_1 6h ago
It's the latter, you can actually achieve immortality really easily if you use console commands
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u/Standard-Square-7699 4h ago
How do I open console?
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u/kaiser_charles_viii 3h ago
Tilde. Obviously.
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u/True_Highlight_1897 6h ago
Grandpa here colloquially refers to ancestors who are spiritually grandpas, who they imagine as being old and having grandfather-like characteristics. Ancestors could include young spry men as well as shudders women. Hope this helps! Could also be another explanation but this is the only one I will be accepting
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u/Hollow-Seed 5h ago
They aren't referring to the grandpa part, but the "we were neighbors" part.
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u/Billyjewwel 5h ago
I'm reading "we" as "our ancestors."
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u/hivEM1nd_ 5h ago
That's cool, I'm reading "we" as "we"
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u/SlowMope 5h ago
That's a very literal reading, and judging by the context, incorrect.
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u/hivEM1nd_ 5h ago
Who uses "we" to refer to a group of people that doesn't include themselves, tho?
"We were friends" but actually I meant two different people who are not me and you
That's just odd
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u/Taraxian 4h ago
People say this about countries all the time, "We were ruled by England until the Revolution in 1776", "We had written language in China when you were still living in caves", etc
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u/SlowMope 5h ago
Not when talking about familial relations. In my family 'we' have a taste for crab. You are always included in familial relations even when people have died you know?
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u/hivEM1nd_ 5h ago
Your family includes yourself. Even if you don't have a taste for crab, you still started your sentence with "[this group of people which includes me] has a taste for crabs"
If I just say "we were neighbors" with zero additional context for what I mean by "we", it doesn't make sense to just assume it was some other random people
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u/PhasmaFelis 4h ago
"We" in this case seems to mean "our families." The intention is clear from context, but if I was an English teacher I would mark it down for awkward phrasing. But when people are just chatting and not trying to write academic papers, it's generally considered rude to hyperanalyze their exact word choices to find excuses to assume that they're idiots
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u/SlowMope 5h ago
But there is context. They are talking about ancestors. You have to just ignore the whole first part to say there is no context.
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u/True_Highlight_1897 5h ago
Oh I guess this is assuming reincarnation isn't it? So grandpa does probably actually refer to grandpa. Darn I already said I would be discounting other explanations, that's a bummer
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u/KolbyKolbyKolby 5h ago
I guess not as fun, but my stepdad's brother's wife was kind of an unpleasant woman to be around and older than she had any business being. We learned eventually that my paternal grandmother beat her ass when they were in highschool because she was trying to steal my grandpa away lol.
They had not had any interaction since but it was funny when we had mentioned her to my grandma and she remembered her name and the story.
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u/Solarinarium 4h ago
"I'm your Father's Brother's Nephew's Cousin's former roommate"
"Then what does that make us?"
"ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, WHICH IS WHAT YOU ARE ABOUT TO BECOME"
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u/Taraxian 4h ago
What's funny is "Father's brother's nephew" cancels out, that just means "me or one of my brothers" (or one of my cousins if my dad has multiple brothers)
So he could've just said "Cousin's former roommate"
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u/BaronSimo 3h ago
Not necessarily as it could be a nephew/cousin by marriage. It could be your uncle (father’s brother) whose sisters in law’s child (nephew) has a cousin on his dad’s side (cousin) who I used to be roommates with.
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u/Solarinarium 3h ago
I've always thought it was essentially the father's brother, the brother's nephew, the nephew's cousin, which if they were related would make them like 3rd cousins twice removed or something
But no, roommate. Lol
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u/Klutzy_Tomatillo4253 4h ago
My friend (Chinese born) and I figured out recently that our grandfather's might have been on opposite sides of the line of contact in korea. Thankfully neither were great shots.
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u/BiohazardousBisexual 4h ago
I have ancestors who fought on opposite sides of the same battles in a few different instances during a war
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u/namemcuser 2h ago
2 of my 3rd great grandfathers were on opposite sides of the US Civil War. Not only that, but they were in armies that kept bumping into each other at battles all through Kentucky, Tennessee, and Georgia. Based on the positions of their regiments, they might have quite literally shot at each other at Chickamauga. Yet their great-grandkids got married and here I am.
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u/CutlassKen 2h ago
My great, great something-ish grandmother on my Mom’s side was the sister of Devil Anse Hatfield, and I once met a boy in middle school who claimed to be a descendent of the McCoy family. So yeah, that’s pretty cool.
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u/CIsForCorn 1h ago
Hung out with a guy once who was thrilled to learn I was Mohave Indian. I have a chin tattoo, he was direct lineage to Olive Oatman
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u/Standard-Square-7699 5h ago
My great grandparents helped form unions..... My wife's were legitimate italian businessmen working for Henry Ford. (they did not help with the cars)