Do you know how many ancestors you have? Of course not. Let’s simplify the question: How many ancestors do you have in the past one thousand years?

For this example, I have assumed that a new generation appears on an average of every twenty-five years:
(Is this a good assumption?)

https://blog.eogn.com/2018/01/26/how-many-ancestors-do-you-have/

sarahs mum said:

(Is this a good assumption?)

It’s okay.

I wonder what year our ancestors only numbered 1000?

Tau.Neutrino said:

I wonder what year our ancestors only numbered 1000?

Number of Ancestors

Generation Number # of Years Before Your Birth Number of ancestors in that generation Total ancestors (this generation plus all later generations)
1 -25 2 2
2 -50 4 6
3 -75 8 14
4 -100 16 30
5 -125 32 62
6 -150 64 126
7 -175 128 254
8 -200 256 510
9 -225 512 1,022
10 -250 1,024 2,046
11 -275 2,048 4,094
12 -300 4,096 8,190
13 -325 8,192 16,382
14 -350 16,384 32,766
15 -375 32,768 65,534
16 -400 65,536 131,070
17 -425 131,072 262,142
18 -450 262,144 524,286
19 -475 524,288 1,048,574
20 -500 1,048,576 2,097,150
21 -525 2,097,152 4,194,302
22 -550 4,194,304 8,388,606
23 -575 8,388,608 16,777,214
24 -600 16,777,216 33,554,430
25 -625 33,554,432 67,108,862
26 -650 67,108,864 134,217,726
27 -675 134,217,728 268,435,454
28 -700 268,435,456 536,870,910
29 -725 536,870,912 1,073,741,822
30 -750 1,073,741,824 2,147,483,646
31 -775 2,147,483,648 4,294,967,294
32 -800 4,294,967,296 8,589,934,590
33 -825 8,589,934,592 17,179,869,182
34 -850 17,179,869,184 34,359,738,366
35 -875 34,359,738,368 68,719,476,734
36 -900 68,719,476,736 137,438,953,470
37 -925 137,438,953,472 274,877,906,942
38 -950 274,877,906,944 549,755,813,886
39 -975 549,755,813,888 1,099,511,627,774
40 -1000 1,099,511,627,776 2,199,023,255,550

sarahs mum said:

Do you know how many ancestors you have? Of course not. Let’s simplify the question: How many ancestors do you have in the past one thousand years?

For this example, I have assumed that a new generation appears on an average of every twenty-five years:
(Is this a good assumption?)

https://blog.eogn.com/2018/01/26/how-many-ancestors-do-you-have/

I would have thought that you would have been regarded as very odd if you had not had a number of children by the age of twenty five. I would think 20 years maximum and probably even lower.

dv said:

sarahs mum said:

(Is this a good assumption?)

It’s okay.

But not perfect.

roughbarked said:

dv said:

sarahs mum said:

(Is this a good assumption?)

It’s okay.

But not perfect.

Probably by a long way.

PermeateFree said:

sarahs mum said:

Do you know how many ancestors you have? Of course not. Let’s simplify the question: How many ancestors do you have in the past one thousand years?

For this example, I have assumed that a new generation appears on an average of every twenty-five years:
(Is this a good assumption?)

https://blog.eogn.com/2018/01/26/how-many-ancestors-do-you-have/

I would have thought that you would have been regarded as very odd if you had not had a number of children by the age of twenty five. I would think 20 years maximum and probably even lower.

Wars and depressions, famines and etcetera discounted then?

PermeateFree said:

sarahs mum said:

Do you know how many ancestors you have? Of course not. Let’s simplify the question: How many ancestors do you have in the past one thousand years?

For this example, I have assumed that a new generation appears on an average of every twenty-five years:
(Is this a good assumption?)

https://blog.eogn.com/2018/01/26/how-many-ancestors-do-you-have/

I would have thought that you would have been regarded as very odd if you had not had a number of children by the age of twenty five. I would think 20 years maximum and probably even lower.

Yes, but he’s talking about average, not the age at first birth. For instance, Princess Victoria had children when she was aged 18, 21 and 34, for an average of 24.3

My mother had her first at 26 and her fourth at 41. I had Sarah at 27. Sarah had Henry at 32.

roughbarked said:

PermeateFree said:

sarahs mum said:

Do you know how many ancestors you have? Of course not. Let’s simplify the question: How many ancestors do you have in the past one thousand years?

For this example, I have assumed that a new generation appears on an average of every twenty-five years:
(Is this a good assumption?)

https://blog.eogn.com/2018/01/26/how-many-ancestors-do-you-have/

I would have thought that you would have been regarded as very odd if you had not had a number of children by the age of twenty five. I would think 20 years maximum and probably even lower.

Wars and depressions, famines and etcetera discounted then?

Yes the loss rate of children would have very high, but it is likely that at least one or more children would have survived long before the mother reached 25. You forget the average age was during these periods of only 35 years, so producing children was of considerable importance.

dv said:

PermeateFree said:

sarahs mum said:

Do you know how many ancestors you have? Of course not. Let’s simplify the question: How many ancestors do you have in the past one thousand years?

For this example, I have assumed that a new generation appears on an average of every twenty-five years:
(Is this a good assumption?)

https://blog.eogn.com/2018/01/26/how-many-ancestors-do-you-have/

I would have thought that you would have been regarded as very odd if you had not had a number of children by the age of twenty five. I would think 20 years maximum and probably even lower.

Yes, but he’s talking about average, not the age at first birth. For instance, Princess Victoria had children when she was aged 18, 21 and 34, for an average of 24.3

I think comparing Queen Victoria with the average woman a 1000 years earlier as rather outlandish.

The key point in any case is that pedigree collapse make this a worthless means of counting ancestors past a few hundred years.

PermeateFree said:

dv said:

PermeateFree said:

I would have thought that you would have been regarded as very odd if you had not had a number of children by the age of twenty five. I would think 20 years maximum and probably even lower.

Yes, but he’s talking about average, not the age at first birth. For instance, Princess Victoria had children when she was aged 18, 21 and 34, for an average of 24.3

I think comparing Queen Victoria with the average woman a 1000 years earlier as rather outlandish.

We aren’t talking about a woman 1000 years earlier. We are talking about the average generational gap over the entire period.

sarahs mum said:

My mother had her first at 26 and her fourth at 41. I had Sarah at 27. Sarah had Henry at 32.

You cannot compare recent years with those of hundreds of years ago when children were important to the survival of the family.

dv said:

PermeateFree said:

dv said:

Yes, but he’s talking about average, not the age at first birth. For instance, Princess Victoria had children when she was aged 18, 21 and 34, for an average of 24.3

I think comparing Queen Victoria with the average woman a 1000 years earlier as rather outlandish.

We aren’t talking about a woman 1000 years earlier. We are talking about the average generational gap over the entire period.

Exactly! Recent events (less than 100 years) where women could have some control of their reproductive ability, against a time when they had none is rather stark. There is no comparison.

PermeateFree said:

dv said:

PermeateFree said:

I think comparing Queen Victoria with the average woman a 1000 years earlier as rather outlandish.

We aren’t talking about a woman 1000 years earlier. We are talking about the average generational gap over the entire period.

Exactly! Recent events (less than 100 years) where women could have some control of their reproductive ability, against a time when they had none is rather stark. There is no comparison.

Okay. Contraception makes a big difference.

sarahs mum said:

PermeateFree said:

dv said:

We aren’t talking about a woman 1000 years earlier. We are talking about the average generational gap over the entire period.

Exactly! Recent events (less than 100 years) where women could have some control of their reproductive ability, against a time when they had none is rather stark. There is no comparison.

Okay. Contraception makes a big difference.

Yes, I’d expect that the average for the last 100 years to be more like 32 years. Much greater than the 25 average over the whole period.

dv said:

sarahs mum said:

PermeateFree said:

Exactly! Recent events (less than 100 years) where women could have some control of their reproductive ability, against a time when they had none is rather stark. There is no comparison.

Okay. Contraception makes a big difference.

Yes, I’d expect that the average for the last 100 years to be more like 32 years. Much greater than the 25 average over the whole period.

Don’t know where you live dv, but it is not on this planet.

dv said:

sarahs mum said:

PermeateFree said:

Exactly! Recent events (less than 100 years) where women could have some control of their reproductive ability, against a time when they had none is rather stark. There is no comparison.

Okay. Contraception makes a big difference.

Yes, I’d expect that the average for the last 100 years to be more like 32 years. Much greater than the 25 average over the whole period.

To give some concrete numbers …

The average difference between my birth year and that of my thrice distant ancestors is 85.5 years, or 28.5 years per generation.

However, the average generation gap for the three generations before that is only 26.9 years.

Does this all answer your question, sm?

dv said:

dv said:

sarahs mum said:

Okay. Contraception makes a big difference.

Yes, I’d expect that the average for the last 100 years to be more like 32 years. Much greater than the 25 average over the whole period.

To give some concrete numbers …

The average difference between my birth year and that of my thrice distant ancestors is 85.5 years, or 28.5 years per generation.

However, the average generation gap for the three generations before that is only 26.9 years.

Perhaps if you considered the rest of the world, you might come to a different conclusion.

dv said:

Does this all answer your question, sm?

I suppose so. I might keep on thinking about it for a short while..

dv said:

Does this all answer your question, sm?

“Oh, that happened three generations ago.” We often reckon the passage of time by generations, especially for those indefinite periods measured by a number of successive parent-child relationships.

But just how long is a generation? Don’t we all know as a matter of common knowledge that it generally averages about 25 years from the birth of a parent to the birth of a child, even though it varies case by case? And wasn’t it closer to 20 years in earlier times when humans mated younger and life expectancies were shorter? Where did those numbers come from?

Several recent studies by a sociologist-demographer and groups of population geneticists and biological anthropologists show that male-line generations, from father to son, are always longer on average than female-line generations, from mother to daughter. They show, too, that both are longer than the 25-year interval that conventional wisdom has assigned to a generation. The male generation is at least a third longer, the female generation is longer by perhaps half that amount.

In genealogy, the length of a generation in the past has been used principally as a check on the credibility of evidence — too long a span between parent and child, especially in a maternal line, has been reason to go back and take a more careful look at whether the received information reflects the actual reality, or whether a generation has been omitted or data for two different individuals attributed to the same person. For that purpose, the accepted 25-year average has worked quite acceptably, and birth dates too far out of line with it are properly suspect.

With the growing application of DNA testing to both anthropology and genealogy, the length of a generation takes on far more importance than it had in the past. Many conclusions from DNA evidence in both disciplines are frequently expressed in terms of generations back to a common ancestor, based on the very slow rate at which random changes or mutations take place in DNA patterns over a number of generations.

