Talk:3252: Ancestral Genomes

I'm expecting some reference to the revelation of Neandthalic/etc genes in various branches of our own population, along the way, but shall leave the actual writing to others. 81.179.199.253 18:15, 29 May 2026 (UTC) Sexis canon again! Caliban (talk) 18:31, 29 May 2026 (UTC)

This comic is an interesting contribution to discussion about how science and the public handle privacy issues. For instance a museums finds it okay to display a dead body [1] just because he died a very long time ago. --2001:4091:A241:81DC:350B:874D:E1AA:9FEE 13:46, 30 May 2026 (UTC)

We need more details about Ötzi to better understand how he is related to us. For example, did he play the Steirische Ziehharmonika, and if not, how did he fail to learn it? Was he killed because of Harmonikamusikhass--someone hated accordions and did not want them to perpetuate? His display in a museum would be much more exciting and appropriate with those details. 173.188.194.118 15:18, 30 May 2026 (UTC)

Ötzi probably predates the Steirische Ziehharmonika, unless someone used their time machine to fix the temporal ordering requirements. --2A10:D586:3E93:0:907B:6DDD:C33E:4855 07:52, 31 May 2026 (UTC)

see also 2268 Treeplate (talk) 15:19, 30 May 2026 (UTC)

• This strip reminds me of 830: Genetic Analysis, where counselor Megan tells Cueball, "... we've analyzed genes on several of your chromosomes, and it's hard to avoid the conclusion: at some point, your parents had sex." --208.59.176.206 19:16, 30 May 2026 (UTC)

Think about how uncomfortable it is to think about your grandparents having sex. It's exponentially worse with your great-great-great-great-great-great-etc-grandparents. RegularSizedGuy (talk) 14:34, 31 May 2026 (UTC)

I disagree. I never met my great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents, and I don't even know what their names were or what they looked like. So I have no specific image of them with which to be discomforted by the idea of them having sex. It may be somewhat uncomfortable to think about them having sex, but considerably less uncomfortable than thinking about my grandparents having sex. --208.59.176.206 05:53, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

One most likely has 256 great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents (a number Randall might appreciate btw). When put in a room, one would have to realize they all had sex together (most likely in pairs), which might feel slightly uncomfortable as a thought.SubtrEM (talk) 08:11, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

At most 256 biological great⁶-grandparents (plus possibly some extra de jure/de facto ones, step-relations, etc).

It's distinctly probable that some of those 256 are the same people as 'others' of those 256. Also, over those few generations, some of them may (on different branches!) also be members of the 512-group and/or 128-group great⁷s- and great⁵s-, if not beyond.

Case in point: I am roughly the age of several of my first-cousins' children. My grandparents' other grandchildren started having their own offspring only a year or two after one of their younger children 'finally' became one of my parents. At least two of my cousins-once-removed have had children of their own, and not even even uncommonly precipitously such that it might be remarked upon! I'm not yet too unusually old to be a parent myself (though I won't comment on how much preparation I've made, to fulfil that possibility), and yet my offspring would be younger than some of their second-cousins-twice-removed, if I've not messed up the counting there. With eight of 'my' more slow-burning generations, if that continues, who knows what distant cousin-removed relationship might appear in the greatⁿ-level ancestries of some hypothetical common descendent of both my parent's sub-tree and that of one of their siblings', just by chance.

Going back, from me, to my own great⁶th ancestry, I wouldn't need to go even half way back to find the marriages being between residents of the same (large) village, who might well have been nth-cousins (with or without 'removed's). My paternal lineage isn't even obvious as there were two possible couples of the same names (first names and the married name, but having differing maiden-names for the wife) who married about a year apart and a year or two before my earliest definite ancestor. Unless the husband was the same person (records are sketchy enough to not be definite, so he could have prefered a particular woman's name when on the rebound from a bereavement or other marital issue), the two husbands were likely Nth-cousins through their paternal lineage alone (the surname itself arrived in that general area maybe 100-150 years before, from another area about 100 miles away). And that's just official and patronimic information the female branches and the genetic reality of my ancestry is nearly impossible to be as certain about.

