# My daughter is the last in a very long lineage
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-daughter-is-the-last-in-a-very-long-lineage/1008790
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
**Created:** [October 14, 2024, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-daughter-is-the-last-in-a-very-long-lineage/1008790 "2024-10-14T23:10:32Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 3
### Author:  [@knavette57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/knavette57)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2024, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-daughter-is-the-last-in-a-very-long-lineage/1008790/41 "2024-10-15T18:49:27Z")
Many famous people have no descendants, at least direct ones. Mark Twain comes to mind, and maybe Abe Lincoln. The high infant mortality rates of the past destroyed many lineages. One of my long ago ancestors was born just a few months before his mom died of plague. My own mother almost died at birth, and if it weren’t for my physician great great grandmother, I would not be here. So far, 2 close calls for me. And there might be more such thin threads of my existence, and maybe I don’t want to know how many.
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### Author:  [@needscoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/needscoffee)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2024, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-daughter-is-the-last-in-a-very-long-lineage/1008790/42 "2024-10-15T19:13:46Z")
> [@Robot\_Arm](#):
>
> Really, nothing at all; no “let me know if you want to borrow the car”, “don’t stay out too late”, “have you thought about what you want to wear to the prom”? Nothing that even tangentially hinted at having a social life? That surprises me.
Only “be home by curfew”. Parents didn’t behave the way they do on TV. If I needed to use the car, I asked. If I needed a dress, I asked (or borrowed one from a friend). I didn’t teach my daughters anything like you’re suggesting - just “do your homework”, “stay out of trouble”, “don’t do drugs”, “clean your room”, etc. They learned social skills from their friends and television.
> [@Robot\_Arm](#):
>
> It seems like we need to learn certain things at certain times in our lives. If I didn’t have anyone to learn certain sociall skills from when I was supposed to, I don’t know if I could make it up later.
I think we learn our social skills from our peers at school, and it begins pretty early on.
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### Author:  [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2024, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-daughter-is-the-last-in-a-very-long-lineage/1008790/43 "2024-10-15T19:35:19Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#):
>
> Are you saying if you lived 150,000 years ago someone on the planet today could (in theory) trace their lineage straight to you?
Read about:
> **[Identical ancestors point](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identical_ancestors_point)**
>
> In genetic genealogy, the identical ancestors point (IAP), or all common ancestors (ACA) point, or genetic isopoint, is the most recent point in a given population's past such that each individual alive at that point either has no living descendants, or is the ancestor of every individual alive in the present. This point lies further in the past than the population's most recent common ancestor (MRCA).
> A set of full siblings has an IAP one generation back: their parents. Similarly, double first ...
To summarize:
At some point in the near past (not more than about 15,000 year ago) every human alive at that time is either an ancestor of every living human or an ancestor of no living human.
The interesting question, which I don’t know the answer to, is what fraction of of the humans at the identical ancestor point are in the former vs the latter group.
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### Author:  [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2024, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-daughter-is-the-last-in-a-very-long-lineage/1008790/44 "2024-10-15T20:17:58Z")
If we take the stated 15K years as the magic number, and 20 years as the average generation time for most of that human history, that suggests there are 15000/20 = 750 generations of humans betwixt then & now.
It doesn’t take long to extinguish or amplify everybody into one camp or the other.
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### Author:  [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2024, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-daughter-is-the-last-in-a-very-long-lineage/1008790/45 "2024-10-15T21:43:43Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#):
>
> …that suggests there are 15000/20 = 750 generations of humans betwixt then & now.
So you and I are 749th cousins. Cool.
Can I crash on your couch?
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### Author:  [@zimaane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zimaane)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2024, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-daughter-is-the-last-in-a-very-long-lineage/1008790/46 "2024-10-15T21:54:54Z")
Some theoretical estimates have a most recent common ancestor more recent than 15,000 years ago, and suggest that we might all be as close as 50th cousins.
I have three bio kids, it seems likely that at least one of them will have kids, so my DNA will live on for a while.
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### Author:  [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2024, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-daughter-is-the-last-in-a-very-long-lineage/1008790/47 "2024-10-15T22:01:16Z")
The 15K years number was to the ACA, not the MRCA.
As the wiki cite says, the MRCA is a bunch more recent than 15K years.
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### Author:  [@Lucas\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucas_Jackson)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2024, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-daughter-is-the-last-in-a-very-long-lineage/1008790/48 "2024-10-15T23:03:45Z")
> [@zimaane](#):
>
> I have three bio kids, it seems likely that at least one of them will have kids, so my DNA will live on for a while.
