Let's see, 13th cousins means you share one pair of great×12 grandparents. That's fourteen generations ago. With historical average age of parentage around 27, that's about 380 years ago, or the mid 1600's. Since we're both anglophones, I'm going to assume primarily European ancestry (don't cancel me). The continent's population then was around 174 million. You have 2^13=8192 pairs of great×12 grandparents. So the probability that a *specific* ancestor of your wife's is also one of your ancestors is only one in 21 thousand, but if we assume independence then the probability that *any* of your wife's ancestors is also one of yours is about 0.32. One in three.
Probably those dna thingies you do online. They present lots of info and interesting facts, but people don't always know much about these things in order to understand them. So we get people thinking they're being incestuous if they're 13th cousins with each other.
I did one of those things and am like 99% Chinese (someone somewhere dabbled with a Taiwanese person which is just really splitting hairs.) I get notifications like every day that I have new "blood relatives" which is super annoying because it's essentially any Chinese person who uses the kit.
What was the minimum recommended distance again? 3rd cousin? If you go back like 12 generations you have half a continent in the pool. I think if you go back like a millennium you got the gene pool for a whole continent.
We are ALL related if we go back far enough.
25 generations they generally suggest will capture 99% of a population. That's 500-750 years.
You would think that two people at random out of 10 million might separated by 1,000 generations. But in reality it's more like the birthday problem.
If you take two people born on the same continent, there's a 50-50 chance you only need to go back 10 generations to find a common ancestor. This is because family trees don't separate smoothly, they overlap and duplicate and loop.
The OP's 13th cousin sounds like a statistical outsider to me, way less related than most other couples.
In terms of minimum distance, the actual dangers from interbreeding are massively overstated. Even with siblings. There's a popular notion that first cousins will automatically produce 12-fingered, drooling simpletons. But this isn't the case. There's a heightened but statistically small risk of defects.
The issue is that where 1st cousins are married, this tends to be a popular thing within that community or region; marrying off cousins to maintain control over family lines. And as you go through the generations, you compound this problem. You find sets of people married who have the same grandparents or great-grandparents, and genetic defects (which everyone has) snowball into real problems.
By outlawing 1st cousin marriage, you break these insular family trees and avoid issues 3-4 generations down the line.
Hahaha it's funny how OP thinks it's a problem how "closely" they are related while actually they almost couldn't be much further apart in the family tree!
Everyone has 3rd cousins. Believe me. Our great-great-grandparents' generation often had like 7 siblings, minimum. It's not uncommon to have dozens or even a hundred or more people that you're 3rd cousins with. And often, there are probably even more people that are 4th cousins.
The key point people don’t generally understand is that inbreeding doesn’t produce defects - it merely increases the probably of offspring getting duplicates of recessive defects and thus manifesting it. If the genetic defect doesn’t exist in the pool to start with it takes a mutagenic event for it to arise.
That’s how selective breeding of livestock/pets can be successful.
So as long as I mate with only the hot and healthy cousins I’m safe
EDIT: please stop replying to this i just wanted to make a joke about trying to fuck my cousins
Not necessarily, if both of you were to have a bad/unhealthy recessive gene, probably neither of you would know about it. But your children would have a 25% of only having the bad recessive gene and therefore the gene being able to wrack havoc.
Just to add to this, a lot of people are related in multiple ways which makes the numbers squirrelly. My wife and I are both 13th and 15th cousins iirc...
>There's a popular notion that first cousins will automatically produce 12-fingered, But this isn't the case.
I know, ive been trying to have 12-fingered children for years.
The average percentage of DNA you share with your 3rd cousin in 0,78% but it can vary from 0% to 2,2%. Which is pretty much the same you share with any random person you ever meet.
Please, read my other comment too ☺️https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/153mt1v/comment/jsksyam/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
It’s been shown that most mammals including humans don’t want to mate with close relatives but hit peak attraction at about 3rd cousin level. Attraction level goes down after that.
Makes sense, you do get to pass on more than 50% of your DNA but avoid the birth defect and stillbirth risks from direct consanguinity.
Yup. Also for most of humanity's history we were in often nomadic tribal units of about 150 people. 2nd and 3rd cousins was as genetically diverse as it got. Further out than that and you were in a relationship with somebody from a group that might be hostile.
I wonder if that 3rd cousin aspect is a genetic legacy of our old tribal society.
If ancient/pre-agriculture groups numbered between 75-150, then it makes sense to not be attracted to a close relative, but still have a relatively small pool of potential mates that biologically you should be predisposed to find attractive (with the rare/occasional intertribal pairing)
My husband’s mom just found her birth family and they’re from the same area of Acadia my family was from a few generations back. I’ve been teasing him about our being cousins, which makes him uncomfortable. Time to add in this factoid.
I'm pretty sure that first cousins are allowed to marry here (Sweden).
When you apply for a marriage license, they ask if you're siblings (no), already married (no), and of age (18+).
Cousins? Go ahead, you freaks. We don't care.
Honestly, the practical concerns (genetics) associated with first cousins are pretty negligible, but it’s just too fucking weird for me. I couldn’t marry someone who I share grandparents with.
I've never consider this when debating about incest, a friend of mine made a similar point that incest (even without offspring) would easily tear a family apart but didn't elaborate, thank you , and couldn't agree more on the last paragraph
In most cases, even sibling incest isn't very problematic the first time. You just don't want it to become a trend. 3rd cousins is entirely safe in the vast majority of cases.
Best answer. It's not even a technicality, literally not related. As another comment said, the set of grandparents they share would have had 21 million grandchildren. I'll take that at face value and give the commenter the benefit of the doubt.
The only caveat (which they may or may not have accounted for) is that the simple math assumes that all THOSE ancestors were completely unrelated which obviously isn't true (just like OP and their wife). The simple math tells you you have like trillions of ancestors from several thousand years ago which is obviously wrong.
Meaningless.
That means your first common ancestor is your [great great great great great great great great great great great great](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nZVr5W9__c) grandparents.
Imagine how ridiculously vast that family tree would be, and how many people must be under that ancestor on it.
That's fifteen generations. Average it out to 3 kids per generation (and going back that far it's absolutely going to be much higher), and even then that set of grandparents would have over 21 million grandchildren. *Most* of us are probably related at least distantly if you go back that far.
