I'd like to sell this off as mine, but as its available on several mailing list, I won't. Its funny just the same though.
Fact No. 1:
Everybody of us knows, that our ancestors double in number in every generation. Our parents had each two parents and they had, too – nothing new so far.
How far did you get back? The oldest ancestor of my daughter is number 50.688...
Fact No. 2:
The further we go back in time, the smaller was the world population. Sooner or later we find matches with other researchers. - Nice...
Now the paradox:
Lets say, every 25 years there is a new generation. (I know! Our generation usually needs a little longer to produce descendants. But in former times 25 years was a good age.) So back to the year 0 we would have 80 generations. How would the development of the world population look compared to the number of our ancestors?
In the year 2000 we had about 6.080.000.000 people on this earth and only me - or you - as the end of our pedigree.
Only 50 years ago, in 1950, there were only about 2.555.000.000 against the four of my grand-parents.
In 1900 1.550.000.000 people surrounded my greatgreatgrandparents, who were sixteen persons.
Let’s jump to 1750, when about 629.000.000 people ran around in the world, of whom 1.024 were my ancestors. In 1500 1.048.576 people of 425.000.000 shared my - or your - blood.
The best is still to come: In the year 1250 the world was populated by about 400.000.000 people. But my ancestors dominated them by far, being 1.073.741.824 in number!!!
In the year 1000 my 1.099.511.627.776 ancestors lived in a world with only 254.000.000 people.
About 500 my kinship had 1.152.921.504.606.850.000 members, but the globe had only 190.000.000.
And when Jesus was born my people crowded this planet with 1.208.925.819.614.630.000.000.000, where only 170.000.000 humans existed.
First question: Are we from Mars, though?
Second question: How did they get cope with environmental problems?
Third question: Who can name this number loudly?
That's it. I won't think about it anymore, because I need some sleep tonight. Probably somebody of you will be polite and explain this to me some time.