As an example, let’s look at the Y-DNA that is passed down substantially unchanged from father to son in the male line. We can expect a random mutation to occur at any one of the distinctive markers tested perhaps once in 500 generations. If 25-marker samples are tested from two men descended in all-male lines from the same ancestor, we can expect that one of the 25 markers would have changed for every 20 generational events that separate them (500 generations divided by 25 markers). If the common ancestor was ten generations back from each, so that the two descendants are separated from each other by 20 generations, a single mutation on average might have occurred in either one of the two lines. If the common ancestor was 20 generations back, so that the modern descendants are separated by 40 generational events, we could expect a mutation in each of the lines, and a two-step difference between them. But how many years is that?

At the usually accepted value of four generations per century, ten generations would place the common ancestor only 250 years in the past, in the mid-18th century, suggesting a further search in records of that period for evidence pointing toward the relationship. However, the longer three-generation per century interval indicated by the recent research would place the common ancestor in the late 1600s, with a much reduced chance of finding further documentary evidence bearing on the relationship.

If the common ancestor lived 20 generations back, the 25-year interval would place him about the year 1500, about at the outer limit of genealogically useful records except for kings and nobles. The new higher estimates would place the common ancestor over 700 years in the past, beyond the scope of genealogical research methods.

As early as 1973, archaeologist Kenneth Weiss questioned the accepted 20 and 25-year generational intervals, finding from an analysis of prehistoric burial sites that 27 years was a more appropriate interval, but recognizing that his conclusion could have been affected if community members who died away from the village were buried elsewhere.

When assigning dates to anthropologically common ancestors 50 or more generations in the past, using the “accepted” 20 or 25 years as a conversion factor can produce substantial underestimates of the time interval. Nevertheless, those unsupported values continue in use, even in recent scientific papers.

In the first of the three more recent studies of generation length, sociologist Nancy Howell calculated average generational intervals among present-day members of the !Kung. These are a contemporary hunter-gatherer people of Botswana and Namibia whose life style is probably close to that of all our pre-agricultural ancestors in the dim past. The average age of mothers at birth of their first child was 20 and at the last birth 31, giving a mean of 25.5 years per female generation — considerably above the 20 years often attributed to primitive cultures. Husbands were six to 13 years older, giving a male generational interval of 31 to 38 years.

A second study by population geneticists Marc Tremblay and Hélène Vézina was based on 100 ascending Quebec genealogies from 50 randomly selected couples married between 1899 and 1974. The data came from BALSAC, an inter-university computerized research database at the University of Quebec at Chicoutimi, extracted from Quebec parish baptism and marriage registers going back to the 1600s. With an average depth of nine generations, but extending as far back as 12 or 13 generations, their sample included 10,538 generational intervals. They took as the interval the years between parents’ and children’s marriages, which averaged 31.7 years.

They also determined separate father-son and mother-daughter generational intervals, from lines that included at least five consecutive all-male or all-female generations. These averaged 35.0 years for male generations, 28.7 years for female years.

Biological anthropologist Agnar Helagason and colleagues, in the last of the three studies, used the Icelandic DeCODE genetics database, containing lineages of most Icelanders back two centuries, and much longer for many families. They computed separate patrilineal and matrilineal generation intervals over different lengths of time, to see if that produced a difference. The first values included only lines to ancestors who live in the 1848-1892 time frame, including three to five generations. Then they calculated interval lengths back to ancestors born between 1692 and 1742, extending them to a length of seven to nine generations. The results showed the most recent generations were a little shorter in length than more distant ones — the opposite of what the conventional view holds.

The female line intervals were 28.12 years for the most recent generations, 28.72 years for the whole lineage length. Male-line lineages showed a similar difference, 31.13 years for the recent generations, 31.93 overall. Based on their Icelandic findings and those of the Quebec study, they recommended using a female-line interval of 30 years and a male interval of 35 years.

For the time being, given the imprecision of the various results and my own need for an estimate that lends itself to easy calculation, I am using three generations per century (33 years each) for male lines, 3 1/2 generations per century or seven in two centuries (29 years each) for female lines, when I need to convert generations into years.

As a check on those values, which are based on extensive data and rigorous mathematical analysis, although rounded off for ease of use, I decided to compare the generational intervals from all-male or all-female ranges in my own family lines for the years 1700 to 2000, and was pleasantly surprised to see how closely they agree. For a total of 21 male-line generations among five lines, the average interval was 34 years per generation. For 19 female-line generations from four lines, the average was 29 years per generation.

It’s the nature of the physical and biological sciences that present understandings are always subject to change as more data becomes available and its interpretation becomes more certain — just as genealogical conclusions about relationships are subject to change when better evidence is discovered. Meanwhile, to convert generations to years and probable date ranges, use a value for the generational interval that is soundly based on the best currently available evidence.
Author details

Donn Devine, CGSM, FNGS, is a semi-retired attorney, archivist, and professional consultant on integrating documentary and genetic genealogy.
Acknowledgements

© Copyright 2005 Ancestry.com.

https://isogg.org/wiki/How_long_is_a_generation%3F_Science_provides_an_answer

sarahs mum said:

“Oh, that happened three generations ago.” We often reckon the passage of time by generations, especially for those indefinite periods measured by a number of successive parent-child relationships.

But just how long is a generation? Don’t we all know as a matter of common knowledge that it generally averages about 25 years from the birth of a parent to the birth of a child, even though it varies case by case? And wasn’t it closer to 20 years in earlier times when humans mated younger and life expectancies were shorter? Where did those numbers come from?

Several recent studies by a sociologist-demographer and groups of population geneticists and biological anthropologists show that male-line generations, from father to son, are always longer on average than female-line generations, from mother to daughter. They show, too, that both are longer than the 25-year interval that conventional wisdom has assigned to a generation. The male generation is at least a third longer, the female generation is longer by perhaps half that amount.

In genealogy, the length of a generation in the past has been used principally as a check on the credibility of evidence — too long a span between parent and child, especially in a maternal line, has been reason to go back and take a more careful look at whether the received information reflects the actual reality, or whether a generation has been omitted or data for two different individuals attributed to the same person. For that purpose, the accepted 25-year average has worked quite acceptably, and birth dates too far out of line with it are properly suspect.

With the growing application of DNA testing to both anthropology and genealogy, the length of a generation takes on far more importance than it had in the past. Many conclusions from DNA evidence in both disciplines are frequently expressed in terms of generations back to a common ancestor, based on the very slow rate at which random changes or mutations take place in DNA patterns over a number of generations.

As an example, let’s look at the Y-DNA that is passed down substantially unchanged from father to son in the male line. We can expect a random mutation to occur at any one of the distinctive markers tested perhaps once in 500 generations. If 25-marker samples are tested from two men descended in all-male lines from the same ancestor, we can expect that one of the 25 markers would have changed for every 20 generational events that separate them (500 generations divided by 25 markers). If the common ancestor was ten generations back from each, so that the two descendants are separated from each other by 20 generations, a single mutation on average might have occurred in either one of the two lines. If the common ancestor was 20 generations back, so that the modern descendants are separated by 40 generational events, we could expect a mutation in each of the lines, and a two-step difference between them. But how many years is that?

At the usually accepted value of four generations per century, ten generations would place the common ancestor only 250 years in the past, in the mid-18th century, suggesting a further search in records of that period for evidence pointing toward the relationship. However, the longer three-generation per century interval indicated by the recent research would place the common ancestor in the late 1600s, with a much reduced chance of finding further documentary evidence bearing on the relationship.

If the common ancestor lived 20 generations back, the 25-year interval would place him about the year 1500, about at the outer limit of genealogically useful records except for kings and nobles. The new higher estimates would place the common ancestor over 700 years in the past, beyond the scope of genealogical research methods.

As early as 1973, archaeologist Kenneth Weiss questioned the accepted 20 and 25-year generational intervals, finding from an analysis of prehistoric burial sites that 27 years was a more appropriate interval, but recognizing that his conclusion could have been affected if community members who died away from the village were buried elsewhere.

When assigning dates to anthropologically common ancestors 50 or more generations in the past, using the “accepted” 20 or 25 years as a conversion factor can produce substantial underestimates of the time interval. Nevertheless, those unsupported values continue in use, even in recent scientific papers.

In the first of the three more recent studies of generation length, sociologist Nancy Howell calculated average generational intervals among present-day members of the !Kung. These are a contemporary hunter-gatherer people of Botswana and Namibia whose life style is probably close to that of all our pre-agricultural ancestors in the dim past. The average age of mothers at birth of their first child was 20 and at the last birth 31, giving a mean of 25.5 years per female generation — considerably above the 20 years often attributed to primitive cultures. Husbands were six to 13 years older, giving a male generational interval of 31 to 38 years.

A second study by population geneticists Marc Tremblay and Hélène Vézina was based on 100 ascending Quebec genealogies from 50 randomly selected couples married between 1899 and 1974. The data came from BALSAC, an inter-university computerized research database at the University of Quebec at Chicoutimi, extracted from Quebec parish baptism and marriage registers going back to the 1600s. With an average depth of nine generations, but extending as far back as 12 or 13 generations, their sample included 10,538 generational intervals. They took as the interval the years between parents’ and children’s marriages, which averaged 31.7 years.

They also determined separate father-son and mother-daughter generational intervals, from lines that included at least five consecutive all-male or all-female generations. These averaged 35.0 years for male generations, 28.7 years for female years.

Biological anthropologist Agnar Helagason and colleagues, in the last of the three studies, used the Icelandic DeCODE genetics database, containing lineages of most Icelanders back two centuries, and much longer for many families. They computed separate patrilineal and matrilineal generation intervals over different lengths of time, to see if that produced a difference. The first values included only lines to ancestors who live in the 1848-1892 time frame, including three to five generations. Then they calculated interval lengths back to ancestors born between 1692 and 1742, extending them to a length of seven to nine generations. The results showed the most recent generations were a little shorter in length than more distant ones — the opposite of what the conventional view holds.

The female line intervals were 28.12 years for the most recent generations, 28.72 years for the whole lineage length. Male-line lineages showed a similar difference, 31.13 years for the recent generations, 31.93 overall. Based on their Icelandic findings and those of the Quebec study, they recommended using a female-line interval of 30 years and a male interval of 35 years.

For the time being, given the imprecision of the various results and my own need for an estimate that lends itself to easy calculation, I am using three generations per century (33 years each) for male lines, 3 1/2 generations per century or seven in two centuries (29 years each) for female lines, when I need to convert generations into years.

As a check on those values, which are based on extensive data and rigorous mathematical analysis, although rounded off for ease of use, I decided to compare the generational intervals from all-male or all-female ranges in my own family lines for the years 1700 to 2000, and was pleasantly surprised to see how closely they agree. For a total of 21 male-line generations among five lines, the average interval was 34 years per generation. For 19 female-line generations from four lines, the average was 29 years per generation.

