It’s always a good day when you discover that one of your ancestors was a King, I have only just discovered that I am descended from Alfred the Great (and as it happens Charlemagne) and in so being I am related to every member of the European dynasties all the way down to Elizabeth II, along with David Cameron and David Beckham. Now before I start brushing off my Tuxedo for April 29th (My Invite to Cousin Wills’ Wedding.) perhaps I should explain (For those of you not already in the know that is – apparently this is quite well known, and i'm just a bit behind with this one.)
Basically I have worked this out using maths which work as follows.
1) Alfred The Great existed over 1000 years ago (I have used 1000 as a simple number to ease the calculations)
2) Since Alfred the Great became the first King of England there have been at least 33 Generations (Again simplified to have 30 years generations.)
3) As I had two parents – who each had two parents if I was to fill out a 33 Generation family tree 1000 years ago I had 8.5 Billion ancestors
4) There were only 30 Million people in Europe at the time (It is unlikely that I had many ancestors from outside Europe as travel was not exactly common.)
So the chances of me not being descended from Alfred The Great in any way is very minute obviously the probability isn’t 0 but it is very close. With Charlemagne who is the most used example of this theory and lived over 40 generations ago relating to 1 Trillion ancestors there is actually a 12,000,000,000,000,000 (12 Quadrillion?) to 1 chance that everyone living today with Primarily European descent is not descended from the Holy Roman Emperor. A similar effect is witnessed for other figures from around the world i.e. Confucius.
Of cause despite the knowledge that Alfred the Great sits on my Family Tree (Actually over 33 Generations I should have an average of 281 connections) I actually think that perhaps a much more interesting fact is that I will also have an average of 281 connections to every other person who was alive and had an exponential family tree at that time. I wonder if Alfred ever thought that as he went around on his mission to free England from the Danes that everyone he met that had children would at some point interact with his own children from Kings to Peasants so that at one point in the future in the England he worked so hard to achieve (Albeit a more Normanised version than he had planned.) The data held by electricity companies would be complete and without errors – Surely that is what it was all about.
No comments:
Post a Comment