Posted elsewhere but would like explained like I’m 5.
What I can’t get my head around is: I had 2 parents, they had 4 (in total) who would have had 8 in a geometric progression, so going back even 1000 years or 20 generations (assuming an average lifespan of 50 years) is 2,097,152 ancestors for just me, and given that there is a reported 7.9 billion people on earth alive today it seems mathematically impossible that all those people could have existed.
In: 7
Your numbers are correct, but the missing piece of the puzzle is that some of them are the same people. Your great to the n^th grandparent on your mother’s side might also be your great to the m^th grandparent on your father’s side.
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