Now that I think about it, we all are at some point distant relatives of people like Albert Einstein or Abraham Lincoln. Though, that could mean that we are also distant relatives of Hitler so...
My Uncle was very proud of the the fact that he was 8,527 in line to be the King of England ,if people died in a specific order. He got depressed when someone died in the wrong order and he went up to well over 12,000 in line. He said he now had no real chance.
If you're 8,527th in line to the throne, it shouldn't matter if someone further down the line dies. Your position in the line of succession remains the same. It only changes if someone higher up the totem pole than you dies, in which case, you get bumped up a spot to 8,526th.
Not true. Charles II had 8 separate great grandparents. On his father's side he had Phillip II, Anne of Austria, Charles II, and Maria Anna of Bavaria (1551-1608). On his mother's side he had Phillip III, Margarita of Austria,. Ferdinand II, and Maria Anna of Bavaria, (1574-1616). That is 8 separate people. The only name that shows up twice is Maria Anna of Bavaria, and those were two different Maria Anna's of Bavaria since they were born in different years and died in different years. Phillip III may have been his grandfather on his father's side and his great-grandfather on his mother's side, but he still nevertheless did not have a great-grandparent on his mother's side who was also his great-grandparent on his father's side. So he still technically had 8 different great-grandparents. Some of those were also his grandparents, but he still did ultimately have eight great-grandparents in total.
I never understood why people care so much about them. They're a relic of the past, and basically it's just a rich family that doesn't have to do anything, and get praised for it. They pretty much just won the human lottery, basically.
I moved to Australia 8 years ago and I though I was the only person in my family over here. I got a job as a cook in a small town and was talking to the sous chef. My family lived in England for 3 generations and before that my ancestry is wales. Well it turns out my sous chefs ancestry was also welsh about 4 years ago and they lived in the next town over from my ancestors (literally just 2-3km away) so we’re most likely related within 6 generations
There could very well be a descendant of a great great great great great great great great great great grandparent or uncle that was shipped off to Australia when it was a penal colony. A little farther removed than your example but I bet you have some very distant relatives living in Australia.
Honestly one of the more impressive things about these channels is how Brady can ask smart questions about subjects he's only learned about an hour ago
@@rs-tarxvfz Yeah please do I´ve been trying to get preggos from my bf but his manjuice always comes out of my boipussy when i am going on the shitter.
We touched on this in one of my genetics classes. We also brought up the idea of ghost ancestors, people in your family tree whom you did not end up inheriting any DNA from, which I think is a bit trippy and a bit sad.
@@bowietwombly5951 "Possible" or "probable?" You have half the genome from each of your parents, who each got half from each of their parents. While astronomically improbable, it is possible for you to get from a parent exactly the half they got from one of their parents and none from the other, in which case you'd have zero genetic inheritance from a grandparent.
No, the real message is: "If you reproduce, you will be an ancestor of everyone in the future. If you don't reproduce, you will be an ancestor of no one in the future. Therefore if you don't reproduce then you have no reason to care about anyone in any way whatsoever, no matter what."
Exceptionally well done,. You spioke to two things that I enjoy very much: genealogy and mathematics. Btw, my own parents have a common ancestor about 400 years based on what I can document today.
So 7000 years ago, they are all my ancestors. But presumably, some of them (the ones that look like more like me) are my ancestors several hundred times over whereas some of them are my ancestor only once.
Actually you left out the part where many of them are not related to you, its just that they are also not related to anyone else alive today. Otherwise, yeah you probably have more ways your related to some people than others (whom your related to) from 7,000 years ago. As they said though this modal is somewhat limited when referring to large populations where movement is restricted. For example we know that in Europe most people are related to Neanderthals with about 3% dna from them, while in Asia only 1%-2%, and in Africa almost none. That would imply that some amount of Europeans from only 7,000 are probably are not the ancestors of most of today Africans. Maybe I'm misunderstanding something (could be that dna reading technology is just too poor to identify these weak relationships like the one time connection you were mentioning).
@@brcoutme 7000 years is about 200 generations so you would have 2^200 ancestors (including the duplicates) from that generation. The number is so much larger than the world's population, you can't even begin to think in terms of a percentage of DNA. For Neanderthals we are going back another thousand generations before that. If you consider the spread of Islam and Christianity through Africa, it's not hard to imagine them having some European and Middle Eastern ancestors.
*talks about how we're all slightly inbred* "but that doesn't show that we're all descended from royalty" - it doesn't, but it's always a sign that you're getting close
That quote James ended on is just the perfect argument against tribalism and racism :) In the end, we are all just people, shaped by our past, so no reason to spread hate.
"And so, I checked all the registered historical facts And I was shocked into shame to discover How I'm the eighteenth pale descendant Of some old queen or other"
this was brilliantly explained in plain language. I've been struggling as a population geneticist to explain to my students how to easily grasp the concept 'time to most recent common ancestor' from the N, this nails it.
