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John Byrne

Grumpy Old Guy

Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 136127
Posted: 04 May 2026 at 4:01pm | IP Logged | 1 post reply

I do want to add that I have zero doubt that quite literally all of us have, in our ancestry, ancestors who were the product of these kind of relationships.

•••

Oh, there’s worse than that!

With each generation we go back, we double the number of ancestors we have. Two biological parents, four grandparents, eight great grandparents, and so on.

Problem is, go back about 30 generations, and we each have more ancestors than there were people on Earth. In order to get the necessary numbers, we end up with a whole lot of cousin-humping—and closer!

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Evan S. Kurtz
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 04 July 2022
Location: Canada
Posts: 295
Posted: 04 May 2026 at 4:10pm | IP Logged | 2 post reply

I mean, we share 50% of our DNA with bananas. Yes, spanning back the quarter of a million years we've been here as a species, there's been a lot of sexual assault and incest in all of our ancestry. Even if there wasn't directly, eventually we'd go back and reach a point where we find commonality. 

Edited by Evan S. Kurtz on 04 May 2026 at 4:10pm
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Brian Miller
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 28 July 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 32007
Posted: 04 May 2026 at 4:26pm | IP Logged | 3 post reply

Problem is, go back about 30 generations, and we each have more
ancestors than there were people on Earth. In order to get the necessary
numbers, we end up with a whole lot of cousin-humping—and closer!
****
Of course that happened, and probably a LOT more than we realize or even
want to know, but your estimation doesn’t take into account siblings and
how they share the same sets of parents, grandparents, etc.
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John Byrne

Grumpy Old Guy

Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 136127
Posted: 04 May 2026 at 5:08pm | IP Logged | 4 post reply

Doesn’t need to. A single thread is enough.
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Victor Manuel Fernandez Patiño
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: Mexico
Posts: 1617
Posted: 06 May 2026 at 5:49pm | IP Logged | 5 post reply


According to the pedigree collapse, any human being in the
year 1066, to give a date, is a direct ancestor of any of
us... Which makes time travel even more complicated!
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John Byrne

Grumpy Old Guy

Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 136127
Posted: 06 May 2026 at 6:30pm | IP Logged | 6 post reply

What I find interesting is the idea of jumping back thru my ancestors one by one, and noticing how soon (in geologic time) I am not jumping through people any more.
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