"No one has suffered like I have; no one has had the burdens I've had to bear...  I am unique!"

        --Uncountable Teenagers

And somewhere out there is the single teenager who is correct.

The back seat of a buggy and a couple of brewskis is all it took for some of us to exist.

...and come from a lineage that only recently was infected with Mormonism, there will not be so many duplicates that the overall count reduces to low double digits.

Interesting, but not factual.

I am related to myself in at least three places.

For example on my mother's side I'm descended from William Bradford and his first wife. On my Father's side I'm descended from William Bradford and his second wife. (No, not a polygamist, first wife died.)

There are two other examples of this in my genealogy in the last 350 years.

Then when we get to the polygamists, it gets even more restricted.

You and Dave are exploring different questions.

His analysis is what I presented in this thread:

https://www.exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,2473611,2473648#msg-2473648

It's standard stuff but does not purport to distinguish unique ancestors from potential ancestors. In short everyone's family tree has a number of redundancies that expands exponentially as you increase the number of generations.

That's why virtually all Western Europeans are directly descended from William the Conqueror, Charlemagne, and almost all other famous people from long ago not once but dozens if not scores of times. And if some interloper from abroad, be it the occasional Othello or Chinggis Khan or Attila the Hun, managed to reproduce with Westerners several times, a few centuries later his DNA would have entered the common pool and eventually have touched almost all European family trees.

To take the argument to its extreme, there were points in early hominid history at which environmental factors reduced entire HSS populations to just a couple of hundred individuals regionally or globally. There are accordingly episodes whose survivors number among the ancestors of all of us not through one or ten lineages but through tens of thousands of them.

So yes, any of our trees would inevitably have a very large number of redundancies.

So your family tree is a totem pole ?

Until you hit Utah then it becomes a thicket.

Had to leave the state to find a nonrelated bride.

*Repositioned



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/03/2023 07:46PM by Lot's Wife.

*Curses!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/03/2023 07:46PM by Lot's Wife.

Makes it so much harder to know who to blame.

Too many cooks spoil the broth? Well, not always.

The possibilities of the combination of which genes you end up with is infinite. I am so like, and, so not like, my brothers and sisters. Some apples fall further from the tree. A lot further.


"Here's the room
with everyone in it.
Your dead friends passing
through you like wind
through a wind chime."
----Ocean Vuong

In pious times, ere priestcraft did begin,
Before polygamy was made a sin;
When man on many multiplied his kind,
Ere one to one was cursedly confined;
When nature prompted, and no law denied
Promiscuous use of concubine and bride;
Then Israel's monarch after heaven's own heart,
His vigorous warmth did variously impart
To wives and slaves; and, wide as his command,
Scattered his maker's image through the land.

—John Dryden—
—the beginning of “Absalom and Achitophel”—

        Roses are red,
      Violets are blue;
    Our ancestors screwed,
      And so are you.

      --Judic West, hoist by his own petard