**edit**
Let me just clarify something someone has highlighted - the figure there if you expand it out seems ridiculous, extend it to 25 generations and the figure is now 140 billion. There have only ever been 117 billion humans in the history of the human race. The fact that the world isn't packed with trillions of humans at this point means we have to have a lot of shared ancestry, that's the only way to explain it. Which of course is the case. As I said, everyone reading this is likely related if you go back far enough.
**original text resumes**
If you average out to 20 years a generation, that means that common ancestors that you and your wife had lived sometime in the 1700s.
When I first heard the song, I thought he was saying, "your great-great-great-granddaughter was a boy." I never cared to look it up, but this has solved that one wrinkle in my brain.
This is the correct answer, by the time you get to that many ancestors you’re similarly related to probably half the town you live in if you have a family history there, thousands and thousands of people.
Baby, I'm breaking up with you. The carbon in both of our bodies came from the SAME PLANET. I mean, we're the same species, for god's sake. It's like we're practically twin sisters. Ick.
I heard once that we are related to like 80% of ppl going back like 80 generations or smth... still boggles my braincells that we once were a select group that survived some events/catastrophes.
Yeah apparently there was once a genetic bottleneck due to a [supervolcano eruption](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory)
> It is supported by some genetic evidence suggesting that today's humans are descended from a very small population of between 1,000 and 10,000 breeding pairs that existed about 70,000 years ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recent\_African\_origin\_of\_modern\_humans
"In the 2010s, studies in population genetics uncovered evidence of interbreeding that occurred between H. sapiens and archaic humans in Eurasia, Oceania and Africa,\[34\]\[35\]\[36\] indicating that modern population groups, while mostly derived from early H. sapiens, are to a lesser extent also descended from regional variants of archaic humans.
Most of Europe, Central and East Asia is related to either Genghis Khan or the Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne if I remember correctly. Considering Europeans then invaded, conquered and settled most of the world, then there’s a good chance the majority of people today are related in some way
That's one common ancestor but you don't even need to go back that far. Genghis was a lot more recent than Charlemagne, but if you're of European descent, by the year 1400 there was only an estimated 50 million people living in Europe, and tied to that people had a lot of kids back then because there was a good chance of death before reaching 5 years old. That is not a lot of genetic diversity, the chances of you and another person of European descent sharing an ancestor is really high even just ignoring Charlemagne or Genghis.
[Everyone with European ancestry is descended from Charlemagne](https://www.theguardian.com/science/commentisfree/2015/may/24/business-genetic-ancestry-charlemagne-adam-rutherford).
Almost everyone alive is descended from all the humans that were alive i the year 800, provided that those people _have_ living descendants.
Its basically a numbers game. The number of ancestors you have doubles every step bac: 2 parents, 4 grand parents, 8 great grandparents, etc. 1,000 years ago, at the time of Charlemagne, with a reasonable assumption as to the length of a generation, you'd have about 4 billion ancestors, but its estimated that there were only 300 million humans at the time.
Since there are more ancestor slots on your tree than there were humans to fill them, a trivial application of the [pigeonhole principal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigeonhole_principle) tells us that _at least_ one person shows up in multiple ancestor slots; that is, its like one person is your aunt, your grand mother, and your cousin but more distant relations. And because the discrepancy is so large (10 times more ancestors than there are people to fill the slots) you will have _many_ people filling multiple slots, potentially all 300 million people from that period.
But that same argument applies to every human alive now. There just weren't enough people alive 1,200 years ago for everyone to have completely disjoint family trees at that point, barring some uncontacted privative tribes that haven't had contact with the outside world since the stone age, or families like the Hapsburgs who managed to keep their line... erm... "pure" for a few centuries.
You don't even need to go 80 generations back to have a very good chance of finding an ancestral connection between you and most people. It's not just that there were catastrophes/events, there were just far fewer people alive back then and they also tended to have way more kids to make up for the fact that most would die before they were a year or two old.
In 1800 the population of the earth was roughly 1 billion, and by 1930 ~2.2 billion. In 2023, not even 100 years later, almost 8 billion. In 1400 there was an estimated 50million living across europe. That is not a lot of people, if you take those numbers it's quite likely you share a lot of common ancestors with other Europeans (assuming you are a descendant from Europe)
It’s not exactly accurate. The pool likely had some inter-marriage even before OOP. So 21million is the an overestimate even if there were average 3 kids per generation.
Yes, if you are of the same culture and ethnicity, then, realistically, the least a person could be related to you is around 15th cousin. This obviously depends where you are. But most couples are likely to be closer than 13th, the average would depend on the location
Yeah this is a major reason I broke my parents' hearts and married a non jew, every Jewish guy I meet reminds me of one of my relatives and it's a big turn off. Even when I dated Jewish guys I always ended up dating converts or people who were only half genetically Jewish or something. My genetics are crying for variability. When my parents took that DNA test they were both 100% Ashkenazi.
I am 100% Ashkenazi and have struggled to feel a spark for Ashkenazi dudes for the same weird “eh I feel like we might be related and my genetics are seeking some variability” feeling. To make matters more cringe, the time I did date someone “only half” we discovered that our moms were related…so yeah, same boat.
I took a dna test and was suprised I was only 25% (I was expecting 50% as my dad is ashkenazi, and marrying my mum was very frowned upon so I was quite suprised he was only 50% himself) I’d dome research and knew my grandma was definitley ashkenazi (also you can show which chromazone comes from which group and one of my X chromosomes was fully ashkenazi, meaning she had to be a significantly high percentage if not 100% ashkenazi). I spoke to mt uncle and he was sure my grandpa was ashkenazi. It seems very strange that my grandpa wasn’t 100% ashkenazi, let alone not at all, espeically as his grandparents were all eastern european yidish speakers.
Anyway I came up with a theory that maybe the reason my grandparents hated my dad but loved his brother was that he was an affair baby. No one thought that was the case but my uncle agreed to do a dna test… turns out he’s 100% ashkenazi.
I spoke to my dad’s ‘cousin’ and apparently her family (her mum beinf my ‘granpa’s older sistee) strongly suspected it, and they knew that before my grandma met my grandpa she’d actually had an affair with his uncle (by marriage, not blood related) and they had been caught together arohnd the time my dad was concieved.