DNA sneak-bragging.
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### Author:  [@chela](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chela)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2024, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-daughter-is-the-last-in-a-very-long-lineage/1008790/49 "2024-10-15T23:13:39Z")
I certainly would be thrilled with grand daughters from my daughters, who have X great grandmothers on mothers side more than I know of before them
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2024, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-daughter-is-the-last-in-a-very-long-lineage/1008790/50 "2024-10-15T23:43:12Z")
I’m shocked this thread has gone so long without any mention of a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule.
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### Author:  [@ParallelLines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ParallelLines)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2024, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-daughter-is-the-last-in-a-very-long-lineage/1008790/51 "2024-10-15T23:58:48Z")
My favorite take on the subject of how we got here comes from Neal Stephenson’s _Cryptonomicon_, and I’ll let the opening speak for itself (sadly the rest of the book can be something of a bore at times, how I wish an editor had been there to ride herd on him).
> Let’s set the existence-of-God issue aside for a later volume, and just stipulate that in _some_ way, self replicating organisms came into existence on this planet and immediately began trying to get rid of each other, either by spamming their environments with rough copies of themselves, or by more direct means which hardly need to be belabored.
>
> Most of them failed, and their genetic legacy was erased from the universe forever, but a few found some way to survive and to propagate. After about three billion years of this sometimes zany, frequently tedious fugue of carnality and carnage, Godfrey Waterhouse IV was born, in Murdo, South Dakota, to Blanche, the wife of a Congregational preacher named Bunyan Waterhouse. Like every other creature on the face of the earth, Godfrey was, by birthright, a stupendous badass, albeit in the somewhat narrow technical sense that he could trace his ancestry back up a long line of slightly less highly evolved stupendous badasses to that first self-replicating gizmo-which, given the number and variety of its descendants, might justifiably be described as the most stupendous badass of all time.
>
> Everyone and everything that wasn’t a stupendous badass was dead.
>
> As nightmarishly lethal, memetically programmed deathmachines went, these were the nicest you could ever hope to meet.
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### Author:  [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)
#### Post date: [October 16, 2024, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-daughter-is-the-last-in-a-very-long-lineage/1008790/52 "2024-10-16T00:01:08Z")
Niiice.
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### Author:  [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)
#### Post date: [October 16, 2024, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-daughter-is-the-last-in-a-very-long-lineage/1008790/53 "2024-10-16T00:16:24Z")
> [@zimaane](#):
>
> I have three bio kids, it seems likely that at least one of them will have kids, so my DNA will live on for a while.
Well, AFAICT not more significantly than it does in your collateral relatives such as siblings’ (or parents’ siblings) descendants, if any.
For example, [on average an individual shares about equal amounts of DNA with a grandchild as with a nibling](https://www.thetech.org/ask-a-geneticist/articles/2013/grandson-nephew-relatedness/) (niece or nephew).
The extent to which you as an individual are making a significant and individually unique genetic contribution to a “line” of descendants is pretty short-lived.
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### Author:  [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)
#### Post date: [October 16, 2024, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-daughter-is-the-last-in-a-very-long-lineage/1008790/54 "2024-10-16T00:24:20Z")
Just think. Of all the female Homo saps alive at the time of the hypothetical Eve, only she has any descendants today. It is provable that every line dies out eventually with probability 1.
Although I have 3 kids and 6 grandkids, my wife’s MtDNA line is ending since we had one daughter and she has just one son (and is 58).
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### Author:  [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)
#### Post date: [October 16, 2024, 2:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-daughter-is-the-last-in-a-very-long-lineage/1008790/55 "2024-10-16T02:36:48Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#):
>
> Just think. Of all the female Homo saps alive at the time of the hypothetical Eve, only she has any descendants today. It is provable that every line dies out eventually with probability 1.
That is incorrect. All female-only lineages converge to Mitochondrial Eve. There are many mixed female-male lineages that go to her contemporaries.
Please compare:
**mt-Eve** (MRCA of every all-female lineage of current population) is 150,000 years ago.
**Identical ancestor point** (latest time when total population is either ancestor of everyone or no one currently alive) is about 15,000 years ago.
