The Melungeons

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Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Genealogy Pedigree Collapse

Written by John Becker, Toronto, ON
As appeared in OGS Families, Vol. 38. No. 3, 1999

"We all are blessed with two parents, four grandparents, eight great grandparents and so on. If the average generation is twenty-five years, in 1200 years (back to 800 AD, the time of Charlemagne) each person has 281.5 trillion grandparents. That's the way geometric progressions work. The number of grandparents doubles every 25 years and in 12OO years or 48 generations, 281.5 trillion names would be on your pedigree."

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