It’s the nature of the physical and biological sciences that present understandings are always subject to change as more data becomes available and its interpretation becomes more certain — just as genealogical conclusions about relationships are subject to change when better evidence is discovered. Meanwhile, to convert generations to years and probable date ranges, use a value for the generational interval that is soundly based on the best currently available evidence.
Author details

Donn Devine, CGSM, FNGS, is a semi-retired attorney, archivist, and professional consultant on integrating documentary and genetic genealogy.
Acknowledgements

© Copyright 2005 Ancestry.com.

https://isogg.org/wiki/How_long_is_a_generation%3F_Science_provides_an_answer

All of the above is doing, is basing its calculations on the length of time of the mothers fertility. It does not reflect the real situation of real people, but a statistical number that does not necessarily relate to a generational period. Naturally it will vary tremendously dependent on the environmental and cultural situation of the time. The most common individual of medieval times, would not be a wealthy businessman/landholder, but a poor peasant working on the land and of which records were rarely or ever kept. However it is reasonable to think that eligible girls would be married off at a young age for the dowry and one less mouth to feed. These women/girls would be reproducing at a young age (less than 20 years), from which a daughter of hers could also do the same, as it could for as long as the environmental situation remained unchanged, where there would not be the need to marry off the females at a young age and when cultural attitudes changed.

The above situation would produce a generation of less than 20 years, as would likely be the case with females born later in the family, but then the parents would be getting old and the mother need help to run the house and generally look after them and the family. Consequently, their generational time would be shorter, if they had children, would be much longer and distort the true situation of the average family generational period. Contrasting with today when Donn Devine holds that the current generational time is shorter than in the past. This is easily explained by the greater control women have over their reproductive environment, therefore early pregnancies are fewer and better planned at a later date, so most children would be of a similar age, thereby statistically their reproductive life would be shorter.

The average generation time varies between 20 and 33 years, depending on who is doing the calculations. Donn Devine has been highly selective and used only a small number of family trees to reach his conclusions, which I might add are disputed by others who have also studied the subject and regard his findings as greatly exaggerated.

PermeateFree said:

sarahs mum said:

“Oh, that happened three generations ago.” We often reckon the passage of time by generations, especially for those indefinite periods measured by a number of successive parent-child relationships.

But just how long is a generation? Don’t we all know as a matter of common knowledge that it generally averages about 25 years from the birth of a parent to the birth of a child, even though it varies case by case? And wasn’t it closer to 20 years in earlier times when humans mated younger and life expectancies were shorter? Where did those numbers come from?

Several recent studies by a sociologist-demographer and groups of population geneticists and biological anthropologists show that male-line generations, from father to son, are always longer on average than female-line generations, from mother to daughter. They show, too, that both are longer than the 25-year interval that conventional wisdom has assigned to a generation. The male generation is at least a third longer, the female generation is longer by perhaps half that amount.

In genealogy, the length of a generation in the past has been used principally as a check on the credibility of evidence — too long a span between parent and child, especially in a maternal line, has been reason to go back and take a more careful look at whether the received information reflects the actual reality, or whether a generation has been omitted or data for two different individuals attributed to the same person. For that purpose, the accepted 25-year average has worked quite acceptably, and birth dates too far out of line with it are properly suspect.

With the growing application of DNA testing to both anthropology and genealogy, the length of a generation takes on far more importance than it had in the past. Many conclusions from DNA evidence in both disciplines are frequently expressed in terms of generations back to a common ancestor, based on the very slow rate at which random changes or mutations take place in DNA patterns over a number of generations.

As an example, let’s look at the Y-DNA that is passed down substantially unchanged from father to son in the male line. We can expect a random mutation to occur at any one of the distinctive markers tested perhaps once in 500 generations. If 25-marker samples are tested from two men descended in all-male lines from the same ancestor, we can expect that one of the 25 markers would have changed for every 20 generational events that separate them (500 generations divided by 25 markers). If the common ancestor was ten generations back from each, so that the two descendants are separated from each other by 20 generations, a single mutation on average might have occurred in either one of the two lines. If the common ancestor was 20 generations back, so that the modern descendants are separated by 40 generational events, we could expect a mutation in each of the lines, and a two-step difference between them. But how many years is that?

At the usually accepted value of four generations per century, ten generations would place the common ancestor only 250 years in the past, in the mid-18th century, suggesting a further search in records of that period for evidence pointing toward the relationship. However, the longer three-generation per century interval indicated by the recent research would place the common ancestor in the late 1600s, with a much reduced chance of finding further documentary evidence bearing on the relationship.

If the common ancestor lived 20 generations back, the 25-year interval would place him about the year 1500, about at the outer limit of genealogically useful records except for kings and nobles. The new higher estimates would place the common ancestor over 700 years in the past, beyond the scope of genealogical research methods.

As early as 1973, archaeologist Kenneth Weiss questioned the accepted 20 and 25-year generational intervals, finding from an analysis of prehistoric burial sites that 27 years was a more appropriate interval, but recognizing that his conclusion could have been affected if community members who died away from the village were buried elsewhere.

When assigning dates to anthropologically common ancestors 50 or more generations in the past, using the “accepted” 20 or 25 years as a conversion factor can produce substantial underestimates of the time interval. Nevertheless, those unsupported values continue in use, even in recent scientific papers.

In the first of the three more recent studies of generation length, sociologist Nancy Howell calculated average generational intervals among present-day members of the !Kung. These are a contemporary hunter-gatherer people of Botswana and Namibia whose life style is probably close to that of all our pre-agricultural ancestors in the dim past. The average age of mothers at birth of their first child was 20 and at the last birth 31, giving a mean of 25.5 years per female generation — considerably above the 20 years often attributed to primitive cultures. Husbands were six to 13 years older, giving a male generational interval of 31 to 38 years.

A second study by population geneticists Marc Tremblay and Hélène Vézina was based on 100 ascending Quebec genealogies from 50 randomly selected couples married between 1899 and 1974. The data came from BALSAC, an inter-university computerized research database at the University of Quebec at Chicoutimi, extracted from Quebec parish baptism and marriage registers going back to the 1600s. With an average depth of nine generations, but extending as far back as 12 or 13 generations, their sample included 10,538 generational intervals. They took as the interval the years between parents’ and children’s marriages, which averaged 31.7 years.

They also determined separate father-son and mother-daughter generational intervals, from lines that included at least five consecutive all-male or all-female generations. These averaged 35.0 years for male generations, 28.7 years for female years.

Biological anthropologist Agnar Helagason and colleagues, in the last of the three studies, used the Icelandic DeCODE genetics database, containing lineages of most Icelanders back two centuries, and much longer for many families. They computed separate patrilineal and matrilineal generation intervals over different lengths of time, to see if that produced a difference. The first values included only lines to ancestors who live in the 1848-1892 time frame, including three to five generations. Then they calculated interval lengths back to ancestors born between 1692 and 1742, extending them to a length of seven to nine generations. The results showed the most recent generations were a little shorter in length than more distant ones — the opposite of what the conventional view holds.

The female line intervals were 28.12 years for the most recent generations, 28.72 years for the whole lineage length. Male-line lineages showed a similar difference, 31.13 years for the recent generations, 31.93 overall. Based on their Icelandic findings and those of the Quebec study, they recommended using a female-line interval of 30 years and a male interval of 35 years.

For the time being, given the imprecision of the various results and my own need for an estimate that lends itself to easy calculation, I am using three generations per century (33 years each) for male lines, 3 1/2 generations per century or seven in two centuries (29 years each) for female lines, when I need to convert generations into years.

As a check on those values, which are based on extensive data and rigorous mathematical analysis, although rounded off for ease of use, I decided to compare the generational intervals from all-male or all-female ranges in my own family lines for the years 1700 to 2000, and was pleasantly surprised to see how closely they agree. For a total of 21 male-line generations among five lines, the average interval was 34 years per generation. For 19 female-line generations from four lines, the average was 29 years per generation.

It’s the nature of the physical and biological sciences that present understandings are always subject to change as more data becomes available and its interpretation becomes more certain — just as genealogical conclusions about relationships are subject to change when better evidence is discovered. Meanwhile, to convert generations to years and probable date ranges, use a value for the generational interval that is soundly based on the best currently available evidence.
Author details

Donn Devine, CGSM, FNGS, is a semi-retired attorney, archivist, and professional consultant on integrating documentary and genetic genealogy.
Acknowledgements

© Copyright 2005 Ancestry.com.

https://isogg.org/wiki/How_long_is_a_generation%3F_Science_provides_an_answer

All of the above is doing, is basing its calculations on the length of time of the mothers fertility. It does not reflect the real situation of real people, but a statistical number that does not necessarily relate to a generational period. Naturally it will vary tremendously dependent on the environmental and cultural situation of the time. The most common individual of medieval times, would not be a wealthy businessman/landholder, but a poor peasant working on the land and of which records were rarely or ever kept. However it is reasonable to think that eligible girls would be married off at a young age for the dowry and one less mouth to feed. These women/girls would be reproducing at a young age (less than 20 years), from which a daughter of hers could also do the same, as it could for as long as the environmental situation remained unchanged, where there would not be the need to marry off the females at a young age and when cultural attitudes changed.

The above situation would produce a generation of less than 20 years, as would likely be the case with females born later in the family, but then the parents would be getting old and the mother need help to run the house and generally look after them and the family. Consequently, their generational time would be shorter, if they had children, would be much longer and distort the true situation of the average family generational period. Contrasting with today when Donn Devine holds that the current generational time is shorter than in the past. This is easily explained by the greater control women have over their reproductive environment, therefore early pregnancies are fewer and better planned at a later date, so most children would be of a similar age, thereby statistically their reproductive life would be shorter.

The average generation time varies between 20 and 33 years, depending on who is doing the calculations. Donn Devine has been highly selective and used only a small number of family trees to reach his conclusions, which I might add are disputed by others who have also studied the subject and regard his findings as greatly exaggerated.

young age and when cultural attitudes changed. = young age and until cultural attitudes changed.

dv said:

PermeateFree said:

dv said:

Yes, but he’s talking about average, not the age at first birth. For instance, Princess Victoria had children when she was aged 18, 21 and 34, for an average of 24.3

I think comparing Queen Victoria with the average woman a 1000 years earlier as rather outlandish.

We aren’t talking about a woman 1000 years earlier. We are talking about the average generational gap over the entire period.

and does an exact figure really matter? it is only to give people an idea about how long ago something happened. it isn’t as if some important science results rests on the accuracy.

Bogsnorkler said:

dv said:

PermeateFree said:

I think comparing Queen Victoria with the average woman a 1000 years earlier as rather outlandish.

