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Ask HN: Are You Related to Caesar?

1 points by singularity2001 ↗ HN
If there are about 4 generations per century, there are about 80 generations since Caesar/Christ. With every parental generation the number of your ancestors doubles. So you have 2^80 ancestors going back 2000 years. That is 10^23. With estimates of all humans ever in existence being about 10^11 that means everyone is directly related to everyone multiple multiple times.

Anyone on earth who had reproductive children back than is now your ancestor, to varying degrees of course. Even Caesar. Even jungle people from the most remote places, because one single contact half way connects the graphs.

So if someone asks you if you are related to Caesar the next time you have to answer with a resounding Yes!

2 comments

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solmag
It is interesting how nobody in Europe can trace their bloodline / genealogy before the fall of Rome. I think there's a bunch of royal bloodlines that can be traced back to like year 1000 and that's it.

Fall of Rome was quite a catastrophe in that sense.

bloak
All living things on earth are related, but Julius Caesar is thought not to have any living descendants. (He had a son who died young, and a daughter who died in childbirth, and a grandchild who died young, or something like that. Of course there may have been others we don't know about, but it is at least plausible that he has no living descendants.)