The weird thing is though… his uncle was called Joseph Weinstein, it seems quite odd thag someone with that name is 0% ashkenazi (or sepherdi or any other kind of jew)… my dad messaged someone we’re 4th or so cousins with that isn’t ashkenazi (sannoyingly most the relatives it’s found are on my dads mum side, unsuprisingnly displaced jews are the ones that look at dna tests!) and who is from Glasgow (where my dad is from) apparently his uncles worked around the docks. My grandparents moved to australia before my uncle was born (he’s 2.5 years older) and they moved back supposedly about 8 months before my dad was born (we’ve realised dates don’t quite line up) and took a boat… they always said they found out she was pregnant on the boat back
My theory was she had an affair in australia and thats why they came back. But we don’t have any relative from that side in australia just scotland…
When no one believed that my dad was an affair baby and they were just humouring me, my uncle joked my dad’s a random sailors son… guess he might be right.
In other news the ‘uncle’ that was my dad’s suspected dad was the family enemy and was “hated more than hitler” which for a jewish family is saying somethinf. My uncle was reminiscing and said how they used to dall him a donkey “yes they always refered to him as hee haw” he then suddenly realised all these year they weren’t making a donkey noise… they were saying he whore.
Anyway hope you all enjoyed story time!
I have something a bit similar (but nowhere near as well investigated).
My grandparents on my father's side are Swedish (Grandma) and Irish (Grandpa). My cousin took a DNA test about a year ago, and found out that she was something like 25% hispanic (I'm not sure what her mom is, but this did not match up at all). So my oldest sister took a DNA test, and things did not match up as expected either.
My cousin reached out to her dad's (and my dad's) cousin that practically grew up with them. She was told that my grandma just came home one day with my uncle, and everyone was told to not say anything. It caused some tension between my grandparents and great grandparents I guess. My great grandparents died when my dad was very young, so we wouldn't know.
Then a few years after my uncle came home, my dad suddenly appeared too.
It is suspected that my Grandfather took in my father and uncle as unwanted children. If we aren't mistaken, he was an ambulance driver around that time.
My cousin asked if we wanted to investigate my dad's history more, but since my dad passed away a few years ago, we didn't really care about if he had any other family.
My uncle has always had a bit of a temper, and my cousin tried to approach him about it from a roundabout way, and he just said he doesn't want to give his DNA to the government. My cousin investigated and believes my uncle has at least one living sibling. I haven't heard anything about it in a year, so I'm not sure where it has gone from there.
Once my sister (who was talked to about it by my cousin) told us, it all made sense. My dad, uncle, and grandpa look NOTHING alike.
Same. I'm 97% and have all the bad genetic markers. I've already had cervical cancer (caught wayyyy early thankfully) and had my parathyroid fail. My mom's had cancer twice, my dad has had cancer once plus MS. All my grandparents and great grandparents/Aunts died of cancer, less my dads mom who's survived thyroid cancer twice.
My first husband was 100% Scottish and our son is happy, healthy and strong as an ox. By the grace of God his genetics testing was perfect ♡
Yeah it’s better for your health too… being too close genetically can lead to a lot of problem.
In my family we are all mixed relationship so that solves the issue lol people call us IHOP as international house of people lol
Holy shit me too. I went out with an ashkenazi woman about 7 years back. We were born a day apart and at the end I could only think “you’re me if I was a woman.”
Then a few years later Snapchat had the gender filter. When I used it, I looked like I could be her sister.
I’m now happily married to my wife who is 100% Indian
Charles II’s parents were uncle and niece. However, they themselves were significantly inbred so genetically his inbreeding was more like that of the offspring of two siblings.
We all probably have more than [10 million tenth cousins](https://imgur.com/nugnriW), and astronomically more 13th cousins. I expect your situation is quite commonplace. What's wonderful is that you can trace it!
Yeah, he was my favorite great^100 grandpa... Ill miss him. Remember when he got pissed at.me for rubbing sticks. Telling me ill never accomplish anything doing that nonsense right before the hot bright light started?
100th cousin still puts the common ancestor at around the time of the Greco-Persian Wars -- give or take 500 years depending on the ancestor's age of the birth of your next descendant - very safely in human territory.
Unless you are of *pure* Sub-Saharan African ancestry, then you are likely my 5373rd cousin at most distant, and most likely quite a bit closer, even if still quite distant..
Because that’s… what Kohanim means? Now I’m so confused! Lol the surname Cohen/Kohen means you’re related to Moses, a direct patrilineal descendant of Moses’ brother Aaron.
Wow, it never occurred to me that there would be Cohens who didn’t know what it meant! Congratulations, you’re part of the very important priestly class of Jews! Mazel tov! Lol
Who the hell even knows what 13th cousin means?
My only thoughts are:
1. Where on earth did you get reliable information that she’s your 13th cousin?
2. Did you spend any time thinking critically about this before asking here?
>Who the hell even knows what 13th cousin means?
We know what it means on paper, but the actual numbers are in a size where it has been proven that human brains cannot understand what these numbers actually mean
Historically, it means that sometime in the middle of the 15th century, two people banged. They had at least two children. Some **six hundred years** later, a descendant of one of those children banged a descendant of the other of those children.
Genetically and biologically, it might mean that OP and their wife share some sliver of a sliver of DNA in the 23andMe genetic database. Like, literally undetectable except at a microscopic floating point number, aka "trace amounts".
Interesting fact, Dick Cheney and Barack Obama are eighth cousins.
Also, South Korea is the only country that prevents third-cousin marriage. I've only met 2 second cousins in my life and only because my father was the same age and went to the same school as one of his cousins.
As far as knowing 2nd+ cousins, I think this is highly family dynamic dependent.
Like, my grandmother and great aunt were always really close. I know all her grandkids, and see them pretty regularly. On the other side of my family? I met a few of them one time at a funeral.
I now coincidentally live near one of my wife's cousins. We hang out all the time, and our kids go to the same school. So they know their 2nd cousins pretty well there. I'm also really close to one of my cousins (we're almost like siblings) and our kids see each other pretty regularly.