We aren’t talking about a woman 1000 years earlier. We are talking about the average generational gap over the entire period.

and does an exact figure really matter? it is only to give people an idea about how long ago something happened. it isn’t as if some important science results rests on the accuracy.

SM asked for opinions, which were given. Statistics are only reliant when all considerations are know. It is a bad idea to accept stats unconditionally.

Bogsnorkler said:

and does an exact figure really matter?

Well, not at all. The point of the exercise is to explain pedigree collapse, and whether you choose 22 years or 25, you’ll come to the same conclusion.

sarahs mum said:

“Oh, that happened three generations ago.” We often reckon the passage of time by generations, especially for those indefinite periods measured by a number of successive parent-child relationships.

But just how long is a generation? Don’t we all know as a matter of common knowledge that it generally averages about 25 years from the birth of a parent to the birth of a child, even though it varies case by case? And wasn’t it closer to 20 years in earlier times when humans mated younger and life expectancies were shorter? Where did those numbers come from?

Several recent studies by a sociologist-demographer and groups of population geneticists and biological anthropologists show that male-line generations, from father to son, are always longer on average than female-line generations, from mother to daughter. They show, too, that both are longer than the 25-year interval that conventional wisdom has assigned to a generation. The male generation is at least a third longer, the female generation is longer by perhaps half that amount.

In genealogy, the length of a generation in the past has been used principally as a check on the credibility of evidence — too long a span between parent and child, especially in a maternal line, has been reason to go back and take a more careful look at whether the received information reflects the actual reality, or whether a generation has been omitted or data for two different individuals attributed to the same person. For that purpose, the accepted 25-year average has worked quite acceptably, and birth dates too far out of line with it are properly suspect.

With the growing application of DNA testing to both anthropology and genealogy, the length of a generation takes on far more importance than it had in the past. Many conclusions from DNA evidence in both disciplines are frequently expressed in terms of generations back to a common ancestor, based on the very slow rate at which random changes or mutations take place in DNA patterns over a number of generations.

As an example, let’s look at the Y-DNA that is passed down substantially unchanged from father to son in the male line. We can expect a random mutation to occur at any one of the distinctive markers tested perhaps once in 500 generations. If 25-marker samples are tested from two men descended in all-male lines from the same ancestor, we can expect that one of the 25 markers would have changed for every 20 generational events that separate them (500 generations divided by 25 markers). If the common ancestor was ten generations back from each, so that the two descendants are separated from each other by 20 generations, a single mutation on average might have occurred in either one of the two lines. If the common ancestor was 20 generations back, so that the modern descendants are separated by 40 generational events, we could expect a mutation in each of the lines, and a two-step difference between them. But how many years is that?

At the usually accepted value of four generations per century, ten generations would place the common ancestor only 250 years in the past, in the mid-18th century, suggesting a further search in records of that period for evidence pointing toward the relationship. However, the longer three-generation per century interval indicated by the recent research would place the common ancestor in the late 1600s, with a much reduced chance of finding further documentary evidence bearing on the relationship.

If the common ancestor lived 20 generations back, the 25-year interval would place him about the year 1500, about at the outer limit of genealogically useful records except for kings and nobles. The new higher estimates would place the common ancestor over 700 years in the past, beyond the scope of genealogical research methods.

As early as 1973, archaeologist Kenneth Weiss questioned the accepted 20 and 25-year generational intervals, finding from an analysis of prehistoric burial sites that 27 years was a more appropriate interval, but recognizing that his conclusion could have been affected if community members who died away from the village were buried elsewhere.

When assigning dates to anthropologically common ancestors 50 or more generations in the past, using the “accepted” 20 or 25 years as a conversion factor can produce substantial underestimates of the time interval. Nevertheless, those unsupported values continue in use, even in recent scientific papers.

In the first of the three more recent studies of generation length, sociologist Nancy Howell calculated average generational intervals among present-day members of the !Kung. These are a contemporary hunter-gatherer people of Botswana and Namibia whose life style is probably close to that of all our pre-agricultural ancestors in the dim past. The average age of mothers at birth of their first child was 20 and at the last birth 31, giving a mean of 25.5 years per female generation — considerably above the 20 years often attributed to primitive cultures. Husbands were six to 13 years older, giving a male generational interval of 31 to 38 years.

A second study by population geneticists Marc Tremblay and Hélène Vézina was based on 100 ascending Quebec genealogies from 50 randomly selected couples married between 1899 and 1974. The data came from BALSAC, an inter-university computerized research database at the University of Quebec at Chicoutimi, extracted from Quebec parish baptism and marriage registers going back to the 1600s. With an average depth of nine generations, but extending as far back as 12 or 13 generations, their sample included 10,538 generational intervals. They took as the interval the years between parents’ and children’s marriages, which averaged 31.7 years.

They also determined separate father-son and mother-daughter generational intervals, from lines that included at least five consecutive all-male or all-female generations. These averaged 35.0 years for male generations, 28.7 years for female years.

Biological anthropologist Agnar Helagason and colleagues, in the last of the three studies, used the Icelandic DeCODE genetics database, containing lineages of most Icelanders back two centuries, and much longer for many families. They computed separate patrilineal and matrilineal generation intervals over different lengths of time, to see if that produced a difference. The first values included only lines to ancestors who live in the 1848-1892 time frame, including three to five generations. Then they calculated interval lengths back to ancestors born between 1692 and 1742, extending them to a length of seven to nine generations. The results showed the most recent generations were a little shorter in length than more distant ones — the opposite of what the conventional view holds.

The female line intervals were 28.12 years for the most recent generations, 28.72 years for the whole lineage length. Male-line lineages showed a similar difference, 31.13 years for the recent generations, 31.93 overall. Based on their Icelandic findings and those of the Quebec study, they recommended using a female-line interval of 30 years and a male interval of 35 years.

For the time being, given the imprecision of the various results and my own need for an estimate that lends itself to easy calculation, I am using three generations per century (33 years each) for male lines, 3 1/2 generations per century or seven in two centuries (29 years each) for female lines, when I need to convert generations into years.

As a check on those values, which are based on extensive data and rigorous mathematical analysis, although rounded off for ease of use, I decided to compare the generational intervals from all-male or all-female ranges in my own family lines for the years 1700 to 2000, and was pleasantly surprised to see how closely they agree. For a total of 21 male-line generations among five lines, the average interval was 34 years per generation. For 19 female-line generations from four lines, the average was 29 years per generation.

It’s the nature of the physical and biological sciences that present understandings are always subject to change as more data becomes available and its interpretation becomes more certain — just as genealogical conclusions about relationships are subject to change when better evidence is discovered. Meanwhile, to convert generations to years and probable date ranges, use a value for the generational interval that is soundly based on the best currently available evidence.
Author details

Donn Devine, CGSM, FNGS, is a semi-retired attorney, archivist, and professional consultant on integrating documentary and genetic genealogy.
Acknowledgements

© Copyright 2005 Ancestry.com.

https://isogg.org/wiki/How_long_is_a_generation%3F_Science_provides_an_answer

Good start, but insufficient information. The first study ignores the life prolongation due to modern medicine. The second study ignores illegitimate children. The third study is for Iceland, a place relatively free of infectious direases.

I did a study of life expectancy in Jamaica circa 1900. Because of mosquito borne diseases, the median life expectancy was 4. The upper quartile of life expectancy was 20. Generations were very short, any family line without short generations rapidly died out.

As for number of ancastors, the total number is reduced because of cousin marriages. I once calculated that I am descended from a substantial percentage of the people who survived the black death in 1350.

dv said:

Bogsnorkler said:

and does an exact figure really matter?

Well, not at all. The point of the exercise is to explain pedigree collapse, and whether you choose 22 years or 25, you’ll come to the same conclusion.

—-

Which is?

tauto said:

dv said:

Bogsnorkler said:

and does an exact figure really matter?

Well, not at all. The point of the exercise is to explain pedigree collapse, and whether you choose 22 years or 25, you’ll come to the same conclusion.

—-

Which is?

That the method used is not a useful way of estimating the number of ancestors one has back to 1000 years. They both give estimates that are greater than the total number of people who have ever lived.

dv said:

tauto said:

dv said:

Well, not at all. The point of the exercise is to explain pedigree collapse, and whether you choose 22 years or 25, you’ll come to the same conclusion.

—-

Which is?

That the method used is not a useful way of estimating the number of ancestors one has back to 1000 years. They both give estimates that are greater than the total number of people who have ever lived.

—

Damn. I was hoping for an explanation about cousins marrying cousins explaining a lot.

tauto said:

dv said:

tauto said:

—-

Which is?

That the method used is not a useful way of estimating the number of ancestors one has back to 1000 years. They both give estimates that are greater than the total number of people who have ever lived.

—

Damn. I was hoping for an explanation about cousins marrying cousins explaining a lot.

Well yeah that’s what pedigree collapse means. Cousin fucking.

dv said:

tauto said:

dv said:

That the method used is not a useful way of estimating the number of ancestors one has back to 1000 years. They both give estimates that are greater than the total number of people who have ever lived.

—

Damn. I was hoping for an explanation about cousins marrying cousins explaining a lot.

Well yeah that’s what pedigree collapse means. Cousin fucking.

Line breeding when it works, inbreeding when it doesn’t.

dv said:

tauto said:

dv said:

Well, not at all. The point of the exercise is to explain pedigree collapse, and whether you choose 22 years or 25, you’ll come to the same conclusion.

—-

Which is?

That the method used is not a useful way of estimating the number of ancestors one has back to 1000 years. They both give estimates that are greater than the total number of people who have ever lived.

Which if you are serious and your figures are correct, would mean that the average generation figure of 22 to 25 is too high.

Re: Ancestor collapse

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function

“The function was named in 1844–1845 by Pierre François Verhulst, who studied it in relation to population growth. The initial stage of growth is approximately exponential; then, as saturation begins, the growth slows, and at maturity, growth stops.”

From: sarahs mum
ID: 1181770
Subject: re: Counting ancestors

My mother had her first at 26 and her fourth at 41. I had Sarah at 27. Sarah had Henry at 32.
============================================================================

Given your age away there Mum.

bucolic3401 said:

From: sarahs mum
ID: 1181770
Subject: re: Counting ancestors

My mother had her first at 26 and her fourth at 41. I had Sarah at 27. Sarah had Henry at 32.
============================================================================

Given your age away there Mum.

Old.

sarahs mum said:

bucolic3401 said:

From: sarahs mum
ID: 1181770
Subject: re: Counting ancestors

My mother had her first at 26 and her fourth at 41. I had Sarah at 27. Sarah had Henry at 32.
============================================================================

Given your age away there Mum.

Old.

A chicken. :)

If you have roughly 11 hours or so
with nothing more pressing to do…
(..and abundant banwidth..)

