Mind-Blowing Facts About Genetics That Doctors Wish We All Knew

The complexity of human ancestry reveals that no living person possesses as many unique ancestors as the math suggests they should. Biologically, each person’s family tree doubles with each preceding generation, resulting in an ever-increasing number of potential forebears.

Tracing lineage back just 30 generations would require over a billion unique 28x great-grandparents, far surpassing the global population that existed in the 11th century. This discrepancy arises from the sheer amount of things like cousin marriages.