Following my ancestry back for a mere 100 generations would give a list of 1,267,650,600,228,229,401,496,703,205,376 different people. And that's just my ancestors.

This seems to be more humans than have ever existed before, yet here I am. What's going on?

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Massive, epic adventure, multi-coloured, multi-layered.
Sort of two/three dimensional Wizard of Oz for the future.

Somewhwere way up along your mothers line, someone bred with someone way along your fathers line. In fact, this happened many many times as when you go back far enough, you'd notice that many of these "1,267,650,600,228,229,401,496,703,205,376 different people" are actually the same people.

It makes sense if you think about it.

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The relationship between all the people is parent-child. Now obviously incest happened but would there be enough of it to compensate for such a large number?

And this is just my ancestry, what's more it's only 100 generations.

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Massive, epic adventure, multi-coloured, multi-layered.
Sort of two/three dimensional Wizard of Oz for the future.

So, when there's a whole load of themit's not that crazy that a whole lot of them should be procreating with each other. Think about it, even at the great-grandparent stage, it wouldn't be too crazy if a great grandmother on your mothers side had a child with someone on your fathers side. It's not really incest, and there's likely to be a ton of it, especially since your ancestors probabale lived around each other. There really is enough to make up the number.

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Incidentally this signature is available in the foyer.

Chances are you go back far enough and everyone currently alive is related to everyone else in some way.

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Yeah, but you see as you get older, the amount of ancestors is exponential (i.e. 2 parents, 4 grandparents 8 great--yaddayaddayadda).

So, when there's a whole load of themit's not that crazy that a whole lot of them should be procreating with each other. Think about it, even at the great-grandparent stage, it wouldn't be too crazy if a great grandmother on your mothers side had a child with someone on your fathers side. It's not really incest, and there's likely to be a ton of it, especially since your ancestors probabale lived around each other. There really is enough to make up the number.

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Ah of course, it's just clicked. You're saying that looking at a family tree from bottom (me) to top, even on my family tree there will be "inbreeding", although a kind of pre-family incest. Gotcha, thankyou.

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Massive, epic adventure, multi-coloured, multi-layered.
Sort of two/three dimensional Wizard of Oz for the future.

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it makes perfect sense........world population was recovering from the ice age at the begining of that line.

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100 generations doesn't go back to the ice age, I am pretty sure.

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flying on eagle's wings!