**MRCA** (most recent common ancestor of current population) is about 2,000 years ago.
> **[Mitochondrial Eve](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve)**
>
> In human genetics, the Mitochondrial Eve (more technically known as the Mitochondrial-Most Recent Common Ancestor, shortened to mt-Eve or mt-MRCA) is the matrilineal most recent common ancestor (MRCA) of all living humans. In other words, she is defined as the most recent woman from whom all living humans descend in an unbroken line purely through their mothers and through the mothers of those mothers, back until all lines converge on one woman.
> In terms of mitochondrial haplogroups, the mt-MR...
> **[Identical ancestors point](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identical_ancestors_point)**
>
> In genetic genealogy, the identical ancestors point (IAP), or all common ancestors (ACA) point, or genetic isopoint, is the most recent point in a given population's past such that each individual alive at that point either has no living descendants, or is the ancestor of every individual alive in the present. This point lies further in the past than the population's most recent common ancestor (MRCA).
> A set of full siblings has an IAP one generation back: their parents. Similarly, double first ...
> **[Most recent common ancestor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_recent_common_ancestor)**
>
> In biology and genetic genealogy, the most recent common ancestor (MRCA), also known as the last common ancestor (LCA), of a set of organisms is the most recent individual from which all the organisms of the set are descended. The term is also used in reference to the ancestry of groups of genes (haplotypes) rather than organisms.
> The MRCA of a set of individuals can sometimes be determined by referring to an established pedigree. However, in general, it is impossible to identify the exact MRCA ...
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### Author:  [@Lucas\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucas_Jackson)
#### Post date: [October 16, 2024, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-daughter-is-the-last-in-a-very-long-lineage/1008790/56 "2024-10-16T04:44:50Z")
> [@ParallelLines](#):
>
> tedious fugue of carnality
I rather like that turn of phrase.
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### Author:  [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)
#### Post date: [October 16, 2024, 9:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-daughter-is-the-last-in-a-very-long-lineage/1008790/57 "2024-10-16T09:15:56Z")
I’ve got a couple of kids and they are too young to be thinking about their plans.
I’m one of five children and three of us have offspring while two of my siblings don’t have any. On my mother’s side, I’m one of 34 cousins, and a really high percent of the cousins have multiple kids. Yes, most remain Mormons.
My son was one of the latter great-grandkids and was number 100. I have no idea how many g-g-grandkids there are.
My wife is Taiwanese, and it’s important in their culture to continue the family name to take care of the ancestors. My wife is one of three daughters, and the others don’t have children.
Her father has a couple of sisters, but his nephews and nieces all have the last names of the fathers.
If I were Taiwanese, our kids would have my last name, but because I’m a foreigner, they have my wife’s last name for their Taiwan names (and my last name for their American names). Consequently, my son is the “only hope” for carrying on the family name (as any potential children for my daughter would likely have the father’s last name).
And so goes the patriarchal thinking, none of which my wife nor I care about.
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### Author:  [@scudsucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scudsucker)
#### Post date: [October 23, 2024, 12:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-daughter-is-the-last-in-a-very-long-lineage/1008790/58 "2024-10-23T12:14:40Z")
> [@Lucas\_Jackson](#):
>
> They will not be having kids so the lineage stops with her.
My mum’s maiden name is the extremely unusual Eells, a product of South Britain. We can’t find anyone else (related) with the name, and I (my bother, sister, and our children) have our much more boring typically English surname, inherited from our Dad.
She seems to be the last. I don’t even know what Eells means, though I reckon it is linked to the unpalitable fish.
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### Author:  [@veryfrank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/veryfrank)
#### Post date: [October 23, 2024, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-daughter-is-the-last-in-a-very-long-lineage/1008790/59 "2024-10-23T13:23:03Z")
My family line will continue but only through my cousins. My dad’s brother had six kids, five of whom have spawned, some of them many many times (they’re the Mormon wing of the family). But I have no blood siblings, and I’m not reproducing. Too much bipolar and autism (including myself) in the bloodline, I’m in my fifties so even if I started tomorrow, I’d be seventy by the time my immediate descendent hits uni and I have no hopes for the general liveability of the planet by that point. I think I expected to have kids back when I was one, but life happens as it does.
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [October 25, 2024, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-daughter-is-the-last-in-a-very-long-lineage/1008790/60 "2024-10-25T02:05:50Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#):
>
> Just think. Of all the female Homo saps alive at the time of the hypothetical Eve, only she has any descendants today.
It’s pretty easy to see that this must be false, in fact. Consider: She had at least two daughters who themselves had children. Each of those daughters had a finite list of partners. Each of those partners had a mother. At least one of those partners’ mothers’ must also be an ancestor of people today.
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