Listen To This:
A Short History of Nearly Everything
by Bill Bryson

Ogmog said:

If you have roughly 11 hours or so
with nothing more pressing to do…
(..and abundant banwidth..)

Listen To This:
A Short History of Nearly Everything
by Bill Bryson

Or read the book?

The Rev Dodgson said:

Ogmog said:

If you have roughly 11 hours or so
with nothing more pressing to do…
(..and abundant banwidth..)

Listen To This:
A Short History of Nearly Everything
by Bill Bryson

Or read the book?

The Greens are trying to have books banned as an ecological threat.

Tamb said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

Ogmog said:

If you have roughly 11 hours or so
with nothing more pressing to do…
(..and abundant banwidth..)

Listen To This:
A Short History of Nearly Everything
by Bill Bryson

Or read the book?

The Greens are trying to have books banned as an ecological threat.

ref?

sarahs mum said:

Tamb said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

Or read the book?

The Greens are trying to have books banned as an ecological threat.

ref?

None whatsoever. I made it up, but with their track record it is a reasonable assumption.

Tamb said:

sarahs mum said:

Tamb said:

The Greens are trying to have books banned as an ecological threat.

ref?

None whatsoever. I made it up, but with their track record it is a reasonable assumption.

ffs.

Tamb said:

sarahs mum said:

Tamb said:

The Greens are trying to have books banned as an ecological threat.

ref?

None whatsoever. I made it up, but with their track record it is a reasonable assumption.

Banning them will just create a black market and library will be like opium dens and the book mobiles peddling them door to door, “Psssttt hey kid wanna try a book, it’ll get you high (with knowledge) and the first time is free”

Cymek said:

Tamb said:

sarahs mum said:

ref?

None whatsoever. I made it up, but with their track record it is a reasonable assumption.

Banning them will just create a black market and library will be like opium dens and the book mobiles peddling them door to door, “Psssttt hey kid wanna try a book, it’ll get you high (with knowledge) and the first time is free”

there was a good movie about that..

equilibrium?

Cymek said:

Tamb said:

sarahs mum said:

ref?

None whatsoever. I made it up, but with their track record it is a reasonable assumption.

Banning them will just create a black market and library will be like opium dens and the book mobiles peddling them door to door, “Psssttt hey kid wanna try a book, it’ll get you high (with knowledge) and the first time is free”

Fahrenheit 451

Stumpy_seahorse said:

Cymek said:

Tamb said:

None whatsoever. I made it up, but with their track record it is a reasonable assumption.

Banning them will just create a black market and library will be like opium dens and the book mobiles peddling them door to door, “Psssttt hey kid wanna try a book, it’ll get you high (with knowledge) and the first time is free”

there was a good movie about that..

equilibrium?

Yeah. Dunno about ‘good’ though?

Witty Rejoinder said:

Stumpy_seahorse said:

Cymek said:

Banning them will just create a black market and library will be like opium dens and the book mobiles peddling them door to door, “Psssttt hey kid wanna try a book, it’ll get you high (with knowledge) and the first time is free”

there was a good movie about that..

equilibrium?

Yeah. Dunno about ‘good’ though?

I think Fahrenheit 451 predated it by several decades.

Stumpy_seahorse said:

Cymek said:

Tamb said:

None whatsoever. I made it up, but with their track record it is a reasonable assumption.

Banning them will just create a black market and library will be like opium dens and the book mobiles peddling them door to door, “Psssttt hey kid wanna try a book, it’ll get you high (with knowledge) and the first time is free”

there was a good movie about that..

equilibrium?

Fahrenheit 451

Witty Rejoinder said:

Stumpy_seahorse said:

Cymek said:

Banning them will just create a black market and library will be like opium dens and the book mobiles peddling them door to door, “Psssttt hey kid wanna try a book, it’ll get you high (with knowledge) and the first time is free”

there was a good movie about that..

equilibrium?

Yeah. Dunno about ‘good’ though?

it was a while ago I saw it, from what I remember, it wasn’t bad…

Stumpy_seahorse said:

Cymek said:

Tamb said:

None whatsoever. I made it up, but with their track record it is a reasonable assumption.

Banning them will just create a black market and library will be like opium dens and the book mobiles peddling them door to door, “Psssttt hey kid wanna try a book, it’ll get you high (with knowledge) and the first time is free”

there was a good movie about that..

equilibrium?

also this, more art in general though.

Tamb said:

Witty Rejoinder said:

Stumpy_seahorse said:

there was a good movie about that..

equilibrium?

Yeah. Dunno about ‘good’ though?

I think Fahrenheit 451 predated it by several decades.

‘Equilibirium’ main plot point was the use of drugs to suppress human empotions in the namewof stability. Conse

Tamb said:

Witty Rejoinder said:

Stumpy_seahorse said:

there was a good movie about that..

equilibrium?

Yeah. Dunno about ‘good’ though?

I think Fahrenheit 451 predated it by several decades.

‘Equilibriums’ main plot point was the use of drugs to suppress human emotions in the name of stability. Consequently books, art etc that provoked emotions were banned.

Stumpy_seahorse said:

Witty Rejoinder said:

Stumpy_seahorse said:

there was a good movie about that..

equilibrium?

Yeah. Dunno about ‘good’ though?

it was a while ago I saw it, from what I remember, it wasn’t bad…

The whole gun martial arts thing could have been from an entirely different movie.

Witty Rejoinder said:

Tamb said:

Witty Rejoinder said:

Yeah. Dunno about ‘good’ though?

I think Fahrenheit 451 predated it by several decades.

‘Equilibirium’ main plot point was the use of drugs to suppress human empotions in the namewof stability. Conse

451°F is the temp books burn at. People were memorising entire books so when all the books were destroyed their contents would live on.

Witty Rejoinder said:

Stumpy_seahorse said:

Witty Rejoinder said:

Yeah. Dunno about ‘good’ though?

it was a while ago I saw it, from what I remember, it wasn’t bad…

The whole gun martial arts thing could have been from an entirely different movie.

yeah, I remember the shotgun manouvre, which would have fitted in the Matrix well

Witty Rejoinder said:

Stumpy_seahorse said:

Cymek said:

Banning them will just create a black market and library will be like opium dens and the book mobiles peddling them door to door, “Psssttt hey kid wanna try a book, it’ll get you high (with knowledge) and the first time is free”

there was a good movie about that..

equilibrium?

Yeah. Dunno about ‘good’ though?

The people who made it thought it was good:

“Wimmer said in a Dreamwatch magazine interview that “the paying customers seemed to get it,” and said the critics “didn’t seem to see that the film had a different message than” Fahrenheit 451 or 1984. Responding to the critics’ views, Wimmer later said, “Why would I make a movie for someone I wouldn’t want to hang out with? Have you ever met a critic who you wanted to party with? I haven’t.”“

Anyone that advocates burning books would be an automatic don’t trust them

Cymek said:

Anyone that advocates burning books would be an automatic don’t trust them

That & knocking the heads off statues or driving a semi over the Nazca lines.

Tamb said:

Cymek said:

Anyone that advocates burning books would be an automatic don’t trust them

That & knocking the heads off statues or driving a semi over the Nazca lines.

Nazca?…. shit, sorry..

I thought it said Nascar…

Cymek said:

Anyone that advocates burning books would be an automatic don’t trust them

It’s amazing how often new regimes from all over the world willingly burn books etc to re-educate the populace about the new way of doing things. Didn’t start with the Nazis. Two examples are the destruction of Greco-Roman manuscripts with the rise of Christianity in 4th century Egypt and the same in Ancient China when new dynasties took control.

Stumpy_seahorse said:

Tamb said:

Cymek said:

Anyone that advocates burning books would be an automatic don’t trust them

That & knocking the heads off statues or driving a semi over the Nazca lines.

Nazca?…. shit, sorry..

I thought it said Nascar…

I think they often drive over stuff in Nascar.

Witty Rejoinder said:

Cymek said:

Anyone that advocates burning books would be an automatic don’t trust them

It’s amazing how often new regimes from all over the world willingly burn books etc to re-educate the populace about the new way of doing things. Didn’t start with the Nazis. Two examples are the destruction of Greco-Roman manuscripts with the rise of Christianity in 4th century Egypt and the same in Ancient China when new dynasties took control.

The destruction of the great library in Constantinople.

sarahs mum said:

Tamb said:

sarahs mum said:

ref?

None whatsoever. I made it up, but with their track record it is a reasonable assumption.

ffs.

He’s from FNQ, couldn’t muster a decent thought without some Murdoch press guiding the way.

poikilotherm said:

sarahs mum said:

Tamb said:

None whatsoever. I made it up, but with their track record it is a reasonable assumption.

ffs.

He’s from FNQ, couldn’t muster a decent thought without some Murdoch press guiding the way.

Shirley sir, you jest.
The Greens do have a gift for espousing wonderful causes which have no chance of success.

Cymek said:

Anyone that advocates burning books would be an automatic don’t trust them

How about just banning books?

Didn’t they burn or encourage people to burn Harry Potters book, silly really as unless you stole them you are giving money to the people that sell them and you have no book

AwesomeO said:

Cymek said:

Anyone that advocates burning books would be an automatic don’t trust them

How about just banning books?

That as well, don’t read them if they offend you.
Bit redundant with the internet if the idea is to repress knowledge.

AwesomeO said:

Cymek said:

Anyone that advocates burning books would be an automatic don’t trust them

How about just banning books?

The statue thing just reminded me.
When we were in Moscow in 1981 we saw a fenced off park full of undamaged statues.
The theory was that the statue’s subject might come back into fashion & whoever had damaged it would have a booking on the next train to a gulag.

Cymek said:

AwesomeO said:

Cymek said:

Anyone that advocates burning books would be an automatic don’t trust them

How about just banning books?

That as well, don’t read them if they offend you.
Bit redundant with the internet if the idea is to repress knowledge.

Lady Chatterly’s Lover was infamous back in the day.

Cymek said:

AwesomeO said:

Cymek said:

Anyone that advocates burning books would be an automatic don’t trust them

How about just banning books?

That as well, don’t read them if they offend you.
Bit redundant with the internet if the idea is to repress knowledge.

Under the twin banners of offense and outrage I think things are getting worse re censorship and speech. Safe places etc.

Tamb said:

AwesomeO said:

Cymek said:

Anyone that advocates burning books would be an automatic don’t trust them

How about just banning books?

The statue thing just reminded me.
When we were in Moscow in 1981 we saw a fenced off park full of undamaged statues.
The theory was that the statue’s subject might come back into fashion & whoever had damaged it would have a booking on the next train to a gulag.

Not keen on removing statues either. Context of the times, understand the history and context, learn from it, dont pull it down cos you get the vapours. It’s been likened to superstitious peasants pulling down idols because they project evil.

