I am reading this book entitled One to Nine, the Inner Life of Numbers and I am currently on chapter 3, which is actually about the number 2. It uses genealogy to explain the importance of the number 2 and it’s implied meaning and I had a strange thought. In Dan Brown’s book, the DaVinci Code, the heroine Sophie Neveu is supposedly the descendant of Christ. Now assuming Christ was an actual person alive 2000 years ago and the average timespan for a generation being 20 years. (Some people have children before they’re 20 some after but let’s use 20 because it keeps the math easy)
That means there would be 100 generations between Christ and Sophie. An interesting notion which makes the efforts of the Priory of Sion that much more impressive. But there is one problem though. Human genes consist of 46 chromosomes. You get 23 from your mother and 23 from your father. So in essence you are 1/2 the genetic make up of your mother and 1/2 the genetic make up of your father; who are in turn 1/2 of each of their parents. You can see where this is going can’t you?
With each successive generation the numbers become 2 to the nth power. So your parents are the first successive generation so 21 which is 2 and therefore 1/2. Your grandparents are the 2nd generation back and so 22, which equals 4 and therefore you are 1/4 of your genes come from each grandparent and so on…
Sophie’s genetic makeup from Christ would be 2100 which would be… 1/1,267,650,600,228,229,401,496,703,205,376. Which is read as it is one nonillion, 267 octillion, 650 septillion, 600 sextillion, 228 quintillion, 229 quadrillion, 401 trillion, 496 billion, 703 million, 205 thousand, 376. Which puts Sophie’s “Christ essence” somewhere less than the potency of homeopathy, which by the way is total bullshit, water doesn’t have a memory.
Here’s where stuff gets really strange – reverse the idea. To create a child there needs to be a man and a woman (unless science has had some breakthrough I don’t know about). To create each of the parents you need 2 more parents, and so on. The estimated population of the world in year zero is about 300 million, not the 1,267,650,600,228,229,401,496,703,205,376 people that the math might suggest which means there was definitely some incest along the way. Now we are probably talking 3rd, 4th, and 5th cousins, but it also begets another interesting idea.
We are all related, literally.