It definitely helps to have a large number of direct descendants. But it is no guarantee -- I would imagine that entire families were wiped out at Pompeii, for example, or more recently in the tsunami. Spreading your descendants at great distances provides lots of backups. And it also helps to be on the winning side in a conquest, like the Khans. But the biggest effect is "compound interest", a la Fibonacci's rabbits. I sure hope that a lot of us are descendants of Fibonacci. It would be great justice for him. At 01:49 PM 6/29/2006, dasimov@earthlink.net wrote:

Henry wrote:

<< Do a Google search on Genghis Khan. Recent results claim that 5% of the world's population derives from him or his brothers. (The media claim that this is due to his large sexual appetite; while this probably helped, the truth is that random theory would show that _someone_ would end up with a large number of descendants.

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Right. That's totally plausible. The fact the Genghis Khan was both the most powerful and well-traveled person of his era just "probably helped". But mainly it's just a coincidence. Right.

--Dan