143
" Something in the order of a 107 billion modern humans have existed, though this number depends on when exactly you start counting. All of them – of us – are close cousins, as our species has a single African origin. We don’t quite have the language to describe what that really means. It doesn’t, for example, mean a single couple, a hypothetical Adam and Eve. We think of families and pedigrees and genealogies and ancestry, and we try to think of the deep past in the same way. Who were my ancestors? You might have a simple, traditional family structure or, like me, it could be handsomely untidy, and its tendrils jumbled like old wires in a drawer. But no matter which, everyone’s past becomes muddled sooner or later. "
― Adam Rutherford , A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Stories in Our Genes
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" Human history is replete with the fluid movement of people, and tribes and countries and cultures and empires are never, ever permanent. Over a long enough time-scale, not one of these descriptions of historical people holds steadfast, and only a thousand years ago your DNA began being threaded from millions from every culture, tribe, and country. If you want to spend your cash on someone in a white coat telling you that you’re from a tribe of wandering Germanic topless warriors, or descended from Vikings, Saracens, Saxons, or Drogo of Metz, or even the Great Emperor Charlemagne, help yourself. I, or hundreds of geneticists around the world, will shrug and do it for free: You are. And you don’t even need to spit in a tube—your majesty. "
― Adam Rutherford , A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Stories in Our Genes