I googled the amount of people that lived on earth throughout its entire history, it’s roughly 108 billions. If I take 1 person and multiply by 2 for each generation of ancestors, at the 37th generation it already outnumbers that 108 billions. (it’s 137 billions). If we take 20 years for 1 generation, it’s only 740 years by the 37th generation.
How??
(I suck at math, I recounted it like 20 times, got that 137 billions at 37th, 38th and 39th generation, so forgive me if it’s not actually at 37th, but it’s still no more than 800 years back in history)
In: 1391
A paper in [Molecular Biology](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2427203/) which comes at the problem from a different direction (matrilineal DNA studies) suggests that for about 100,000 years there was a “long bottleneck” during which human populations dropped at times to as few as 2000 individuals.
That’s 2000 people who are the ancestors of everyone alive today.
Hello, cousins.
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