Anything to avoid metric.
this post was submitted on 01 Jan 2026
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Your ancestor tree also expands exponentially (almost doubling with every generation), so everyone alive around the year 1250 AD is either one of your ancestors or no-one-around-today's ancestor (because their line died out).
We are all related about 30 mothers out.
Yeah. I had thought about that, although I realized that it's probably a little more complex due to genetic isolation; that is, you've got inbreeding several generations back, even more so if your ancestors were really quite homogeneous like the Japanese. Like, instead of it being 30 mothers out, it might only be 15 or less within your region.
And a pure Native American must have a common mother with a pure Aboriginal Australian about 1600 mothers ago.
Does that take into account the relative lack of mixing among populations in different continents until recently?
Yea, a pure Native American doesn't share a mother with an Aboriginal Australian in 1250 AD lol.
Happy cake day!
Just a tip: the term "Aborigine" (that's how it's spelt, fwiw) is no longer preferred, and is often regarded as offensive. "Aboriginal Australian" or "Indigenous" are preferred instead.
Thanks, fixed.
Also helps that mitochondrial DNA from the matrilineal side is so reliable to track. It's not just that agriculture was about 450 mothers ago - we can literally track who's mothers they were, in order.
I mean, people kinda are aware of it? We all know our grandparents are old, and that’s just two generations— knowing your great grandparents is considered a rare honor because of how old they must be, and that’s just three. So a long time spanning relatively few people isn’t really a shocking revelation, is it?
Years ago I had a hospice patient that was 108 years old. Her main caregivers were her children who were in their 80's, with support of their children who were in their 50's. And yes, they had children who were also starting to have children. Family get togethers had to be something!
The aunt of my mother already has great-great-grandchildren, and she is only around 90 years old. Meanwhile her sister (my grandmother) only has grandchildren.
That's also the weird thing about the "experienced" past.
When we think about what things were like "in the past", we think of what they were like for the oldest people we know, and if we are lucky we get a couple stories from them about their parents or grandparents.
So for me, my experienced past ends in 1930.
The experienced past is the lense through which we see the whole past, even though it's such a tiny sliver of the actual past.
Remember this in this context: Whenever someone says "In the past X was always the case", what they really mean was "For my grandparents X was the case", and they likely don't even realize that.
which is why studying history is so important, it's actively expanding your experienced past. At this point the middle ages no longer feels like a long time ago.
Studying history helps with an intellectual understanding of the slice of the past that was documented in history. So that's helpful, but it's not the same as the "experienced" past, where you have an emotional and intuitive understanding of how things worked.
The history of the middle ages, for example, pretty much only cover nobility. There's not a lot of history about the day-to-day life of the bottom 90% of the people. You know, the kind of people you and I would have been if we had lived 1500 years ago.
Also, the past isn't a homogeneous thing at all, neither in time nor in space. So things that might be true for 950 CE in one town might be totally different two towns over or 50 years later.
Just as a small example in the more recent history:
Women not working outside the home was the standard for the middle class in 1950. It was not the standard for the middle class in 1900. Then it was the standard for nobility, but regular women would be working full-time jobs.
i'm not sure why you bring all of that up? i said studying history, that.. obviously includes the things you mention, that is what it means to study history.........
Because studying history is not enough to have an emotional and intuitive understanding of it, as I said.
The historical records are not deep enough. They don't contain all the stuff you get from having lived through a period and/or personally knowing someone who did.
because of how old they must be
Usually it's because of how young the mothers were.
I can tell my kids about their great-great grandparents.
I somehow think that even 100 years ago mothers would start having kids sooner than 25
Even assuming 20 as the average age, that makes it only 50 women per thousand years (100 ish since 1 A.D.).
And I do think 25 is a solid guess. While you could def have kids younger, you can also have them older. 25 does feel old for average age, but also, 20 feels too young for an average.
Its probs somewhere between those two, but for math, me likey round number.
People were considered adults at an earlier age prior to the industrial revolution, but surprisingly this article implies 25 is a fairly close guess. https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/average-age-of-conception-throughout-human-history/151423/
makes more sense when you consider that people would generally have a handfull of kids, and you probably want to wait a few years between them to catch your breath and try to get the last one to survive past the first year.
So I was curious and checked what the average age for marriage was in ancient Greece, think 400 BCE. And.... 25 is old maid range. As soon as puberty kicked in they were married, as young as 14 - 16. At least if you trust Wikipedia. And since this isn't scholarly work, I mostly trust it.
Remember that not everyone is a direct line of first children. The average age of the mother of the birth of A child (contrary to her first child) seems to be around age 30 over most of history according to google.
Which does make sense if you consider that women would start getting children in their late teens (puberty used to start later) and end getting children in their 40s.
That's why for an average generation 30 years is usually taken.
So we've only got 400 mothers to prepare for the Butlerian Jihad?
Crazy how generations be like they are
there is no 0 ad
1 word: Adblockers
There definitely was a 0 ad, but whether that standa for anything real is another issue.
Is there 0 bc then?
also no, 1bc then 1 ad
"you're the result of countless ejaculations"
Product of, and producer of.
The song Year 3000 by Busted makes me laugh. They're like "your great great great granddaughter is pretty fine." In 1000 years there were only 5 generations? They had an average breeding age of 200?!
Interesting, but downvoted because of self censorship of the word shit.
Is 80 supposed to be little? I never knew my great-grandparents so I'm only aware of my 2 past mothers. If I knew 10 mothers that would be huge, I would know about the great-grandparents of the great-grandparents of my great-grandparents. 80 is not "only", it's beyond comprehension.
How many daughters away from Star Trek time travel are we?