In order to be born, you needed:
2 parents
4 grandparents
8 great-grandparents
16 second great-grandparents
32 third great-grandparents
64 fourth great-grandparents
128 fifth great-grandparents
256 sixth great-grandparents
512 seventh great-grandparents
1,024 eighth great-grandparents
2,048 ninth great-grandparents
For you to be born today from 12 previous generations, you needed a total of 4.094 ancestors over the last 400 years.
Think for a moment - How many struggles? How many battles? How many difficulties? How much sadness? How much happiness? How many love stories? How many expressions of hope for the future? - did your ancestors have to undergo for you to exist in this present moment.
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| Art by Joe Magee |
Put this clearly, it's pretty mind blowing right? Especially when most of us didn't get to know our grandparents or their life stories. Much less those of our great grandparents or great greats. So much of the world had changed in only the last hundred years that tracing back to earlier times can seem so inconceivable.
It is no wonder that most of us have such short memories and even narrower perspectives to form interests or concerns. Maybe if we cared more and are more attentive we would not be in the pickle we are in now?/ Maybe it is our fate to be where we are today - who knows?
Calculating my own timeline and parental lineages, here are some approximate dates:
parents - born 1924 & 1933
grandparents – 1900s & 1910s
great grandparents – 1880s & 1890s
2nd great grandparents – 1860s & 1870s
3rd great grandparents – 1840s & 1850s
4th great grandparents – 1820s & 1830s
5th great grandparents – 1800s & 1810s
6th great grandparents – 1780s & 1790s
7th great grandparents – 1760s & 1770s
8th great grandparents – 1740s & 1750s
9th great grandparents – 1720s & 1730s
Who of us can even tell what was going on in the 1700s without Googling it? With World War II in the Philippines, many official records were burned during the bombings and occupation. So at best many of us only have guesstimates based on our elders failing memories.
Scouring through some world history sites, here are some highlights of those times:
1700s - War of the Spanish Succession begins,
1750s – Seven Years' War (French
and Indian Wars in America), Voltaire, Haydn, Catherine the Great, first Continental Congress, the Boston Tea Party; Rosetta Stone discovered in Egypt
1800s – Napoleonic Wars; Industrial Revolution; invention of steam
engine, telegraph, banking, child labor, labor unions. Louisiana Purchase,
slavery abolished, White House first used, West Point Academy, Alexander Hamilton dies in duel with Aaron Burr
1850s – Civil War, Annapolis Academy, Jane Eyre published, Gold Rush,
New York Times, Indian Mutiny, first oil well, Gettysburg battle, phonograph,
Victoria Empress of India, Orient Express, Brooklyn Bridge, Eiffel Tower, Kodak
1900s – NYC subway built, Boxer Rebellion, Queen Victoria dies, Morse
Code SOS, first world war, Susan B Anthony, League of Nations, Adolf Hitler, Lenin dies, Stalin rules, Russian Communist Party, Dust Bowl depression years, Wright brthers, Russo-Jap war
1950s - Korean War, McCarthyism, Argentina ousts Peron, Rosa Parks, MLK, Egypt takes Suez Canal, Dalai Lama escapes Tibet, Alaska and Hawaii are made states
What if we lived our lives as the Native American do - connected to seven generations of their past ancestors and seven generations of their future descendants? Would we be more considerate and careful given this larger perspective?
It says a lot about us that generations born from 1945 and before are all lumped together as traditionalists or worse, the silent generation. While se obsessively categorize every generations after - boomers, Gen X, Gen Y or Millenials, Gen Z or Centenials. What do we call the babies born in these corona times or now that we've ran out of the alphabets?
Knowing and understanding more than just our brief blink here on earth, will we be able to live more honorably? Shouldn't this be worth aiming for, especially if it means living instead of extinction? Better food for thought than food for worms - right?
Inspired by the life & work of Wangari Maathai
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