REALITY CHECK
As we wade through our family history, we will locate many famous names of iconic figures in northwestern European history and you may be tempted to say to yourself, “Wow. I am descended from a famous, iconic figure in northwestern European history!” I caution you to check your ego at the door. Do you have any idea how many people on the face of Earth can claim a descent from William the Conqueror or Alfred the Great? Literally billions. I received the following inquiry some time ago from a struggling family genealogist who wanted to identify every person on earth who could be his or her distant cousin. Here is the note and my response.
Dear Doc,
I picked up a book the other day that outlined the descendants of my 10x great Grandfather, John Walter. It was 480 pages thick and it started with only 2 people, John and his wife Margaret nee Gethin. How many people can descend from one couple that was alive in 1530?
– R. Walter, Muscatine IA
Dear R.,
It could be as few as Zero (0) if the initial couple was without child. In the case of John and Margaret Walter, it may be as many as billions. Let’s begin with any one couple in 1600 and create a model: Let’s say the couple had 8 adult children and each of those 8 children had 8 adult children. There are now 64 grandchildren. Each of the 64 grandchildren has 8 adult children and we now have 512 children (8 x 64 = 512). Again, this is fiction. Using the constant number of 8 adults each producing 8 adult offspring, within 10 generations the table looks like this:
Generation 1 1 set of parents have 8 adult children in 1600
Generation 2 Those 8 adults marry and produce 64 adult children
Generation 3 8 x 64 = 512
Generation 4 8 x 512 = 4,096
Generation 5 8 x 4,096 = 32,768
Generation 6 8 x 32,768 =262,144
Generation 7 2,097,152
Generation 8 16,777,216
Generation 9 134,217,728
Generation 10 1,073,741,824
Within ten generations and a 400-year span, John and his lovely wife Margaret may have 1,073,741,824 seven times great grandchildren. That is but one way to look at their descendants. In the course of the family history, the sum of 10 generations of adults (generation 1 plus gen 2 plus …) who walked the earth and descended from Margaret and the dashing John would be 1,227,133,512 people. That does not include those offspring who did not make it to adulthood, or those who did become adults but never a parent.
Best of luck with your research and should you run into any problems please seek counseling.
Note: The model I produced for R. Walter of Muscatine, Iowa, allows 40 years per each generation. There have been many families that created ‘next generations’ every 25 years or less. At generation 13 the number of descendants becomes a staggering 549,755,813,888. We know the average family today does not produce 8 adult children, nor has it over the last century. It varies widely across the globe and centuries. This model is hypothetical but does make the point that it would take a thick book to just enumerate the descendants of one couple from 500 years ago. Just so you know, we are not going to try doing that here.
– – – – –
Finding Cerdic as a 47xGGP in the year 534 caused K.J. Sweeney of Los Chihuahuas CA to write:
Dear Doc,
How do I know how many people were my 10 times great grandparents?
– K.J. Sweeney, Los Chihuahuas CA
Dear KJ,
I assume we are talking about birth parents only. Each of us has two birth parents, four grandparents and the numbers double each time as we go back to the 10xGreat Grandparents. My 10 times great grandparents walked the earth between the years 1550 and 1650.
1 person, Doc, has 2 parents and those
2 parents each have 2 parents giving Doc
4 grandparents and they each have 2 parents and Doc has
8 great grandparents
16 2xGGP
32 3xGGP
64 4xGGP
128 5xGGP
256 6xGGP
512 7xGGP
1024 8xGGP
2048 9xGGP
In roughly 1600 AD, there were 4096 people who were my 10xGGP.
Good Luck with your research KJ. Please remember that there are emotional support groups for struggling family history buffs.
Note: Please put things in perspective as we travel through the royal families. Many people today descend from the iconic royal folks found in history books. I recently posted the above models in my online blog and received the following response from an avid follower in Cut Rate, Nevada.
Hey Doc,
If there are roughly 7 billion people on Earth today and each of us had 4096 great grandparents in 1600 AD, wouldn’t the population of the Earth have been a staggering 28,672,000,000,000 back then? That would be 7 billion x 4096. Seems your numbers don’t make sense. And if each of those 28,672,000,000,000 people back then could have 1,073,741,824 descendants alive today, shouldn’t the population of Earth today be 30,786,325,577,728,000,000,000? (28,672,000,000,000 x 1,073,741,824)?
– Perplexed in Nevada
Authors’ Note: I suspect my blog attracted a troll who was at a loss as to what to do with his time after the November elections of 2018. If you are thinking he is right, and making a valid point, think again.
