Happy Father's Day

This year I am going to celebrate Father's Day with Charles Darwin and with some hypothetical  Biology/Mathematics. I guess I should do a little bit of explaining.  What better way to celebrate humanity and origins than to trace it all the way back to the separation of proto-human and proto-bonobos.  I watched a Nova Video not too long ago, and it hasn't been too long since my anthropology classes, and I think these numbers are mostly B.S. but at the same time not too far off.

The Numbers:

Most Recent Common Ancestor of Humans and Bonobos: approximately 7 million years ago

Most of that time our forefathers were more like Bonobos than Humans. Bonobos typical start having children at age of 13.

Let's say average generation, just for shits and giggles, was 16 years long. That doesn't mean life expectancy was 16, just mean breading age.

That means 7 million divided by 16 produces 4.4 x 10^5 great grandparents. Or to put it another way, imagine the city of Sacramento is nothing but your ancestors. Now imagine a great line of 440,000 people long, imagine all the ways you look different from your father and all the differences your father has from your grandfather; now imagine the differences that must have been between your grandfather and his father. All the way back until the separation.

At the moment Wikipedia says:

2.5 x 10^5 -greats-grandparents or a generation every 20 years.  My calculation had over twice as many predicted ancestors. O well. 

Liam '12

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