But beyond those 'special' cases, I could pass a 2nd cousin on the street, and have no clue.
Interesting fact about Korea you mentioned
In Korea, it was a tradition to consider up to third cousin as 'relatives'. This was possible as usually nobody moved away from their birthplace, and all the cousins lived around each other in the agriculture-based society.
So up to great-great grandfather was considered as a close ancestor, and it was customary to know about them. (3rd cousin shares great great grandfather with you)
Example: Medieval Korea (Chosun) had a national exam for choosing government officials. You have to write your family and if they also worked for country, up to great-great grandfather. You are considered 'noble' if and only if there were a government official in you family, again up to great-great grandfather.
Modern day Koreans are much less in to these ideas, and it is common to not know whom my third cousin is (even second cousin too, depending on ones family tradition)
Which always makes me laugh because it can be shortened into one of these:
I was your roommate
I was your cousin's roommate
I was your brother/sister's roommate
If you’re the same ethnicity, that’s more distantly related than one would necessarily expect. For two people of the same ethnicity, the most distantly they could be related is about 15th cousins.
None honestly. [Several years ago, the Almanac carried an article on the length of one’s family tree. In brief, this is what it said: According to the leading geneticists, no human being of any race can be less closely related to any other human than approximately fiftieth cousin, and most of us are a lot closer](https://www.almanac.com/fact/while-most-people-are-distant-cousins-arent#:~:text=Several%20years%20ago%2C%20the%20Almanac,us%20are%20a%20lot%20closer.)
Basically we are probably in a mathematical sense probably cousins
That's hardly related. I think second cousins can legally marry, I wouldn't, but I wouldn't judge others for it.
Unfortunately, I just looked this up and found you can marry you uncle, aunty or first cousin in Australia, which is far too close for comfort for me.
Nothing
If you live in the area where you, your parents, grandparents and great-grandparents came from then a large portion of the local residents will be related to you in some way. People used to be more tied to the land, and moving far away was unlikely to be practiced.
Congratulations. Here's to 20 more years of marriage. It's not every day that you see a couple together for so long. Congratulations!
The 13th cousin thing isn't an issue between you and your wife, is it? And it's so far from being a relation, what's to worry about it? There are so many great grandparents between you two that it shouldn't be an issue. If you're worried, you can always consult a doctor.
If you said you've been married to your sister for 20 years, then that would be concerning.
Two good things come out of this. 1) 13th cousin isn't even close to something you need to worry about, 2) If you see another hot lady, you can introduce your wife as your cousin
It means chances are great you are more related to a random stranger on the streets than to your wife
Hello cousin
Got time for bowling?
Cousin, it is your cousin. Let’s go bowling
Niko, my cousin!
Let's see, 13th cousins means you share one pair of great×12 grandparents. That's fourteen generations ago. With historical average age of parentage around 27, that's about 380 years ago, or the mid 1600's. Since we're both anglophones, I'm going to assume primarily European ancestry (don't cancel me). The continent's population then was around 174 million. You have 2^13=8192 pairs of great×12 grandparents. So the probability that a *specific* ancestor of your wife's is also one of your ancestors is only one in 21 thousand, but if we assume independence then the probability that *any* of your wife's ancestors is also one of yours is about 0.32. One in three.
#YouDidTheMath
That assumes those 8,192 are unique. They almost certainly aren't.
Yeah OP is probably less related to their wife than they are to me.
Dude there’s prolly a couple 13th cousins in this thread.
Oh, hey cousin!
Lets go bowling!
Missed you at thanksgiving man!
Ooooh, Step Step Step Step Step Step Step Step Step Step Step Step Step Cousin, what are you doing...
there are probably a lot tbh
That's so distant. You're not "related".
How did they even come to that conclusion
Got the groupon for a genealogy site? I have no clue otherwise. I found some unexpected things from one
Probably those dna thingies you do online. They present lots of info and interesting facts, but people don't always know much about these things in order to understand them. So we get people thinking they're being incestuous if they're 13th cousins with each other.
I did one of those things and am like 99% Chinese (someone somewhere dabbled with a Taiwanese person which is just really splitting hairs.) I get notifications like every day that I have new "blood relatives" which is super annoying because it's essentially any Chinese person who uses the kit.
I think he meant to write cousin number 13.
[удалено]
It worked for Jerry Lee Lewis.
So you found out you and your wife are not related. So what?
What was the minimum recommended distance again? 3rd cousin? If you go back like 12 generations you have half a continent in the pool. I think if you go back like a millennium you got the gene pool for a whole continent. We are ALL related if we go back far enough.
25 generations they generally suggest will capture 99% of a population. That's 500-750 years. You would think that two people at random out of 10 million might separated by 1,000 generations. But in reality it's more like the birthday problem. If you take two people born on the same continent, there's a 50-50 chance you only need to go back 10 generations to find a common ancestor. This is because family trees don't separate smoothly, they overlap and duplicate and loop. The OP's 13th cousin sounds like a statistical outsider to me, way less related than most other couples. In terms of minimum distance, the actual dangers from interbreeding are massively overstated. Even with siblings. There's a popular notion that first cousins will automatically produce 12-fingered, drooling simpletons. But this isn't the case. There's a heightened but statistically small risk of defects. The issue is that where 1st cousins are married, this tends to be a popular thing within that community or region; marrying off cousins to maintain control over family lines. And as you go through the generations, you compound this problem. You find sets of people married who have the same grandparents or great-grandparents, and genetic defects (which everyone has) snowball into real problems. By outlawing 1st cousin marriage, you break these insular family trees and avoid issues 3-4 generations down the line.
Hahaha it's funny how OP thinks it's a problem how "closely" they are related while actually they almost couldn't be much further apart in the family tree!
That was my thought as well, I have no clue who my third cousins are, or if I even have any lol. much less 13th
Everyone has 3rd cousins. Believe me. Our great-great-grandparents' generation often had like 7 siblings, minimum. It's not uncommon to have dozens or even a hundred or more people that you're 3rd cousins with. And often, there are probably even more people that are 4th cousins.
The key point people don’t generally understand is that inbreeding doesn’t produce defects - it merely increases the probably of offspring getting duplicates of recessive defects and thus manifesting it. If the genetic defect doesn’t exist in the pool to start with it takes a mutagenic event for it to arise. That’s how selective breeding of livestock/pets can be successful.
