The Lens:
This is an extension of my “Degrees of Separation” post. So, if you haven’t read it yet, take a few quick minutes to read it before continuing on.
Done?? Ok, here we go . . .
Connectedness.
Years ago, I mentioned to someone I worked with that I am a direct descendant of Jose Francisco Ortega. She said she had a friend who was also his descendant. This took me aback. How could that be?
One of those things you never stop to think about. In my little world, the direct descendants of Ortega were me, my sisters, my two cousins, and our children. That conversation caused me to pause and think, and realize there are probably lots of us descendants out there. But, how many??
This friend of my co-worker, who is my relative, is walking around the Bay Area, and I have no idea who she is (I didn’t think to ask her name at the time!). Maybe I have run into her not realizing we are related. Ortega is a pretty common name. In addition, my last name is now my husband’s and before that it was my father’s. To tell someone my name, would not indicate any connection to the Ortega family. How many of us Ortega’s are out there whose last name doesn’t reflect that?? So many questions.
The Refraction:
This refraction is for the mathematicians out there.
I wrote in “Degrees of Separation” and in “One Person’s Sorrow” I have become a fan of the PBS show “Finding Your Roots,” where the host, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., researches the ancestry of famous people. At the end of the show, he presents his guests with their family tree. It is often a huge sheet with names branching out all over the place.
The last episode I watched got me thinking. I have been bouncing back and forth between filling in the blanks of those from whom I have descended, and building out the descendants of JFO – creating one bottom-up tree and one top-down tree.
In terms of numbers, I was looking at all of the names on the top-down tree trying to find a number of relatives I have wandering around today.
Switching to my bottom-up tree, i.e., those from whom I have descended, while I could see the names growing on this tree, I never considered the sheer number of those names.
We all have two parents. We have a mother and a father. We may not know who they are or be raised by these people, but we all were created by the sperm of a man and egg of a woman.
Each of our parents had two parents. And, each of their parents had two parents. And so on. And so on. For each generation, the number of grandparents doubles.
By the time I get to Jose Francisco, I should have 128 5th great grandparents. Using Ancestry.com, I can go back the farthest on Jose Francisco’s line (if it is all correct) to my 11th great grandparents. At this level, I should have 8,192 great grandparents. Just looking at my 11th great parents, it took 8,192 people to make little ol’ me. Wow!
How many have descended from these 8,192 individuals? More questions.
Of course, there were many more before my 11th great grandparents. My DNA shows I have more Neanderthal DNA than 92% of 23andMe customers. How many grandparents would I have at the Neanderthal level? Unfathomable to me.
This noble effort to build out the ancestors of Jose Francisco wouldn’t even show me a drop in a bucket of the number of people I have a connection to, albeit some extremely remote.
There is a caveat to this story. My 2nd great grandparents on the Ortega side were 1st cousins (not uncommon in that day). Their fathers were brothers, so they had the same parents. That means at the 4th great grandparent level, I have 62 great grandparents, instead of 64. Going up the line, there maybe less great grandparents if other cousins married.
That ought to narrow the number of my relatives – right?