Quick HHGTTG question. At the beginning of the first book, it is revealed that the council worker about to demolish Arthur Dent’s house, Mr Prosser, is a direct descendent of Ghengis Khan. Did Douglas Adams ever comment on this? Is there any indication he was aware that most people alive today are descended from Ghengis Khan?
It’s narrowed down some by specifying that he’s a direct male line descendent.
“Direct, male-line descendent…”
It’s slightly more specific.
Well, if you define “most people alive” as “about 8% of people in Central Asia”.
No, it’s not clarified. It’s in fact never mentioned again, like most of what happens on Earth.
About 8% of people in Central Asia (which is still a very large number of people) are male-line descendants of Genghis (note spelling). A very great many more, probably including all of Eurasia if not the world, are descendants from him in some line or other.
When Douglas Addams wrote that joke, we didn’t have an internet yet. So we didn’t have a SDMB, and definitely didn’t have 8 threads in General Questions on “How many people are descended from … Julius Caesar, William the Conqueror, [insert your favorite thread here]”
When I read that joke, what I noticed was the next joke, recessive genes had removed from Mr. Posser all the Asian traits, except for a roundness about the tum and a predilection for furry hats. I was in AP biology in high school at the time, and I never wrote Douglas Adams for the specifics of his research on the genetic encoding of hat preference. I let that one go. The OP should probably have let this one go as well …
Except, where did people go, back then for discussions like this? Maybe PBS had talks on subjects like this. Maybe not 'tho.
It was called a pub. And in those days the clientelle actually interacted with one another for purposes other than securing bedmates. 
Before I heard that Genghis Khan had been proven to be everyone’s ancestor, I’d already said many times to friends something along the lines of “Well, we’re all probably descended from Ramses” or “Everyone in England probably has some claim to the throne.” It’s actually pretty obvious that we’re all descended from, effectively, everyone after a few dozen generations.
I am 1 person, I have 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great-grandparents… After 24 generations, I have some 16.8 million ancestors – probably a larger number than the total population of the planet 24 generations ago. Now figure that every individual carries around that number of ancestors, so even if you have a strong division, like an ocean, if just one person makes it across, he’s carrying a continent’s worth of ancestors with him. If the Vikings of Canada met and had sex with any native Americans, they brought over the entire Asian/African/European gene pool a thousand years ago. And figure the great odds are that once a century, there’s probably at least one shipwrecked sailor who washes up on distant shores, like the Americas or Australia.
It’s not a question of genetics, just math, and I’m sure that Douglas Adams had the basics of math* down.
- In his case “maths”
I dunno - at 30 years per, 24 generations is a little over 700 years and wiki estimates world population over 16.8 million, 6000 years ago.
For some reason, I find this idea very intriguing. Are the rules of succession sufficiently precise that if you had a complete family tree for everyone in England you could rank them all, in order? Does someone eight generations back, descended from the male of the family, beat someone descended from the cousin of the queen five generations ago, that sort of thing? Could you give everyone a number?
I don’t buy it. Sorry, I just don’t believe I’m descended from the Mongol khans. That implies a high level of exogamy that just doesn’t seem to be sustained in reality.
IIRC, at least in the old commodore 64 text game (that had direct input from Douglas Adams), the Genghis Khan item was looking to be like a brick joke, as at the end of the game Arthur manages to leave the ship and warriors on horseback approached *, what those warriors were going to do was going to be revealed on the sequel…
That never came.
- I may have imagined that last bit, but I do remember Arthur Dent looking at the warriors and then just the abrupt ending note that one should wait for the sequel, however most walk-troughs out there do not mention Arthur encountering anyone as soon as he reaches Magrathea, (a different version of the game in the USA?)
Fascinating. Please, tell me more about this “real life” of which you speak.
Possibly a different version. I remember playing the game back then, and it ends very simply with everyone exiting the ship.
The game I played would have been the Apple II version, bought in the US.
Good catch, I’d forgotten that.
Yes, I’m aware it’s not clarified in the books, but I wondered if Douglas Adams had mentioned it in an interview or something.
Well, we did have trivia even before the internet, and the “everyone is descended from” meme has been floating around for quite a long time.
Maybe the OP wasn’t clear enough. I’m not quibbling with it, I was wondering if the joke was “well, actually everyone is a descendent of Mr Khan” or if he just threw it in at random. Looks like it’s the latter. I was wrong about most people being descended from Genghis, he didn’t live long enough ago. Also, direct male-line descent is specified.
See, I asked, "Where did people argue pointless trivia before the internet – and I got a good answer, the pub. Maybe something like this trivia is referenced in The Guinness Book of World Records, which was ostensibly (and probably also jokingly) meant to store trivia for pub discussion purposes. Note: I’m a US teenager when HHGTTG was written, my knowledge of the bar scene is 70’s pickup – not the British pub culture.
I get where the O.P. is coming from, its just that Mr. Posser also has visions of mounted warfare, burning, and looting, a sensation he tries to sublimate with gardening or pub crawling. Apparently, Mongol destructiveness is also genetically encoded, hence Mr. Possers chosen profession, which he ironically hates. But nothing implies that Mr. Posser appears even slightly Asian looking. It seems to me, the joke is cleaner and more self-referential, and more self-contained, than the O.P. thinks.
Damn. But Douglas Addams was a good writer, wasn’t he? It was hard to put into words just how good he was, except when you look at examples like these.
that is true.
how many books get made into radio plays, tv series and movies and all those get plenty of praise and do well.
HHGTTG was actually a radio play before it was a book.