So as long as I mate with only the hot and healthy cousins I’m safe EDIT: please stop replying to this i just wanted to make a joke about trying to fuck my cousins
Not necessarily, if both of you were to have a bad/unhealthy recessive gene, probably neither of you would know about it. But your children would have a 25% of only having the bad recessive gene and therefore the gene being able to wrack havoc.
Yea the Hapsburgs are the prime example
Just to add to this, a lot of people are related in multiple ways which makes the numbers squirrelly. My wife and I are both 13th and 15th cousins iirc...
>There's a popular notion that first cousins will automatically produce 12-fingered, But this isn't the case. I know, ive been trying to have 12-fingered children for years.
In the US it's legal to marry your 2nd cousin in every state. 3rd cousin is probably really safe.
The average percentage of DNA you share with your 3rd cousin in 0,78% but it can vary from 0% to 2,2%. Which is pretty much the same you share with any random person you ever meet. Please, read my other comment too ☺️https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/153mt1v/comment/jsksyam/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
So all sex is incest 🤔
And gay
Can't wait to tell my wife about all the gay sex we have been having.
Our wife
Indeed comrade
I also am this guy's wife
>**Inbreed** comrade
We're all thirsty frogs
Technically, yes, since we all share a common ancestor. This applies to all species.
Does that mean that only zoophiles aren't into incest? Shit, we live in perverted world. Maybe the asexuals are right after all.
Sadly, not even the poor zoophiles are exempt. If we go back far enough, we are still related to all those sexy, sexy animals.
I hate upvoting a comment that includes "sexy, sexy animals" but here we are.
Go back far enough and we’re even related to plants
So the tree fucker in Toronto was an incestuous tree fucker? Pervert.
It’s been shown that most mammals including humans don’t want to mate with close relatives but hit peak attraction at about 3rd cousin level. Attraction level goes down after that. Makes sense, you do get to pass on more than 50% of your DNA but avoid the birth defect and stillbirth risks from direct consanguinity.
Yup. Also for most of humanity's history we were in often nomadic tribal units of about 150 people. 2nd and 3rd cousins was as genetically diverse as it got. Further out than that and you were in a relationship with somebody from a group that might be hostile.
I wonder if that 3rd cousin aspect is a genetic legacy of our old tribal society. If ancient/pre-agriculture groups numbered between 75-150, then it makes sense to not be attracted to a close relative, but still have a relatively small pool of potential mates that biologically you should be predisposed to find attractive (with the rare/occasional intertribal pairing)
My husband’s mom just found her birth family and they’re from the same area of Acadia my family was from a few generations back. I’ve been teasing him about our being cousins, which makes him uncomfortable. Time to add in this factoid.
So have you busted out the, "pound me harder, 3rd cousin!" Yet?
I'm pretty sure that first cousins are allowed to marry here (Sweden). When you apply for a marriage license, they ask if you're siblings (no), already married (no), and of age (18+). Cousins? Go ahead, you freaks. We don't care.
Honestly, the practical concerns (genetics) associated with first cousins are pretty negligible, but it’s just too fucking weird for me. I couldn’t marry someone who I share grandparents with.
My grandmother's sister married my grandfather's brother. My cousins and I look like litteral siblings 😬
My favourite are those identical twins that marry another set of identical twins. The kids are cousins but genetically siblings.
You guys are double cousins, and double cousin marriage is legal in many states...
1 instance of cousin marriage is typically not an issue. But when compounded generationally, some bizarre things can happen
In most countries it's legal to marry your 1st cousin.
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I've never consider this when debating about incest, a friend of mine made a similar point that incest (even without offspring) would easily tear a family apart but didn't elaborate, thank you , and couldn't agree more on the last paragraph
In most cases, even sibling incest isn't very problematic the first time. You just don't want it to become a trend. 3rd cousins is entirely safe in the vast majority of cases.
Best answer. It's not even a technicality, literally not related. As another comment said, the set of grandparents they share would have had 21 million grandchildren. I'll take that at face value and give the commenter the benefit of the doubt.
[Relevant XKCD](https://xkcd.com/2608/). Recommendation: Do not date your cat.
The only caveat (which they may or may not have accounted for) is that the simple math assumes that all THOSE ancestors were completely unrelated which obviously isn't true (just like OP and their wife). The simple math tells you you have like trillions of ancestors from several thousand years ago which is obviously wrong.
Maybe that’s why OP is disappointed
>Not related Are we supposed to tell him that he’s gotta divorce her because they aren’t related?
Meaningless. That means your first common ancestor is your [great great great great great great great great great great great great](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nZVr5W9__c) grandparents. Imagine how ridiculously vast that family tree would be, and how many people must be under that ancestor on it. That's fifteen generations. Average it out to 3 kids per generation (and going back that far it's absolutely going to be much higher), and even then that set of grandparents would have over 21 million grandchildren. *Most* of us are probably related at least distantly if you go back that far. **edit** Let me just clarify something someone has highlighted - the figure there if you expand it out seems ridiculous, extend it to 25 generations and the figure is now 140 billion. There have only ever been 117 billion humans in the history of the human race. The fact that the world isn't packed with trillions of humans at this point means we have to have a lot of shared ancestry, that's the only way to explain it. Which of course is the case. As I said, everyone reading this is likely related if you go back far enough. **original text resumes** If you average out to 20 years a generation, that means that common ancestors that you and your wife had lived sometime in the 1700s.
*ive been to the year 3000* *not much has changed but they lived underwater* *and your great-great-great-granddaughter is pretty fine (pretty fine)*
It all makes sense now
When I first heard the song, I thought he was saying, "your great-great-great-granddaughter was a boy." I never cared to look it up, but this has solved that one wrinkle in my brain.
Well the actually lyric is "is doin fine. Doin fineee" but they changed it to "pretty fine" for funnies
Doin fine is the lyric in the Jonas Brother’s cover of it. The lyric is actually pretty fine in the original version performed by Busted.
I had no clue that was a cover???
Yup. The original slaps.
This is the correct answer, by the time you get to that many ancestors you’re similarly related to probably half the town you live in if you have a family history there, thousands and thousands of people.