Tamb said:

poikilotherm said:

sarahs mum said:

ffs.

He’s from FNQ, couldn’t muster a decent thought without some Murdoch press guiding the way.

Shirley sir, you jest.
The Greens do have a gift for espousing wonderful causes which have no chance of success.

Examples?

And while you are at it feel free to give me examples of greens lying to parliament and rorting the system. Even in the dual citizen washout I think the Greens showed more integrity. People put shit on the Greens but mostly it is parroting Rupert Murdoch and that hardly shows any capacity for having thought things through.

poikilotherm said:

sarahs mum said:

Tamb said:

None whatsoever. I made it up, but with their track record it is a reasonable assumption.

ffs.

He’s from FNQ, couldn’t muster a decent thought without some Murdoch press guiding the way.

A bit harsh.

sarahs mum said:

I agree with that though.

sarahs mum said:

People put shit on the Greens but mostly it is parroting Rupert Murdoch and that hardly shows any capacity for having thought things through.

Or agree with that.

Watching the new X files it’s quite funny making fun of themselves in this episode

sarahs mum said:

Tamb said:

poikilotherm said:

He’s from FNQ, couldn’t muster a decent thought without some Murdoch press guiding the way.

Shirley sir, you jest.
The Greens do have a gift for espousing wonderful causes which have no chance of success.

Examples?

And while you are at it feel free to give me examples of greens lying to parliament and rorting the system. Even in the dual citizen washout I think the Greens showed more integrity. People put shit on the Greens but mostly it is parroting Rupert Murdoch and that hardly shows any capacity for having thought things through.

The Greens don’t rort or lie much.
Read their policy ( https://greens.org.au/policy )& then tell me how practical many of their policies actually are.
BTW I don’t read the Murdoch press except possibly to offer criticism

Tamb said:

sarahs mum said:

Tamb said:

Shirley sir, you jest.
The Greens do have a gift for espousing wonderful causes which have no chance of success.

Examples?

And while you are at it feel free to give me examples of greens lying to parliament and rorting the system. Even in the dual citizen washout I think the Greens showed more integrity. People put shit on the Greens but mostly it is parroting Rupert Murdoch and that hardly shows any capacity for having thought things through.

The Greens don’t rort or lie much.
Read their policy ( https://greens.org.au/policy )& then tell me how practical many of their policies actually are.
BTW I don’t read the Murdoch press except possibly to offer criticism

There’s quite a lot there.

Can you pick out a few examples that you think are particularly impractical?

The Rev Dodgson said:

Tamb said:

sarahs mum said:

Examples?

And while you are at it feel free to give me examples of greens lying to parliament and rorting the system. Even in the dual citizen washout I think the Greens showed more integrity. People put shit on the Greens but mostly it is parroting Rupert Murdoch and that hardly shows any capacity for having thought things through.

The Greens don’t rort or lie much.
Read their policy ( https://greens.org.au/policy )& then tell me how practical many of their policies actually are.
BTW I don’t read the Murdoch press except possibly to offer criticism

There’s quite a lot there.

Can you pick out a few examples that you think are particularly impractical?

At present, no. Stuff to do but I’ll keep my eye open over the next week.

Tamb said:

sarahs mum said:

Tamb said:

Shirley sir, you jest.
The Greens do have a gift for espousing wonderful causes which have no chance of success.

Examples?

And while you are at it feel free to give me examples of greens lying to parliament and rorting the system. Even in the dual citizen washout I think the Greens showed more integrity. People put shit on the Greens but mostly it is parroting Rupert Murdoch and that hardly shows any capacity for having thought things through.

The Greens don’t rort or lie much.
Read their policy ( https://greens.org.au/policy )& then tell me how practical many of their policies actually are.
BTW I don’t read the Murdoch press except possibly to offer criticism

Perhaps it is easier for you to pick out what upsets you. A quick squizz and I have no problems. People say that the Greens only have an environmental platform and are short in other areas. The policies you linked to show that they do have more policies.

I live in Tas. I have known Green ministers and candidates personally. I have no problems with most of them. Happy to be represented. Specially like being represented by those who can string a sentence together and not rort the system.

sarahs mum said:

Tamb said:

sarahs mum said:

Examples?

And while you are at it feel free to give me examples of greens lying to parliament and rorting the system. Even in the dual citizen washout I think the Greens showed more integrity. People put shit on the Greens but mostly it is parroting Rupert Murdoch and that hardly shows any capacity for having thought things through.

The Greens don’t rort or lie much.
Read their policy ( https://greens.org.au/policy )& then tell me how practical many of their policies actually are.
BTW I don’t read the Murdoch press except possibly to offer criticism

Perhaps it is easier for you to pick out what upsets you. A quick squizz and I have no problems. People say that the Greens only have an environmental platform and are short in other areas. The policies you linked to show that they do have more policies.

I live in Tas. I have known Green ministers and candidates personally. I have no problems with most of them. Happy to be represented. Specially like being represented by those who can string a sentence together and not rort the system.

The Greens do rort. I’ve heard of one case where a homeowner was fined $32,000 by the Greens for cutting down the trees around his house. The bushfire went through and his was the only house left standing.

ending live export and the transportation and transfer of livestock to be conducted in a humane and safe manner.
—-
Green state policy Tas.

This one is tricky. I agree with canning the live export trade. I am good with the transportation of breeding stock.

The problem here is that there is a lot of animals bred on King Island out of the dairying industry and it has been hard to keep an abattoir open and also to keep animal transport to mainland Tas abattoirs going.

Needs more discussion and work.

sarahs mum said:

Tamb said:

sarahs mum said:

Examples?

And while you are at it feel free to give me examples of greens lying to parliament and rorting the system. Even in the dual citizen washout I think the Greens showed more integrity. People put shit on the Greens but mostly it is parroting Rupert Murdoch and that hardly shows any capacity for having thought things through.

The Greens don’t rort or lie much.
Read their policy ( https://greens.org.au/policy )& then tell me how practical many of their policies actually are.
BTW I don’t read the Murdoch press except possibly to offer criticism

Perhaps it is easier for you to pick out what upsets you. A quick squizz and I have no problems. People say that the Greens only have an environmental platform and are short in other areas. The policies you linked to show that they do have more policies.

I live in Tas. I have known Green ministers and candidates personally. I have no problems with most of them. Happy to be represented. Specially like being represented by those who can string a sentence together and not rort the system.

On a Federal level the greens seem quite vapid when it comes to the environment.

mollwollfumble said:

sarahs mum said:

Tamb said:

The Greens don’t rort or lie much.
Read their policy ( https://greens.org.au/policy )& then tell me how practical many of their policies actually are.
BTW I don’t read the Murdoch press except possibly to offer criticism

Perhaps it is easier for you to pick out what upsets you. A quick squizz and I have no problems. People say that the Greens only have an environmental platform and are short in other areas. The policies you linked to show that they do have more policies.

I live in Tas. I have known Green ministers and candidates personally. I have no problems with most of them. Happy to be represented. Specially like being represented by those who can string a sentence together and not rort the system.

The Greens do rort. I’ve heard of one case where a homeowner was fined $32,000 by the Greens for cutting down the trees around his house. The bushfire went through and his was the only house left standing.

rofl, political parties can fine people now?

mollwollfumble said:

sarahs mum said:

Tamb said:

The Greens don’t rort or lie much.
Read their policy ( https://greens.org.au/policy )& then tell me how practical many of their policies actually are.
BTW I don’t read the Murdoch press except possibly to offer criticism

Perhaps it is easier for you to pick out what upsets you. A quick squizz and I have no problems. People say that the Greens only have an environmental platform and are short in other areas. The policies you linked to show that they do have more policies.

I live in Tas. I have known Green ministers and candidates personally. I have no problems with most of them. Happy to be represented. Specially like being represented by those who can string a sentence together and not rort the system.

The Greens do rort. I’ve heard of one case where a homeowner was fined $32,000 by the Greens for cutting down the trees around his house. The bushfire went through and his was the only house left standing.

That doesn’t sound like a rort to me. A rort is taking a helicopter to the races.

Was this a local council issue? Were the Greens in control of council? Tree preservation orders happen in councils without green members serving.

Biggest bushfire in recent Tasmanian history started in a plantation of E.nitens that went in under the Liberals/Abetz’s MIS.

Council have rezoned my property 3 times in the last 30 years. I have gone from rural to rural residential to tree preservation. My property is protected now for a species of tree that doesn’t exist on my property. However I can remove trees if they are small or close to the house. I still have some issues with the rulings.So do the councils. eg Hobart council have just realised they have 10 times the amount of houses now in the area burnt by the 67 fires.

poikilotherm said:

sarahs mum said:

Tamb said:

The Greens don’t rort or lie much.
Read their policy ( https://greens.org.au/policy )& then tell me how practical many of their policies actually are.
BTW I don’t read the Murdoch press except possibly to offer criticism

Perhaps it is easier for you to pick out what upsets you. A quick squizz and I have no problems. People say that the Greens only have an environmental platform and are short in other areas. The policies you linked to show that they do have more policies.

I live in Tas. I have known Green ministers and candidates personally. I have no problems with most of them. Happy to be represented. Specially like being represented by those who can string a sentence together and not rort the system.

On a Federal level the greens seem quite vapid when it comes to the environment.

Their refusal to support Rudd’s ETS in his first term is one of the causes of the problems now where their perfect was the enemy of the good.

Witty Rejoinder said:

poikilotherm said:

sarahs mum said:

Perhaps it is easier for you to pick out what upsets you. A quick squizz and I have no problems. People say that the Greens only have an environmental platform and are short in other areas. The policies you linked to show that they do have more policies.

I live in Tas. I have known Green ministers and candidates personally. I have no problems with most of them. Happy to be represented. Specially like being represented by those who can string a sentence together and not rort the system.

On a Federal level the greens seem quite vapid when it comes to the environment.

Their refusal to support Rudd’s ETS in his first term is one of the causes of the problems now where their perfect was the enemy of the good.

only a vague memory. But well remembered and valid.

Witty Rejoinder said:

poikilotherm said:

sarahs mum said:

Perhaps it is easier for you to pick out what upsets you. A quick squizz and I have no problems. People say that the Greens only have an environmental platform and are short in other areas. The policies you linked to show that they do have more policies.

I live in Tas. I have known Green ministers and candidates personally. I have no problems with most of them. Happy to be represented. Specially like being represented by those who can string a sentence together and not rort the system.

On a Federal level the greens seem quite vapid when it comes to the environment.

Their refusal to support Rudd’s ETS in his first term is one of the causes of the problems now where their perfect was the enemy of the good.

