OT: grandparents who raped and pillaged

[Andrew Dalke]

Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters wrote:
> Projecting to the world as a whole, you have to go back
> about 2000 years back to be descended from EVERY person alive at the
> time (who was fecund).

Hmmm.  If true, this would be a recent truth.  The first humans in
the Americas came over roughly 11,000 years ago.  (Or at least
around then, though there are other possibilities.)  Now, it is
possible that there are people in the Americas who are descendents
only from those settlers -- though I won't put good chances on that.
However, go back 100-200 years and the chance was much higher that
there were two people in the world with a direct ancestor further
than 2000 years previous in history.


> FWIW, (some of) your ancestors not too far back are from any
> ethnic/racial group you want to think of.  So people with bigotries
> against any groups are also descendents of those groups.  (I don't mean
> c.l.py readers as such bigots, of course, just as a general point).

Some ethnic/racial groups are less than a few hundred years old.
As an easy example, few here have Afrikaaners heritage because it's
only about 150 years old.  (Though since my Dutch ancestors came over
to the U.S. less than 150 years ago, there's a slight possibility ..
but rather unlikely.)

Nit-pick-ly-yr's.

					Andrew
					dalke at dalkescientific.com