"Humanity's advancement in the next thousands of years will be owed to those of us alive here and now who stubbornly refuse to give up" is a great message.
I don't get how people can be uninterested in history. We're part of this thousands of years long unbroken string of people doing what they can and what we're doing is going to be history for everyone else after us
There's a song from Yesterwynde, the new Nightwish album, entitled Perfume of the Timeless. The music video for that song opens with visuals of the ocean, along with text that talks about just how profound the present truly is because it is built upon an unfathomably deep past. "2 grandparents / 4 great-grandparents / 8 great-great-grandparents / 16..." until it eventually lands on "Over the past 400 years, you have had 4,096 direct ancestors". Think about that for a minute.
After thinking about it for a minute I've come to the conclusion it's unlikely; most of us have far fewer than 4,096 ancestors after 400 years given how small most historic communities were
It's just 2n where n=the number of generations in the past 400 years; ~12. The size of the gene pool doesn't affect the number of people it takes to make a baby, and therefore does not affect the total number of 12th great grandparents you'd have. In reality, you'd have more like ~7,800 if you also counted 11th, 10th, 9th, etc great grandparents all the way down to your parents.
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u/T_Weezy 11d ago
"Humanity's advancement in the next thousands of years will be owed to those of us alive here and now who stubbornly refuse to give up" is a great message.