Your Billions of Ancestors

Did you ever think, says the St. Louis Republic, how many male and female ancestors were required to bring you into the world? First, it was necessary that you should have a father and mother—that makes two human beings. Again, each of them must have had a father and mother—making eight more human beings. So on we go back to the time of Jesus Christ—fifty-six generations. The calculation thus resulting shows that 132,235,017,489,534,976 births must have taken place in order to bring you into this world—you, who read these lines. All this since the birth of Christ–not since the beginning of time. According to Proctor, if from a single pair, for 5,000 years, each husband and wife had married at 21 years of age and there had been no deaths, the population of the earth would be 2,199,915 followed by 144 ciphers. It would require to hold his population a number of worlds the size of this, equal to 3,166,626 followed by 125 ciphers. The human mind shrinks in contemplating such immense numbers.

Thanks to:
Jane Hutchings who sent it to the ORLINN-L@rootsweb.com newsletter.