Something different…

I intended for this blog to cover all aspects of life, but have found that writing seems to have taken up most of my posts so far, so I thought I should do something a bit different. I found the above pic on facebook, it seems to have done the rounds a couple of times now, and I found it interesting … In my own genealogy research I have not got so far back as 1400 – my own personal research extends to the mid 1800’s – and a distant cousin has managed to trace one branch back as far as the late 1500’s, in France.

Now, the image claims that there were 450,000,000 people in the whole world in 1400 (a look at world population on wikipedia suggests that the population actually dropped around 1400 from 450 million people, to about 350 million – due to the plague). So far as I can gather my ancestors all come from Europe: Denmark, France, Germany, England, Scotland and Ireland. While my Danish ancestors came straight out to Australia, my French and German ancestors emigrated to England, where they lived for several generations before one thing or another found them on Aussie shores.

The population of Europe and the  UK at that time was around 50 million (http://www.flowofhistory.com/units/west/11/FC75 ) That reduces my potential ancestors to only 50 million, but pentuple’s (yes, it is a word means ‘multiplys by 5’ – I just googled it), the amount of times I am actually related to anyone else who ancestors come from the same area.

As a family historian, this is good news. If I am lucky enough to get that far back in my research, then I only have to find 50 million great, great, great (etc. etc.) grandparents – instead of the billion I’d be searching for otherwise. 😛