Two Million Direct Ancestors Since 1500
During my recent research into the Perez family's history and Sephardic genealogy in Spain, I made, what was to me, a most amazing "discovery." I hope you find the following chart and information as fascinating as I do.
Since the year 1492, when the Catholic Inquisition expelled the Jews of Spain and Christopher Columbus is said to have "discovered the New World," each and every one of us, every human being on Earth, theoretically, has had more than 2 MILLION direct ancestors.
That's right. Each of us, mathematically, has had some 2,097,152 direct ancestors, just in the last 500 years.
By direct ancestors, I mean parents, grandparents, great grandparents, great-great grandparents, and so on.
How did I arrive at the number 2,097,152?
It's really very simple: Since 1492, there have been more than 500 years. If you calculate a generation as being 25 years, this amounts to approximately 20 generations.
Since you begin with two parents, the mathematical notation is: 2 to the 20th power, which equals 1,048,576. Map Courtesy of Sephardim.Com
* TOTAL THE FIGURES IN THE CHART BELOW TO SEE HOW I ARRIVE AT THE NUMBER 2,097,152
Note: The example below is based on an average person born in 1950
YEAR BORN GENERATION # # OF ANCESTORS RELATIONSHIP b.1950 Generation 01 02 parents b.1925 Generation 02 04 grandparents b.1900 Generation 03 08 great grandparents b.1875 Generation 04 16 great-great grandparents b.1850 Generation 05 32 great-great... grandparents b.1825 Generation 06 64 great-great... grandparents b.1800 Generation 07 128 great-great... grandparents b.1775 Generation 08 256 great-great... grandparents b.1750 Generation 09 512 great-great... grandparents b.1725 Generation 10 1,024 great-great... grandparents b.1700 Generation 11 2,048 great-great... grandparents b.1675 Generation 12 4,096 great-great... grandparents b.1650 Generation 13 8,192 great-great... grandparents b.1625 Generation 14 16,384 great-great... grandparents b.1600 Generation 15 32,768 great-great... grandparents b.1575 Generation 16 65,536 great-great... grandparents b.1550 Generation 17 131,072 great-great... grandparents b.1525 Generation 18 262,144 great-great... grandparents b.1500 Generation 19 524,288 great-great... grandparents b.1475 Generation 20 1,048,576 great-great... grandparents TOTAL ANCESTORS 2,097,152 great-great... grandparents NOTE: These figures are hypothetical. There were fewer than 4 million people in all of Spain in 1475, and no more than 40 or 50 million in all of Europe. If you go back just one more generation the number of ancestors doubles, and then doubles again, with each succeeding generation.
The probability is high that each of us shares a common ancestor within the last 500 years, and almost certainly within the past 1000 years.
If any one of the 2,097,152 people in your own family tree (since 1500) had not existed, or had been a different individual, then you would not exist, or would only partially exist, metaphysically, as part of a completely different human being.
"In the end, we truly ARE all brothers and sisters of one great, extended family." - Rick Perez, 2001