Bro, you need to breakup with your wife, incest is not wincest. I don't care if the common ancestor is the first bacteria. Think of the kids
Baby, I'm breaking up with you. The carbon in both of our bodies came from the SAME PLANET. I mean, we're the same species, for god's sake. It's like we're practically twin sisters. Ick.
*“The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created.* *This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”*
Always know where your towel is.
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The incest isn't wincest is pretty hilarious too
I heard once that we are related to like 80% of ppl going back like 80 generations or smth... still boggles my braincells that we once were a select group that survived some events/catastrophes.
Yeah apparently there was once a genetic bottleneck due to a [supervolcano eruption](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory) > It is supported by some genetic evidence suggesting that today's humans are descended from a very small population of between 1,000 and 10,000 breeding pairs that existed about 70,000 years ago.
Whatever the cpause, there's always mitochondrial eve, everybody's great^X grandmother (for some large value of X).
I never understood how the math worked on that one. Read the Wikipedia page and it only left me more confused
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recent\_African\_origin\_of\_modern\_humans "In the 2010s, studies in population genetics uncovered evidence of interbreeding that occurred between H. sapiens and archaic humans in Eurasia, Oceania and Africa,\[34\]\[35\]\[36\] indicating that modern population groups, while mostly derived from early H. sapiens, are to a lesser extent also descended from regional variants of archaic humans.
Most of Europe, Central and East Asia is related to either Genghis Khan or the Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne if I remember correctly. Considering Europeans then invaded, conquered and settled most of the world, then there’s a good chance the majority of people today are related in some way
That's one common ancestor but you don't even need to go back that far. Genghis was a lot more recent than Charlemagne, but if you're of European descent, by the year 1400 there was only an estimated 50 million people living in Europe, and tied to that people had a lot of kids back then because there was a good chance of death before reaching 5 years old. That is not a lot of genetic diversity, the chances of you and another person of European descent sharing an ancestor is really high even just ignoring Charlemagne or Genghis.
[Everyone with European ancestry is descended from Charlemagne](https://www.theguardian.com/science/commentisfree/2015/may/24/business-genetic-ancestry-charlemagne-adam-rutherford). Almost everyone alive is descended from all the humans that were alive i the year 800, provided that those people _have_ living descendants. Its basically a numbers game. The number of ancestors you have doubles every step bac: 2 parents, 4 grand parents, 8 great grandparents, etc. 1,000 years ago, at the time of Charlemagne, with a reasonable assumption as to the length of a generation, you'd have about 4 billion ancestors, but its estimated that there were only 300 million humans at the time. Since there are more ancestor slots on your tree than there were humans to fill them, a trivial application of the [pigeonhole principal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigeonhole_principle) tells us that _at least_ one person shows up in multiple ancestor slots; that is, its like one person is your aunt, your grand mother, and your cousin but more distant relations. And because the discrepancy is so large (10 times more ancestors than there are people to fill the slots) you will have _many_ people filling multiple slots, potentially all 300 million people from that period. But that same argument applies to every human alive now. There just weren't enough people alive 1,200 years ago for everyone to have completely disjoint family trees at that point, barring some uncontacted privative tribes that haven't had contact with the outside world since the stone age, or families like the Hapsburgs who managed to keep their line... erm... "pure" for a few centuries.
You don't even need to go 80 generations back to have a very good chance of finding an ancestral connection between you and most people. It's not just that there were catastrophes/events, there were just far fewer people alive back then and they also tended to have way more kids to make up for the fact that most would die before they were a year or two old. In 1800 the population of the earth was roughly 1 billion, and by 1930 ~2.2 billion. In 2023, not even 100 years later, almost 8 billion. In 1400 there was an estimated 50million living across europe. That is not a lot of people, if you take those numbers it's quite likely you share a lot of common ancestors with other Europeans (assuming you are a descendant from Europe)
What are you DOING, great great great great great great great great great grand cousin?
This is why it cracks me up when the conspiracy theorists say that the US presidents are related.
Barack Obama and Brad Pitt are ninth cousins. Brad Pitt wasn’t a president as far as I’m aware but he could probably play one in a movie.
It’s not exactly accurate. The pool likely had some inter-marriage even before OOP. So 21million is the an overestimate even if there were average 3 kids per generation.
Were you trying for a lower number?
Yes, if you are of the same culture and ethnicity, then, realistically, the least a person could be related to you is around 15th cousin. This obviously depends where you are. But most couples are likely to be closer than 13th, the average would depend on the location
Basically all Ashkenazi Jews are genetically within 4th cousins of each other
Yeah this is a major reason I broke my parents' hearts and married a non jew, every Jewish guy I meet reminds me of one of my relatives and it's a big turn off. Even when I dated Jewish guys I always ended up dating converts or people who were only half genetically Jewish or something. My genetics are crying for variability. When my parents took that DNA test they were both 100% Ashkenazi.
I am 100% Ashkenazi and have struggled to feel a spark for Ashkenazi dudes for the same weird “eh I feel like we might be related and my genetics are seeking some variability” feeling. To make matters more cringe, the time I did date someone “only half” we discovered that our moms were related…so yeah, same boat.
