Quote:
Originally posted by Shape Shifter
This "researcher" is leaving out some very important facts.
On purpose?
|
Read
his paper and explain it to the rest of us (seriously, I can't understand a word of it) before you judge based on an article in the Atlantic Monthly.
As for my poor brain, I will have to content myself with understanding only that Charlemagne was approximately 40 generations back from the present day, and each person has 2 parents, 2^2 = 4 grandparents, 2^3 = 8 great-grandparents, etc. and 2^40, or approximately 1,000,000,000,000, 40th-generation ancestors, which means half a trillion male ancestors. Since the entire male population of Europe at the time of Charlemagne was only about 15 million, this puts the chances that each person with European ancestry is
not descended from Charlemagne at once chance in 10^15,000. Even accounting for non-European branches and low intermarriage rates between social classes, the probability approaches zero because there are so many freakin' ancestors 40 generations back.