I was checking the comments to see if anyone else thought this because clearly not “everyone” is a “royal” descendant. There are very isolated indigenous peoples all around the world. Royalty is a cultural concept that is relatively recent in human history, and it wasn't recognized by all cultures.
Everyone whose family has been in Europe for more than a handful of generations is (almost certainly) descended from Genghis Khan. Most of Asia too though it's a bit more complicated there.
Thank you numberphile for fulfilling the service of teaching and inspiring. It is very awesome to get to have new perspectives in life because passionate inspired souls put in the work and dedication to bring it to the uninformed. Thank you for your channel and the work you do.
"If we were talking about a population of millions, then [virgin births] aren't going to happen" "Once every 2000 years maybe" There are very few things that make me chuckle like a Numberphile video cutting right after Brady tries to make a joke.
Too bad joke is incorrect. If you have larger population then virgin birth per person is less likely but you have much more birth events per generation balancing the probability. virgin birth per person is 1/n but to get probability for no virgin birth per generation you need to calculate (1-1/n)^n which would mean about 37% chance for no virgin birth in a large population.
@@suokkos Your formula is right (assuming consistently sized generations), but your conclusion is a bit off. For positive integers, (1-1/n)^n starts at 0.25 (n=2, the smallest generation size for which this discussion is meaningful). As you say, the limit of f(n) is ~= a 36.7879% chance (1/e) of no virgin births in an arbitrarily large population. This means that population size increasing DOES slightly decrease the chances per generation (although in all cases it's still more likely than not).
@@SellymeYT , It does slightly decrees but clear decrees happens only for a few smallest and after that probability of no virgin birth is growing only very slightly with population size growth. So population size 6 is already close to same as population size of a million where both except to see no virgin birth approximately every 3rd year.
Whenever I think about our most recent common ancestor, I just think about places like north sentinel island where they have not contacted any other people for thousands of years and basically how insane it is that we all were together at one point, and then some people left and apparently just forgot there were more of us
Actually there's another problem with the model. Let's imagine individuals 1,2 and 3 have the respective parents (1,2), (2,3), and (1,3). If parents 1 and 2 have been able to make a child, as well as parents 2 and 3, then parents 1 and 3 could not have been able to reproduce. I wonder if it impacts the model a lot or if it disappears for large population sizes...
I’m pretty sure the 6 person thing is a HUGE simplification (so the dice works and we can actually draw it) to simply understand the model. You have to imagine this with millions of people, much more complicated connections and those issues being eliminated.
You could "solve" this problem by saying that each number actually represents a gender pair of siblings (one male one female)... ............. Actually let's not do that. Let's not do that at all.
I think it matters, but it matters less than the other issues (like for example that people stayed in there village over generations in medieval times - the probability to marry a person in your town was more than 1000 times bigger than marrying sb from another country)
@@jamirimaj6880 He is rolling dice to create his chart. The expression "roll with" means to go along with something unexpected, to adapt to it. So, he could have made a pun by saying, "Let's just roll with this [roll]."
This is so great to see! My grandfather was very into our ancestry, and he did a family tree for all of his grandkids, and concluded that I was a descendent of Charlemagne. I love that it's also the statistically likely outcome 😂
I'm directly related to Robert the Bruce! And actually, as a Canadian with very mixed heritage, I was surprised to find out that my 100% ethnically Norwegian maternal grandfather and my Scottish x Irish x French x Native North American maternal grandmother were each, within 8 generations back, ancestrally from the same farming community in Troms.
@@ivar185 We are. We construct our own meaning in life. Nihilsm isn't saying that there's no meaning in life, it says there's no intrinsic/inherent meaning in life.
Oh, THAT is why god does not play dice anymore. **rolls dice** "Aaaand this one get's to... oh.. no that is awkward. Errmmm, I did not think that one through, did I? Well, honesty might be the best course of action here. Gabriel? Could you be so kind to go down there and tell that woman, I kinda fucked things up? Yes, quickly please. NO, don't tell her *I* fu..., GABRIEL! ... Darned dice..."
Considering the long isolation of the Aboriginals and that it's been a while since there was a land bridge between Asia and American, it seems pretty unlikely the most common recent ancestor lived only a few hundred to a few thousand years ago.
Its kinda funny tho becuase it means at any point of migration If its before time of all common ancestors Was the true all common ancestors Sing everyone that left was part of the breeding population till that point
Except that the Aboriginals and Native Americans of today likely share ancestry with people from other continents. Considering that the Americas were discovered in 1492 and Australia was discovered in 1770, there's been a lot of time for ancestral lines to mix. It wouldn't even have to be much: just a single ancestor from another continent would make them directly descended from the most recent common ancestor.
I also really appreciate the humor in this episode. And looking toward the future in this way is simultaneously awe-inspiring and terrifying. (I do not want my family to die out - especially if I am the reason for that!)