They do come across as fanatical and humans should take second fiddle to everything else, if it’s against nature it’s wrong. We do need to respect life but have to be realistic about it

Cymek said:

Witty Rejoinder said:

poikilotherm said:

On a Federal level the greens seem quite vapid when it comes to the environment.

Their refusal to support Rudd’s ETS in his first term is one of the causes of the problems now where their perfect was the enemy of the good.

They do come across as fanatical and humans should take second fiddle to everything else, if it’s against nature it’s wrong. We do need to respect life but have to be realistic about it

The vegans make a lot of noise. We are all aware of that.

But if you go to a greens meeting at the town hall it is full with women slightly older than me. That isn’t what the press pushes in their short takes.

Witty Rejoinder said:

poikilotherm said:

sarahs mum said:

Perhaps it is easier for you to pick out what upsets you. A quick squizz and I have no problems. People say that the Greens only have an environmental platform and are short in other areas. The policies you linked to show that they do have more policies.

I live in Tas. I have known Green ministers and candidates personally. I have no problems with most of them. Happy to be represented. Specially like being represented by those who can string a sentence together and not rort the system.

On a Federal level the greens seem quite vapid when it comes to the environment.

Their refusal to support Rudd’s ETS in his first term is one of the causes of the problems now where their perfect was the enemy of the good.

Yep that, and their refusal to accept that Aus current immigration rate is an environmental concern.

poikilotherm said:

Witty Rejoinder said:

poikilotherm said:

On a Federal level the greens seem quite vapid when it comes to the environment.

Their refusal to support Rudd’s ETS in his first term is one of the causes of the problems now where their perfect was the enemy of the good.

Yep that, and their refusal to accept that Aus current immigration rate is an environmental concern.

Population is talked about every now and then. It isn’t a popular conversation.

sarahs mum said:

poikilotherm said:

Witty Rejoinder said:

Their refusal to support Rudd’s ETS in his first term is one of the causes of the problems now where their perfect was the enemy of the good.

Yep that, and their refusal to accept that Aus current immigration rate is an environmental concern.

Population is talked about every now and then. It isn’t a popular conversation.

My impression of the Greens is they would let them all in, providing their sob story was good enough.

sarahs mum said:

poikilotherm said:

Witty Rejoinder said:

Their refusal to support Rudd’s ETS in his first term is one of the causes of the problems now where their perfect was the enemy of the good.

Yep that, and their refusal to accept that Aus current immigration rate is an environmental concern.

Population is talked about every now and then. It isn’t a popular conversation.

Didn’t think they were meant to be a populism based political party, the Greens tend to bring up the race/xenophobia card every time the topic is mentioned, much like another political party(ies).

mollwollfumble said:

The Greens do rort. I’ve heard of one case where a homeowner was fined $32,000 by the Greens for cutting down the trees around his house. The bushfire went through and his was the only house left standing.

So what legislation enables a political party to fine a home owner for cutting down trees?

Surely that’s a local council responsibility.

The Rev Dodgson said:

mollwollfumble said:

The Greens do rort. I’ve heard of one case where a homeowner was fined $32,000 by the Greens for cutting down the trees around his house. The bushfire went through and his was the only house left standing.

So what legislation enables a political party to fine a home owner for cutting down trees?

Surely that’s a local council responsibility.

Also …(scratches head) how is that a rort? Do you think the Greens pocketed that money some how?

poikilotherm said:

Witty Rejoinder said:

poikilotherm said:

On a Federal level the greens seem quite vapid when it comes to the environment.

Their refusal to support Rudd’s ETS in his first term is one of the causes of the problems now where their perfect was the enemy of the good.

Yep that, and their refusal to accept that Aus current immigration rate is an environmental concern.

Pretending that anti-immigration is anything to do with environmental concern is nonsense put out to allow certain groups to distract attention from their basically racist agenda.

The Rev Dodgson said:

poikilotherm said:

Witty Rejoinder said:

Their refusal to support Rudd’s ETS in his first term is one of the causes of the problems now where their perfect was the enemy of the good.

Yep that, and their refusal to accept that Aus current immigration rate is an environmental concern.

Pretending that anti-immigration is anything to do with environmental concern is nonsense put out to allow certain groups to distract attention from their basically racist agenda.

False.

poikilotherm said:

sarahs mum said:

Yep that, and their refusal to accept that Aus current immigration rate is an environmental concern.

It certainly is.

It’s way too low. Australia’s low immigration rate compounds several problems caused by population imbalance.

poikilotherm said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

poikilotherm said:

Yep that, and their refusal to accept that Aus current immigration rate is an environmental concern.

Pretending that anti-immigration is anything to do with environmental concern is nonsense put out to allow certain groups to distract attention from their basically racist agenda.

False.

No, True.

The Rev Dodgson said:

poikilotherm said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

Pretending that anti-immigration is anything to do with environmental concern is nonsense put out to allow certain groups to distract attention from their basically racist agenda.

False.

No, True.

I didn’t mention a race, just immigration, now, AFAIK, that’s not racist, is it?

Plus, the link is worth a read. But hey, play the racist card, it’s easy and filled with a nice cloud of smug.

The Rev Dodgson said:

mollwollfumble said:

The Greens do rort. I’ve heard of one case where a homeowner was fined $32,000 by the Greens for cutting down the trees around his house. The bushfire went through and his was the only house left standing.

So what legislation enables a political party to fine a home owner for cutting down trees?

Surely that’s a local council responsibility.

From memory it was in a semi-rural area of conservation value and he cut down considerably more trees (most of his acreage) than those around the house.

poikilotherm said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

poikilotherm said:

False.

No, True.

I didn’t mention a race, just immigration, now, AFAIK, that’s not racist, is it?

Plus, the link is worth a read. But hey, play the racist card, it’s easy and filled with a nice cloud of smug.

I didn’t say anything about you.

I made an observation about political groups who pretend that restricting immigration will help the environment, whereas it will tend to result in a higher global population, and increased density in areas already way more overcrowded than Australia.

I have also never seen any of these groups suggest reducing the birth rate of Australian residents, which actually would do something to help the environment.

The Rev Dodgson said:

poikilotherm said:

Witty Rejoinder said:

Their refusal to support Rudd’s ETS in his first term is one of the causes of the problems now where their perfect was the enemy of the good.

Yep that, and their refusal to accept that Aus current immigration rate is an environmental concern.

Pretending that anti-immigration is anything to do with environmental concern is nonsense put out to allow certain groups to distract attention from their basically racist agenda.

You might have a point there, except everything we do, especially with higher population numbers is paid for by the environment. Do you think a quarter of million people a year coming to Australia are just going to disappear into thin air?

The Rev Dodgson said:

poikilotherm said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

No, True.

I didn’t mention a race, just immigration, now, AFAIK, that’s not racist, is it?

Plus, the link is worth a read. But hey, play the racist card, it’s easy and filled with a nice cloud of smug.

I didn’t say anything about you.

I made an observation about political groups who pretend that restricting immigration will help the environment, whereas it will tend to result in a higher global population, and increased density in areas already way more overcrowded than Australia.

I have also never seen any of these groups suggest reducing the birth rate of Australian residents, which actually would do something to help the environment.

I have seen the Tas greens discuss population. It isn’t a welcome discussion as until recently our population was falling anyway.

The Rev Dodgson said:

poikilotherm said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

No, True.

I didn’t mention a race, just immigration, now, AFAIK, that’s not racist, is it?

Plus, the link is worth a read. But hey, play the racist card, it’s easy and filled with a nice cloud of smug.

I didn’t say anything about you.

I made an observation about political groups who pretend that restricting immigration will help the environment, whereas it will tend to result in a higher global population, and increased density in areas already way more overcrowded than Australia.

I have also never seen any of these groups suggest reducing the birth rate of Australian residents, which actually would do something to help the environment.

Fair enough.

It’s not pretend though, it would, according to that report linked earlier.

Immigration is easier to slow and is almost the same as the birth rate.

PermeateFree said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

poikilotherm said:

Yep that, and their refusal to accept that Aus current immigration rate is an environmental concern.

Pretending that anti-immigration is anything to do with environmental concern is nonsense put out to allow certain groups to distract attention from their basically racist agenda.

You might have a point there, except everything we do, especially with higher population numbers is paid for by the environment. Do you think a quarter of million people a year coming to Australia are just going to disappear into thin air?

Do you think they are going to disappear into thin air if they don’t come to Australia?

poikilotherm said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

poikilotherm said:

I didn’t mention a race, just immigration, now, AFAIK, that’s not racist, is it?

Plus, the link is worth a read. But hey, play the racist card, it’s easy and filled with a nice cloud of smug.

I didn’t say anything about you.

I made an observation about political groups who pretend that restricting immigration will help the environment, whereas it will tend to result in a higher global population, and increased density in areas already way more overcrowded than Australia.

I have also never seen any of these groups suggest reducing the birth rate of Australian residents, which actually would do something to help the environment.

Fair enough.

It’s not pretend though, it would, according to that report linked earlier.

Immigration is easier to slow and is almost the same as the birth rate.

actually i was looking at old data, immigratino is about 200,000 (not including boat people) and birth rate is about 370,000. Still immigration is easier to halve than the birth rate…

poikilotherm said:

It’s not pretend though, it would, according to that report linked earlier.

It might in the short term in Australia. In the Global and longer term it is likely to be positive overall.

The Rev Dodgson said:

PermeateFree said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

Pretending that anti-immigration is anything to do with environmental concern is nonsense put out to allow certain groups to distract attention from their basically racist agenda.

You might have a point there, except everything we do, especially with higher population numbers is paid for by the environment. Do you think a quarter of million people a year coming to Australia are just going to disappear into thin air?

Do you think they are going to disappear into thin air if they don’t come to Australia?

So in that context let them all into Australia. How many millions would that be I wonder and don’t worry about the environment because there wont be much left.

The Rev Dodgson said:

PermeateFree said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

Pretending that anti-immigration is anything to do with environmental concern is nonsense put out to allow certain groups to distract attention from their basically racist agenda.

You might have a point there, except everything we do, especially with higher population numbers is paid for by the environment. Do you think a quarter of million people a year coming to Australia are just going to disappear into thin air?

Do you think they are going to disappear into thin air if they don’t come to Australia?

I suppose it comes down to where they are coming from and if staying there or coming here has more environmental impact, in Australia they would expect first world standards of living and its associated footprint

poikilotherm said:

poikilotherm said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

I didn’t say anything about you.

I made an observation about political groups who pretend that restricting immigration will help the environment, whereas it will tend to result in a higher global population, and increased density in areas already way more overcrowded than Australia.

I have also never seen any of these groups suggest reducing the birth rate of Australian residents, which actually would do something to help the environment.

Fair enough.

It’s not pretend though, it would, according to that report linked earlier.

