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When I saw "100 children" in the title, immediately the Indian king Dhrutarashtr came to mind. Didn't know he had a competition from Egypt :)

• nindalf 4y ago
  This is obvious to those in the know, but the King you mention is quasi-fictional, in the sense that Achilles and Odysseus are. He’s mentioned in the Indian epic Mahabharata, which is similar to the Iliad in terms of age, scope and influence on modern society. Whereas the pharaoh is much more real.
  • rnd0 4y ago
    Mind you, that's what they thought about the city of Troy, too. Don't be too surprised if someone somewhere stumbles upon the tomb of king Dhrutarashtr!
    • kshacker 4y ago
      No Tombs for Hindus except some rare parts. Generally cremated in a pyre. But guess we never know how things were millennia back.
      • OJFord 4y ago
        Doesn't preclude finding a shrine of some kind though right? What (if anything) was the equivalent of garlanded photo-portraits before cameras? Sketched/painted portraits?
        • nindalf 4y ago
          Shrines only exist for deified figures. Some kings did successfully deify themselves, to the point where they are still worshipped as Gods. This king wasn’t deified. Deification of kings sounds unusual, but it was quite a common tactic of political control in the ancient world. The Roman Imperial cult was quite successful at this.
          • OJFord 4y ago
            I only meant it loosely, in the sense of any kind of physical thing or collection of things used to represent or remember the deceased, like a photo adorned with a garland.
• lockhouse 4y ago
  There is also Genghis Khan who had so many children that 1 in 200 men living today are direct descendants of him. https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/1-in-200-men-direct-descendants-of-genghis-khan https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/1-in-200-men-d...
  • kshacker 4y ago
    Thought experiment: after a couple of generations, would we expect a higher or lower percentage using the same calculations Without reading the article, (had read a similar one years back), here are my thoughts: More: 0.5% is a small segment of population and by random selection, they are likely to breed with the 99.5% thus increasing the direct descendants with every generation. Less: they may be locked by geography so they may be inter breeding and not growing (at worst) or slowly growing (at best) but other places such as India quadrupled over the century and they lost percentage as a result.
    • im3w1l 4y ago
      Direct line descendants, that is fathers fathers father etc. While normal descendants increase with every generation as everything is diluted, direct line descendants do not.
      • Retric 4y ago
        He didn’t father even 0.005% of all kids when he was alive, which means reaching 0.5% requires an increase vastly faster than simple population growth. That increase comes from ‘father mother father’ lines of decent being included. So, I can only conclude you’re confused about something.
        • im3w1l 4y ago
          It's not just about how many sons he himself had (4). It's also about how many sons his sons had (quite a lot) and so on. His high social status not only let him have many sons but also helped his descendants (not forever, but for some time) with that. Consider also the possibility that his Y-chromosome may be genetically superior. As the Y-chromosome does not undergo recombination, the only way for those beneficial mutations to spread is very gradually, outperforming generation after generation until every single human is a direct descendant. On the other hand.... it does seem that the genetical evidence is a bit more murky and questionable than popular sources claim.
• rjsw 4y ago
  Saudi Arabia fits the pattern too.