My family has been in this area for a long time (South Carolina - Myrtle Beach, Conway), and we have many kinships over the place. I haven't lived here all of my life, but my father was born and raised here. He knows many more familial realtionships in the area than I do.
Over the past 8 years, as I got out of the USMC and was in college, I would occasionally run into my father when I was with a girl I was interested in. They were usually local girls, from the area that my grandmother lived because that's where my college is. My father would immediately start the girl asking what her name was, who she's related to, does she know this person, etc. Invariably they would settle on some obscure person that they both knew of but hadn't seen in 2.3 million years, and my father just sure that this girl was a fifth cousin or some crap like that.
<sigh> Like we need incest in South Carolina. </sigh>
- Matt Small
----- Original Message -----
From: Ian Skinner
To: CF-Community
Sent: Monday, January 05, 2004 3:44 PM
Subject: RE: Generational Math
Depends on how you look at it. First of all, yes the farther you go back,
the more "cousin" loving you get. It doesn't take that far at really, just
go back 2 or 3 centuries, you would get relatively small populations with
little geographical movement, you would most likely be marrying a cousin of
some sort. Now, once you get past the 2nd cousin level, it's really not
that big a deal.
If fact, that was the first purpose of genealogy, to make sure that the
person one was marrying was not too closely related to oneself.
The other way to look at it, is to do the math forward. Take a person who
lived 1500 years ago, and assume he had on average, 2 surviving descendants
each generation (a fairly conservative number I believe) and you get
562,949,953,421,312 descendants in the current generation. Obviously
considerably more then the number of people currently alive. It basically
means that anybody you marry now, must be a cousin of some level.
Especially if you stay within your own ethnic/geographical area (reduces the
number of choices considerably).
So in reality, we all are engaged in cousin loving everyday.
--------------
Ian Skinner
Web Programmer
BloodSource
www.BloodSource.org
Sacramento, CA
-----Original Message-----
From: John Stanley [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Monday, January 05, 2004 12:34 PM
To: CF-Community
Subject: RE: Generational Math
So there must have been a ton of interfamily breeding back in the day,
especially when you take into account populational bottlenecks due to
natural disasters and global epidemics. Wow. I never thought of it, but
there must have been alot, I mean ALOT of cousin lovin going on.
-----Original Message-----
From: Ian Skinner [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Monday, January 05, 2004 3:29 PM
To: CF-Community
Subject: RE: Generational Math
You are correct, if you go back far enough we are all related to one another
one way or another. What will happen is that the farther back you go, you
will conceivable have that same ancestor appearing in two or more lines. A
simple example, that does happen. If you have a pair of second cousins who
marry, they would share a common set of great-grandparents. So instead of
having 4 sets of great-grandparents (8 people) they would only have 3
distinct sets (6 people).
What would happen is the percentage of this relationship sharing would grow
the farther back you go.
--------------
Ian Skinner
Web Programmer
BloodSource
www.BloodSource.org
Sacramento, CA
-----Original Message-----
From: John Stanley [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Monday, January 05, 2004 12:08 PM
To: CF-Community
Subject: Generational Math
Okay doing family history research which by the way can be seen at
http://www.netconceptions.com <http://www.netconceptions.com>
<http://www.netconceptions.com>
<http://www.netconceptions.com>
<http://www.netconceptions.com> , and stating
to see something odd. I know that the number of ancestors a person has for a
particular generation doubles from the previous generation's number. So at
the 4th generation back from me I have 8, and the 5th I have 16 and so on.
Which leads to this. You can tell the number of ancestors you have for a
generation by taking 2 to the (generation number minus one) power.
This is all fine and dandy, but after a certain point it becomes more and
more improbable that say after 49 generations which is about 1500 years I
would have 562,949,953,421,312 ancestors in that generation.
So what gives. Is the math suspect? Is there an inbreeding curve? Even if
you account for like 50% cross-ancestral breeding, that still leaves a huge
number of people anyone is descended from going back that far. This must
take into account the number of people on earth for the whole generational
period in question.
Anyone?
John
_____
_____
_____
[Todays Threads] [This Message] [Subscription] [Fast Unsubscribe] [User Settings]
