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I need help with a paradox. not a trick question, i do not know the answer
I'm plotting my family tree. I have two parents. I record the names of all
four grandparents and all 8 great grandparents. I need to do some research on
the great great grandparents but I allocate space for all 16 of them on my
chart. I go on to the next generation - 32 spots, next one 64, the next one
128 etc. By the time I get to the tenth generation I have to acount for 1,024
individuals. Ten generations previous and I need one million people. Go back
10 more generations and I need about 1 billion people to account for my
existence. This is a total of thirty generations ago and that takes me back
to aproximatelly the 12th century. I don't think there was a billion people
on the planet then.
Then, just go back another 4 generations or so and I would need some 16
billion direct ancestors to account for me.
Something is not adding up, but I do not know what's missing. Remember; no
one comes into being without two parents, so it seems that you always need
two additional people to create each ancestor. I've posed this question to
quite a few people, no one has come up with anything. I figured I'd try this
crowd and see what y'all can do.
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