3 ms·
To be fair, at this point of removal the amount of DNA you share with Charlemagne is likely to be similar to the amount of silver nitrate in a homeopathic remed
by jschwartzi 8y ago
To be fair, at this point of removal the amount of DNA you share with Charlemagne is likely to be similar to the amount of silver nitrate in a homeopathic remedy.
- fapjacks 8y agoDon't let the Descent From Antiquity people hear you say that!
- dahart 8y agoYeah exactly, if there's any left at all. Since DNA's finite and has fewer than 2^40 base pairs, any one person's direct DNA influence is likely to have been factored out completely. Fun to think about the probabilities and combinatorics though. There are 2^40 "votes" in our ancestry for the time Charlemagne lived. Depending on how "prolific" he was, all the population crossover since then means he will occupy many of those 2^40 votes. Some people have a lot more influence than others, but it's nearly impossible to know.
- peter303 8y agoIts smaller than that if count just the 21K coding proteins, two copies from both parents. If perfectly mixed you start losing ancestor contributions as soon as 16 generations or 400 years. But meiosis- the halving of DNA during creation of eggs and sperm- is not perfectly random, but chunky. So ancestor dropout occurs sooner.(It is hypothesized much of the other 98% of the genome has some sort of genetic influence too.)