@Terry White While I'm not a citizen of the United Kingdom, I have looked into the studies of the costs of England's royal family vs. the costs of giving them back the property they've lent to the nation in exchange for their position and pay as well as the studies of how much they pull in in tourism money. They seem to be a net benefit to the UK, at least from a monetary point of view. They cost **much** less than they bring in to the government and the cost (in government property that would suddenly belong to the Windsor family instead) would be quite detrimental to a UK going through the own goal that is Brexit.
This is by far the most awe inspiring video I've seen in quite some time. Just one remark though: if you apply the model to generations of, say, 1.000.000 people, it is true that virgin births become rarer, but you will still expect one per generation, so they will keep occurring.
I stopped in at a local bar a couple of years ago. They have a covered patio at one end of the building and it was summertime. I walked around looking for someone I might know and walked out to the patio. There were four guys at a table eating lunch at a table. One of the guys looked up and smiled as if he knew me. I didn't think much of it and walked back inside to sit at the bar. Half hour after they walked through the bar area to leave. The guy who seemed to recognize me stopped to talk. He asked me where I was from. I said I was local. He said he made a trip to a small town the day before for a sales call. The guy he talked to looked like my twin and that was the reason he did a double take when he saw me. The town he visited was 3 or so hours from where we were but only about an hour and a half from towns where I had relatives. This video made me think of a possible family connection between his customer and myself. People once said we all have a twin somewhere. Sounds like there's truth to that "old wives' tale."
But I don't really get the point about how this works out when groups split away from the rest of the world, like when royals didn't marry some non-royal so they've may been their own smaller set in there. Maybe like the Maori in New Zealand who also weren't connected. How does this work out?
With royals it probably does work. Kings tended to have bastards, and there were also plenty of sovereigns who had like eight legitimate kids, some of whom generally married lesser nobility, who in the next generation might have married lesser nobility still...etc. But I agree with you with isolated groups like Polynesians or Native Americans. I guess though all it takes is one. One intrepid Maori winds up in Malaysia or vice versa and ten generations down the line, all Maori are connected by blood to everywhere else.
I mean, the Maori only arrived in New Zealand around ~1200 (AD), and I think they'd invented kings by then :p But also going purely by linguistic families, I'd have thought they're also descended from Polynesian cousins of those Malaysians (their languages are all demonstratively related in the Malayo-Polynesian family) so who knows, maybe it's the other way around
There's also quite a bit more historical movement than we realize. Not entire populations, but in each there would always be at least a few people that left, a few that arrived from elsewhere or maybe just wandered around.
I was trying to explained my nephew why he should'nt act so entitled to things, like he is some kind of king or something. Now I don't know what to tell him...
@@BlackfeatherTanfur To be honest, the choice of number was entirely arbitrary. The "Number 6 will have you shocked!" part is just part of me referencing clickbait list articles that would often have outrageous or garish titles like "6 ways you can solve all your problems (Number 2 will shock you!)" or "5 ways to know you're a genius (Number 3 is bonkers!). Continuing in the vein of clickbait titles, the initial part of my comment is referencing rather tasteless youtube videos that would have titles like "creationists (Though it could just as easily be Feminists, leftist, snowflakes, etc.) absolutely destroyed with Facts and Logic Though I am now curious what the "prisoner" you're talking about is
@15:25 Not only that, but how well documented ancestry is now in the digital era, 1k+ years from now people will know specifically who they were related too, where they lived exactly, and who our friends were(social media).
@@bunderbah Nahh man, I worked out how he does it. There seeps a special liquid out of his bottom and when people drink it they suddenly like him, fight for him (literally) and hate who ever he wants them to ;) Since it now has been proven that we're all related to each other, we can say that every single bad thing that has happened was done by a relative of Farage. Farages family did 9/11, Farages family killed Diana and the worst of all, Farages family said that Pluto wasn't a planet anymore.
Ye olden times -> NOW. Brilliant, yet subtle touch. Never stop doing such stuff just because most people will not notice. Some will and they usually love it ;)
I read two articles in recent years about this kind of thing, that showed that: (1) Today, 80% of white Britons are direct descendants of Edward III (reign 1327-1377). (Both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are confirmed direct descendants, as well as probably a majority of the people that voted for either one.) (2) In 1947, 80% of British babies born during that year were direct descendants of King John. I gave myself a mental exercise -- Consider one of the most exclusive hereditary-entry clubs in the United States, the Descendants of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence (DSDI). In the real world, only 15 of the 58 signers have descendants living today. But imagine that every signer had two children and all of their descendants will have two children, and one generation is 30 years. This being a math channel, I can put it in terms of the fact that 2^n gets really big as n gets really big. Long and short is that, in 930 years, or 31 generations after 1776, you'll have a number of DSDI eligible people that is higher than the current estimate of the number of human beings that have ever existed as of right now.