Even without invoking any awkward in-breeding, or intergenerational age-imbalances, an accurate list of every individual who is my genuine great⁶-grandparent is likely to feature fewer than the full compliment of 256 unique individuals (and few people could say for sure that it does, for their own case, though its easier these days to marry people from far further wfield that might add more diversity of background — I've seen my own contemporaneous cousins marrying people from several different continents, something their parents were unlikely to have had the opportunity to do, even after my branch of the family moved another 100-odd miles to the general sub-region that I have always considered 'home'). And the sum total of all individuals who are part of the tree-of-ancestry from that level all the way down to myself is likely also going to be less than the nominal 511, even if it was somehow the full 256 exclusively at that particular generational remove.

As to whether I imagine any of them having sex... Not really, but then it's also unlikely that I'd (even hypothetically) feature in their thoughts whilst they were having sex, also. Though who knows what kinks such long-dead people might once have had, suitable for our retrospective views on the society of that age or not. There could have been some right ravers/proto-swingers in my progenitor-list, for all I know, and ae long as it was sufficiently consenting, all round, I say "all power to them" for it. 82.132.239.195 15:43, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

While I agree that, in general, the public doesn’t respect the privacy of people who died a long time ago, I think it should be pointed out that this is a real ethical discussion in history and in social sciences more generally. Ethnic studies has really broached the subject of what sources should be available to us, the importance of respecting the people/cultures behind those sources, etc. and historians have been taking note. Ari Kelman’s book Misplaced Massacre is a good example. I think saying that at a certain point privacy is just left to history is a bit reductive. Salsmachev (talk) 15:30, 31 May 2026 (UTC)

I'd just like to note that the diagram as shown could either be one of descendency or ancestry.

• Descendency: from a single common ancestor at the top, it tracks known descendents chronologically downwards until the modern day extended family whose genomes may have been sampled to back-derive the separate paths down which various genetic variations from the original presumed common heritage found their way (presumably mostly added in by partners of the intermediate descendents). Dotted lines may indicate tentative 'non-maritable' genetic links across branches ("uncle Bob was always nearby, ready to help mother out while my father was away"). There's quite a few modern-day descendents. But, realistically, any ancestor far enough back who has extant descendents is likely to have many (i.e. the "X% of the world's population is directly descended from Genghis Kahn”, or whoever, but the same could probably be said of various anonymous others from that time, if only we knew who they were), so long as all their branches haven't all died out.
• Ancestry: Top node is the single present target individual, each layer down is the parents of the layer above, with some (but limited) information about the most immediate layers. The clumped lines at the bottom is where it turns into more generalist assumptions starting to be more based upon official records and even regionality/ethnicity assumptions. (Again, dotted lines indicate possible 'unofficial gene-sharing'.)

...I would lean towards the latter, given that most nodes that have decinite and distinct 'feeder lines' from below have exactly two of them. Everyone^{[citation needed]} has two parents, one way or another. For the other, you'd have to assume a lot of consistent two-child families as the overwhelming norm, in a part of the diagram leading back in a time where Family Planning was (at best) more like making good practical use around the home/farm/factory of as many of the numerous children you had that hadn't already succumbed to one of the copious childhood illnesses/accidents. (Or, if a more priveleged family tree, some rather deliberate sticking to the "an heir, and a spare" philosophy, though even that would have been hit-and-miss and you'd still expect to see intergenerational and intragenerational variations.)
The more Doylist explanation is that it's just a scribbled diagram by Randall, and whichever archetype of figure he might have taken inspiration from, in an actual Ancestry/Descendency study, he just went for the general look. But it doesn't stop me pondering the in-universe/Watsonian facts deep behind the festuted scenario, however unnecesary it might be to try to understand (and then explain) in order to appreciate the comic's more deliberate punchline(s). But I still wished to share my ponderings on the matter. 82.132.238.174 13:37, 1 June 2026 (UTC)