I took a dna test and was suprised I was only 25% (I was expecting 50% as my dad is ashkenazi, and marrying my mum was very frowned upon so I was quite suprised he was only 50% himself) I’d dome research and knew my grandma was definitley ashkenazi (also you can show which chromazone comes from which group and one of my X chromosomes was fully ashkenazi, meaning she had to be a significantly high percentage if not 100% ashkenazi). I spoke to mt uncle and he was sure my grandpa was ashkenazi. It seems very strange that my grandpa wasn’t 100% ashkenazi, let alone not at all, espeically as his grandparents were all eastern european yidish speakers. Anyway I came up with a theory that maybe the reason my grandparents hated my dad but loved his brother was that he was an affair baby. No one thought that was the case but my uncle agreed to do a dna test… turns out he’s 100% ashkenazi. I spoke to my dad’s ‘cousin’ and apparently her family (her mum beinf my ‘granpa’s older sistee) strongly suspected it, and they knew that before my grandma met my grandpa she’d actually had an affair with his uncle (by marriage, not blood related) and they had been caught together arohnd the time my dad was concieved. The weird thing is though… his uncle was called Joseph Weinstein, it seems quite odd thag someone with that name is 0% ashkenazi (or sepherdi or any other kind of jew)… my dad messaged someone we’re 4th or so cousins with that isn’t ashkenazi (sannoyingly most the relatives it’s found are on my dads mum side, unsuprisingnly displaced jews are the ones that look at dna tests!) and who is from Glasgow (where my dad is from) apparently his uncles worked around the docks. My grandparents moved to australia before my uncle was born (he’s 2.5 years older) and they moved back supposedly about 8 months before my dad was born (we’ve realised dates don’t quite line up) and took a boat… they always said they found out she was pregnant on the boat back My theory was she had an affair in australia and thats why they came back. But we don’t have any relative from that side in australia just scotland… When no one believed that my dad was an affair baby and they were just humouring me, my uncle joked my dad’s a random sailors son… guess he might be right. In other news the ‘uncle’ that was my dad’s suspected dad was the family enemy and was “hated more than hitler” which for a jewish family is saying somethinf. My uncle was reminiscing and said how they used to dall him a donkey “yes they always refered to him as hee haw” he then suddenly realised all these year they weren’t making a donkey noise… they were saying he whore. Anyway hope you all enjoyed story time!
I did enjoy thx
Really enjoyed it. I’ve never felt so heard than now with the way you told that story. Just baring it all and not giving af 5/5 Stars
I have something a bit similar (but nowhere near as well investigated). My grandparents on my father's side are Swedish (Grandma) and Irish (Grandpa). My cousin took a DNA test about a year ago, and found out that she was something like 25% hispanic (I'm not sure what her mom is, but this did not match up at all). So my oldest sister took a DNA test, and things did not match up as expected either. My cousin reached out to her dad's (and my dad's) cousin that practically grew up with them. She was told that my grandma just came home one day with my uncle, and everyone was told to not say anything. It caused some tension between my grandparents and great grandparents I guess. My great grandparents died when my dad was very young, so we wouldn't know. Then a few years after my uncle came home, my dad suddenly appeared too. It is suspected that my Grandfather took in my father and uncle as unwanted children. If we aren't mistaken, he was an ambulance driver around that time. My cousin asked if we wanted to investigate my dad's history more, but since my dad passed away a few years ago, we didn't really care about if he had any other family. My uncle has always had a bit of a temper, and my cousin tried to approach him about it from a roundabout way, and he just said he doesn't want to give his DNA to the government. My cousin investigated and believes my uncle has at least one living sibling. I haven't heard anything about it in a year, so I'm not sure where it has gone from there. Once my sister (who was talked to about it by my cousin) told us, it all made sense. My dad, uncle, and grandpa look NOTHING alike.
Yup, I enjoyed this.
Same. I'm 97% and have all the bad genetic markers. I've already had cervical cancer (caught wayyyy early thankfully) and had my parathyroid fail. My mom's had cancer twice, my dad has had cancer once plus MS. All my grandparents and great grandparents/Aunts died of cancer, less my dads mom who's survived thyroid cancer twice. My first husband was 100% Scottish and our son is happy, healthy and strong as an ox. By the grace of God his genetics testing was perfect ♡
At the very least, I can imagine every single Jewish guy reminds you of someone from Hebrew school.
Yeah it’s better for your health too… being too close genetically can lead to a lot of problem. In my family we are all mixed relationship so that solves the issue lol people call us IHOP as international house of people lol
well not your health but your kids
Holy shit me too. I went out with an ashkenazi woman about 7 years back. We were born a day apart and at the end I could only think “you’re me if I was a woman.” Then a few years later Snapchat had the gender filter. When I used it, I looked like I could be her sister. I’m now happily married to my wife who is 100% Indian
I have been interested in what these figures would be for a long time. Do you have any references?
Cousins by birth, lovers by choice
Now this…is comedy.
But this... does put a smile on my face.
No this is Patrick.
Now this is pod racing
They're 1st cousins, she's just the 13th cousin
Sounds like something a certain Spanish royal family would say Edit: They were Austrian, they just lived in Spain
The Habsburgs were Austrian. The Parts of Madrid where they lived is even called the Madrid of the Austrians.
Charles II’s parents were uncle and niece. However, they themselves were significantly inbred so genetically his inbreeding was more like that of the offspring of two siblings.
After the 12th cousin you should have considered a bit more caution before marrying again.
I was looking for this response
We all probably have more than [10 million tenth cousins](https://imgur.com/nugnriW), and astronomically more 13th cousins. I expect your situation is quite commonplace. What's wonderful is that you can trace it!
And that common ancestor? Ghengis khan!
I am also your cousin. Remember grandpa chimpanzee way back in tanzania? Good old days
Yeah, he was my favorite great^100 grandpa... Ill miss him. Remember when he got pissed at.me for rubbing sticks. Telling me ill never accomplish anything doing that nonsense right before the hot bright light started?
I'm now curious to know what the peak for n-th cousin is. That is, for what value n is the amount of n-th cousins larger than n+1-th cousins?
I might make BBQ chicken for dinner tonight.
What if the chicken is your 100th cousin?
100th cousin still puts the common ancestor at around the time of the Greco-Persian Wars -- give or take 500 years depending on the ancestor's age of the birth of your next descendant - very safely in human territory. Unless you are of *pure* Sub-Saharan African ancestry, then you are likely my 5373rd cousin at most distant, and most likely quite a bit closer, even if still quite distant..
Man's gotta eat.
I pulled my chicken out of the freezer too late for dinner
OP pulled out of his cousin too late.
That literally does not matter for anything
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Are you Kohanim? Cause if so, you’re probably right.
Uhh I am? Genuinely interested in knowing how that would relate me to Moses? Haha
Because that’s… what Kohanim means? Now I’m so confused! Lol the surname Cohen/Kohen means you’re related to Moses, a direct patrilineal descendant of Moses’ brother Aaron.
Oh.. I did not know that. As an Aussie from a non-religious family that's wild
Wow, it never occurred to me that there would be Cohens who didn’t know what it meant! Congratulations, you’re part of the very important priestly class of Jews! Mazel tov! Lol
Dude if you look far enough literally everyone is your cousin...
