The longest known family tree spans 80 generations and spans 3,000 years. Among those included in the research is a famous philosopher. Scientists are trying to find out how many generations of modern humans there are since the split from the ape.
Confucius, the master of Chinese thought PHOTO: The truth (archive)
The longest family tree includes the Chinese philosopher Confucius (551 – 479 BC), according to Mediafax.
The family tree is the world record holder and spans more than 80 generations, from the ancestors of Confucius in the 8th century BC. down to his living descendants. That's almost 3,000 years.
Starting from this record, researchers set out to find out how many generations of people have existed on the planet throughout history. Modern humans have been around for about 300,000 years, and experts are trying to figure out how many generations it has been since Homo sapiens emerged as a species.
Researchers have done several studies using the so-called generation gap, which is calculated based on the average age at which people have children.
Thus, more results came out. The first study showed that there were about 11,152 generations of humans over 300,000 years. Other researchers have determined that there have been at least 10,000 generations of humans, while some speak of a minimum of 12,195 generations.
