Question

When describing the growth of a population, the passage of time is sometimes described in generations, a generation being about 30 years. If you had 2 ancestors one generation ago, 4 ancestors two generations ago, and 8 ancestors 90 years ago, how many ancestors did you have 300 years ago? 900 years ago? Do your answers make sense?

A) 16 ancestors, 512 ancestors
B) 16 ancestors, 32 ancestors
C) 8 ancestors, 32 ancestors
D) 8 ancestors, 16 ancestors

Answer 1

To find the number of ancestors 300 years ago and 900 years ago, we need to determine the number of generations that have passed. The correct answers are not provided in the given options.

Step-by-step explanation:

To find the number of ancestors you had 300 years ago, we need to determine the number of generations that have passed from that time. If a generation is about 30 years, then 300 years is equivalent to 10 generations. Each generation doubles the number of ancestors, so if you had 2 ancestors one generation ago and 4 ancestors two generations ago, then 10 generations ago you would have had 2^10 = 1024 ancestors. Therefore, your answer is not provided in the options.

For 900 years ago, we can calculate the number of generations by dividing 900 by 30, which gives us 30 generations. Using the same logic, we can determine that 30 generations ago you would have had 2^30 = 1,073,741,824 ancestors. Again, this answer is not provided in the options.

Based on these calculations, none of the given options make sense. The correct answers would be 1024 ancestors for 300 years ago and 1,073,741,824 ancestors for 900 years ago.