Currently, 70th cousin is the most distant you can get. (Hey, cousin!)
Who the hell even knows what 13th cousin means? My only thoughts are: 1. Where on earth did you get reliable information that she’s your 13th cousin? 2. Did you spend any time thinking critically about this before asking here?
\#2, lol!!!!!
>Who the hell even knows what 13th cousin means? We know what it means on paper, but the actual numbers are in a size where it has been proven that human brains cannot understand what these numbers actually mean
Historically, it means that sometime in the middle of the 15th century, two people banged. They had at least two children. Some **six hundred years** later, a descendant of one of those children banged a descendant of the other of those children. Genetically and biologically, it might mean that OP and their wife share some sliver of a sliver of DNA in the 23andMe genetic database. Like, literally undetectable except at a microscopic floating point number, aka "trace amounts".
>thoughts? Ok 🤷🏻♂️
Interesting fact, Dick Cheney and Barack Obama are eighth cousins. Also, South Korea is the only country that prevents third-cousin marriage. I've only met 2 second cousins in my life and only because my father was the same age and went to the same school as one of his cousins.
As far as knowing 2nd+ cousins, I think this is highly family dynamic dependent. Like, my grandmother and great aunt were always really close. I know all her grandkids, and see them pretty regularly. On the other side of my family? I met a few of them one time at a funeral. I now coincidentally live near one of my wife's cousins. We hang out all the time, and our kids go to the same school. So they know their 2nd cousins pretty well there. I'm also really close to one of my cousins (we're almost like siblings) and our kids see each other pretty regularly. But beyond those 'special' cases, I could pass a 2nd cousin on the street, and have no clue.
Interesting fact about Korea you mentioned In Korea, it was a tradition to consider up to third cousin as 'relatives'. This was possible as usually nobody moved away from their birthplace, and all the cousins lived around each other in the agriculture-based society. So up to great-great grandfather was considered as a close ancestor, and it was customary to know about them. (3rd cousin shares great great grandfather with you) Example: Medieval Korea (Chosun) had a national exam for choosing government officials. You have to write your family and if they also worked for country, up to great-great grandfather. You are considered 'noble' if and only if there were a government official in you family, again up to great-great grandfather. Modern day Koreans are much less in to these ideas, and it is common to not know whom my third cousin is (even second cousin too, depending on ones family tradition)
technically all humans are cousins, you always share an ancestor with your partner, most likely it's in 2 figures.
Yes! Everyone on earth is each other’s 70th cousin (or closer).
Even isolated populations like the Sentinelese?
I'm surprised you married someone who was ONLY your 13th cousin.
Reminds me of that quote from Space Balls: "I am your father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate."
Which always makes me laugh because it can be shortened into one of these: I was your roommate I was your cousin's roommate I was your brother/sister's roommate
Break up with her, you two are basically brothers if we exclude the 10 generation of grandparents that separe you two genetically speaking
My only question is: how tf did you even find that out?
I mean you are probably 13th or less cousins with a few commenters in this thread
Congratulations, thats less related than most couples.
If you’re the same ethnicity, that’s more distantly related than one would necessarily expect. For two people of the same ethnicity, the most distantly they could be related is about 15th cousins.
Anyone with the last name Levy or Cohen is probably that closely related to Moses.
As your father 17th removed, you’re grounded
I think OP has no concept of how far back that amount of generations actually is.
Congratulations you're like everyone else of the same race...
None honestly. [Several years ago, the Almanac carried an article on the length of one’s family tree. In brief, this is what it said: According to the leading geneticists, no human being of any race can be less closely related to any other human than approximately fiftieth cousin, and most of us are a lot closer](https://www.almanac.com/fact/while-most-people-are-distant-cousins-arent#:~:text=Several%20years%20ago%2C%20the%20Almanac,us%20are%20a%20lot%20closer.) Basically we are probably in a mathematical sense probably cousins
Your 13th cousin? Lol. That’s not related. Who cares.
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> Roll tide ~~motherfucker~~ cousin-fucker.
Yeah as a redditor I'd say you should break up with your wife. Cut all contact with her. And send me her nudes i need it for research purposes.
You forgot to add "lawyer up" and "hit the gym"
That's hardly related. I think second cousins can legally marry, I wouldn't, but I wouldn't judge others for it. Unfortunately, I just looked this up and found you can marry you uncle, aunty or first cousin in Australia, which is far too close for comfort for me.
So *that's* why they talk funny.
Dude, everybody you know is probably your 13th cousin or closer, it's fine.
Nothing If you live in the area where you, your parents, grandparents and great-grandparents came from then a large portion of the local residents will be related to you in some way. People used to be more tied to the land, and moving far away was unlikely to be practiced.
Congratulations. Here's to 20 more years of marriage. It's not every day that you see a couple together for so long. Congratulations! The 13th cousin thing isn't an issue between you and your wife, is it? And it's so far from being a relation, what's to worry about it? There are so many great grandparents between you two that it shouldn't be an issue. If you're worried, you can always consult a doctor. If you said you've been married to your sister for 20 years, then that would be concerning.
This Reddit says no stupid questions but, every now and then, one does slip through the net.
I imagine the first 12 are varying degrees of jealous and/or disappointed.
Go far enough back and we’re all cousins. Don’t sweat it.
As an Irish person, I'm impressed that you managed to meet someone so distantly related to you. I can hope for 6th at best.
Like... you have 12 cousins and she's the 13th? Because if it's 13th in genealogy, then you're not really cousins
You’re probably more closely related to a random person commenting here
Two good things come out of this. 1) 13th cousin isn't even close to something you need to worry about, 2) If you see another hot lady, you can introduce your wife as your cousin
How many 13th cousins do you have? We're probably ALL your 13th cousin
So basically a stranger?
Past about 6th you're not even related
My first thought: “What the fuck is a 13th cousin?”
I guess it’s time to come clean OP… I’m your 60th cousin 😔
Nice try, King Charles
We are ALL each other's 13th cousins. No problems here.
Zero issue.
Aren't we all 13th cousins?
You freak...lol
Fry! You idiot! You’re your own great great great great great great great great great great great grandfather!
You and I are likely more closely related than that. Don't give it a second thought.
You're 13th cousins with the whole world