Ancestors in Asturias
Posted: Sun Feb 15, 2004 4:17 pm
I have been pleasantly surprised to find several cousins through this forum. A little reflection on the simple mathematics involved convinces me that there are many more family relationships to be discovered.
We each have two parents, four grandparents, eight great grandparents, etc. Our number of ancestors doubles for every generation that we go back in time. The current population of Asturias is a little over one million (1,000,000). If we allow 20 to 25 years per generation, we each have a little over a million ancestors somewhere between 400 and 500 years ago. More recently, the number of ancestors we each have must have equalled or exceeded the number of people then living in Asturias. The inevitable conclusion is that many of us are biologically related.
Obviously, this oversimplied model ignores emmigration and immigration, differential reproduction of different individuals, inbreeding, internal patterns of migration within Asturias, and other such factors, but it is at least enough to show that many of us must share common ancestors.
Bob Martinez
We each have two parents, four grandparents, eight great grandparents, etc. Our number of ancestors doubles for every generation that we go back in time. The current population of Asturias is a little over one million (1,000,000). If we allow 20 to 25 years per generation, we each have a little over a million ancestors somewhere between 400 and 500 years ago. More recently, the number of ancestors we each have must have equalled or exceeded the number of people then living in Asturias. The inevitable conclusion is that many of us are biologically related.
Obviously, this oversimplied model ignores emmigration and immigration, differential reproduction of different individuals, inbreeding, internal patterns of migration within Asturias, and other such factors, but it is at least enough to show that many of us must share common ancestors.
Bob Martinez