First and Last Things by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
page 59 of 187 (31%)
page 59 of 187 (31%)
|
2.9. INDIVIDUALITY AN INTERLUDE. I would like in a parenthetical section to expand and render rather more concrete this idea of the species as one divaricating flow of blood, by an appeal to its arithmetical aspect. I do not know if it has ever occurred to the reader to compute the number of his living ancestors at some definite date, at, let us say, the year one of the Christian era. Everyone has two parents and four grandparents, most people have eight great-grandparents, and if we ignore the possibility of intermarriage we shall go on to a fresh power of two with every generation, thus:-- Column 1: Number of generations. Column 2: Number of ancestors. 3 : 8 4 : 16 5 : 32 7 : 128 10 : 1,024 20 : 126,976 30 : 15,745,024 40 : 1,956,282,976 I do not know whether the average age of the parent at the birth of a child under modern conditions can be determined from existing figures. There is, I should think, a strong presumption that it has been a rising age. There may have been a time in the past when most women were mothers in their early teens and bore most or all of their children before |
|