Immigration is easier to slow and is almost the same as the birth rate.

actually i was looking at old data, immigratino is about 200,000 (not including boat people) and birth rate is about 370,000. Still immigration is easier to halve than the birth rate…

I wonder how much of its planned birth and how much is accident

Cymek said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

PermeateFree said:

You might have a point there, except everything we do, especially with higher population numbers is paid for by the environment. Do you think a quarter of million people a year coming to Australia are just going to disappear into thin air?

Do you think they are going to disappear into thin air if they don’t come to Australia?

I suppose it comes down to where they are coming from and if staying there or coming here has more environmental impact, in Australia they would expect first world standards of living and its associated footprint

Everyone has an impact on the environment, requiring more food, water, housing, things to fill the houses, roads, schools, etc., etc., etc.

PermeateFree said:

Cymek said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

Do you think they are going to disappear into thin air if they don’t come to Australia?

I suppose it comes down to where they are coming from and if staying there or coming here has more environmental impact, in Australia they would expect first world standards of living and its associated footprint

Everyone has an impact on the environment, requiring more food, water, housing, things to fill the houses, roads, schools, etc., etc., etc.

Yes so realistically the human race should realise all resources belong to everyone the planet and distribute them accordingly. Environmental impact is also a entire human race issue and everything should be done to minimise it. Whomever can afford (not just monetary wealth but resources, etc) to take in refugees, immigrants should be supported in this.

Cymek said:

PermeateFree said:

Cymek said:

I suppose it comes down to where they are coming from and if staying there or coming here has more environmental impact, in Australia they would expect first world standards of living and its associated footprint

Everyone has an impact on the environment, requiring more food, water, housing, things to fill the houses, roads, schools, etc., etc., etc.

Yes so realistically the human race should realise all resources belong to everyone the planet and distribute them accordingly. Environmental impact is also a entire human race issue and everything should be done to minimise it. Whomever can afford (not just monetary wealth but resources, etc) to take in refugees, immigrants should be supported in this.

So countries like Africa and other places around the globe can have as many children as they like, because there is always room for them in Australia? The world environment is in a diabolical state largely due to human activity and our ridiculously high population, yet you say, never mind that, let the environment go down the tube, as long as our species prospers and continues to multiply. I think you need to have a another look at your priorities.

PermeateFree said:

Cymek said:

PermeateFree said:

Everyone has an impact on the environment, requiring more food, water, housing, things to fill the houses, roads, schools, etc., etc., etc.

Yes so realistically the human race should realise all resources belong to everyone the planet and distribute them accordingly. Environmental impact is also a entire human race issue and everything should be done to minimise it. Whomever can afford (not just monetary wealth but resources, etc) to take in refugees, immigrants should be supported in this.

So countries like Africa and other places around the globe can have as many children as they like, because there is always room for them in Australia? The world environment is in a diabolical state largely due to human activity and our ridiculously high population, yet you say, never mind that, let the environment go down the tube, as long as our species prospers and continues to multiply. I think you need to have a another look at your priorities.

No the opposite we fight over resources when they should be distributed fairly instead of who owns them. Birth control should be free and everyone should mind their own business about some religion not liking it. Should certain nations take in refugees when they can’t afford them just because said refuges come from that region of the world. Doesn’t the entire world have a responsibility to look after it population and not just the nation where they happen to be born.

Cymek said:

PermeateFree said:

Cymek said:

Yes so realistically the human race should realise all resources belong to everyone the planet and distribute them accordingly. Environmental impact is also a entire human race issue and everything should be done to minimise it. Whomever can afford (not just monetary wealth but resources, etc) to take in refugees, immigrants should be supported in this.

So countries like Africa and other places around the globe can have as many children as they like, because there is always room for them in Australia? The world environment is in a diabolical state largely due to human activity and our ridiculously high population, yet you say, never mind that, let the environment go down the tube, as long as our species prospers and continues to multiply. I think you need to have a another look at your priorities.

No the opposite we fight over resources when they should be distributed fairly instead of who owns them. Birth control should be free and everyone should mind their own business about some religion not liking it. Should certain nations take in refugees when they can’t afford them just because said refuges come from that region of the world. Doesn’t the entire world have a responsibility to look after it population and not just the nation where they happen to be born.

I think a number of people have been doing that for a very long time now, yet populations continue to increase at an alarming rate. These things might happen someday in the future (like generations), but we and the world have been ignoring the problems for a very long time until they have reached critical proportions and I don’t think Africa’s problems are going to rate much higher as our own problems progressively worsen. Time is now very short and we simply do not have enough to contemplate these world changing situations. I think you are close to entering into the Wookie World.

Is overpopulation the problem in Africa, or is conflict, lack of governance and corruption?

AwesomeO said:

Is overpopulation the problem in Africa, or is conflict, lack of governance and corruption?

Over-population is over-population, they all get there via the same procedure.

AwesomeO said:

Is overpopulation the problem in Africa, or is conflict, lack of governance and corruption?

lack of government, corruption

plus the lack of infrastructure required to feed, clothe and house all their people in good health.

party_pants said:

AwesomeO said:

Is overpopulation the problem in Africa, or is conflict, lack of governance and corruption?

lack of government, corruption

plus the lack of infrastructure required to feed, clothe and house all their people in good health.

There are already too many people there. There is a great deal of food aid and other aid pouring into Africa and the naturally vegetated areas are being devastating due to poaching and bush meat hunting. Not to mention land-clearing and fuel gathering and grazing their animals. Africa is not in a state of equilibrium.

PermeateFree said:

party_pants said:

AwesomeO said:

Is overpopulation the problem in Africa, or is conflict, lack of governance and corruption?

lack of government, corruption

plus the lack of infrastructure required to feed, clothe and house all their people in good health.

There are already too many people there. There is a great deal of food aid and other aid pouring into Africa and the naturally vegetated areas are being devastating due to poaching and bush meat hunting. Not to mention land-clearing and fuel gathering and grazing their animals. Africa is not in a state of equilibrium.

Exactly. there are too many people for their meagre infrastructure to cope with. Short of killing off the surplus people the answer must lie in bringing the infrastructure up to standard. A reliable supply of elecvtricity for example will reduce the need to go gathering fuel for cooking fires.

Well they’ve tried democracy, didn’t work.
They’ve tried socialism, didn’t work.
What they need to try is benevolent fascism where the wealth of the country is not syphoned off by a cabal of Jewish controlled multi nationals and the United Nations inveigling their way in handing out free food causing a malaise of wastrel laziness with the fields left unploughed.
A sunlit upland where nationalism is strong and work is freedom, where the youth have a goal and purpose and proudly sing songs and the like.

party_pants said:

PermeateFree said:

party_pants said:

lack of government, corruption

plus the lack of infrastructure required to feed, clothe and house all their people in good health.

There are already too many people there. There is a great deal of food aid and other aid pouring into Africa and the naturally vegetated areas are being devastating due to poaching and bush meat hunting. Not to mention land-clearing and fuel gathering and grazing their animals. Africa is not in a state of equilibrium.

Exactly. there are too many people for their meagre infrastructure to cope with. Short of killing off the surplus people the answer must lie in bringing the infrastructure up to standard. A reliable supply of elecvtricity for example will reduce the need to go gathering fuel for cooking fires.

Educating women (as in school ——> university) is extremely important too. Countries with high educational achievements for women end up with low birth rates (often lower than replacement).

Michael V said:

party_pants said:

PermeateFree said:

There are already too many people there. There is a great deal of food aid and other aid pouring into Africa and the naturally vegetated areas are being devastating due to poaching and bush meat hunting. Not to mention land-clearing and fuel gathering and grazing their animals. Africa is not in a state of equilibrium.

Exactly. there are too many people for their meagre infrastructure to cope with. Short of killing off the surplus people the answer must lie in bringing the infrastructure up to standard. A reliable supply of elecvtricity for example will reduce the need to go gathering fuel for cooking fires.

Educating women (as in school ——> university) is extremely important too. Countries with high educational achievements for women end up with low birth rates (often lower than replacement).

Yeah. In some places they first need to be freed from the daily burden of collecting firewood and fresh water.

party_pants said:

PermeateFree said:

party_pants said:

lack of government, corruption

plus the lack of infrastructure required to feed, clothe and house all their people in good health.

There are already too many people there. There is a great deal of food aid and other aid pouring into Africa and the naturally vegetated areas are being devastating due to poaching and bush meat hunting. Not to mention land-clearing and fuel gathering and grazing their animals. Africa is not in a state of equilibrium.

Exactly. there are too many people for their meagre infrastructure to cope with. Short of killing off the surplus people the answer must lie in bringing the infrastructure up to standard. A reliable supply of elecvtricity for example will reduce the need to go gathering fuel for cooking fires.

That is all very well, but we do not have the luxury of time; the rate of reproduction in Africa is enormous and it is estimated they will far exceed the populations of India and China combined within the next 80 years. Plus there are many other problems currently looming in the world that is going to divert attention away from an overpopulation in Africa. Meanwhile are you suggesting we bring them all here?

PermeateFree said:

party_pants said:

PermeateFree said:

There are already too many people there. There is a great deal of food aid and other aid pouring into Africa and the naturally vegetated areas are being devastating due to poaching and bush meat hunting. Not to mention land-clearing and fuel gathering and grazing their animals. Africa is not in a state of equilibrium.

Exactly. there are too many people for their meagre infrastructure to cope with. Short of killing off the surplus people the answer must lie in bringing the infrastructure up to standard. A reliable supply of elecvtricity for example will reduce the need to go gathering fuel for cooking fires.

That is all very well, but we do not have the luxury of time; the rate of reproduction in Africa is enormous and it is estimated they will far exceed the populations of India and China combined within the next 80 years. Plus there are many other problems currently looming in the world that is going to divert attention away from an overpopulation in Africa. Meanwhile are you suggesting we bring them all here?

Hell no, migration won’t solve the problem. Has to be done from the aim of improving Africa through sensible development. Probably need to shoot a lot of religious leaders along the way.

party_pants said:

PermeateFree said:

party_pants said:

Exactly. there are too many people for their meagre infrastructure to cope with. Short of killing off the surplus people the answer must lie in bringing the infrastructure up to standard. A reliable supply of elecvtricity for example will reduce the need to go gathering fuel for cooking fires.

That is all very well, but we do not have the luxury of time; the rate of reproduction in Africa is enormous and it is estimated they will far exceed the populations of India and China combined within the next 80 years. Plus there are many other problems currently looming in the world that is going to divert attention away from an overpopulation in Africa. Meanwhile are you suggesting we bring them all here?

Hell no, migration won’t solve the problem. Has to be done from the aim of improving Africa through sensible development. Probably need to shoot a lot of religious leaders along the way.

The Chinese will sort it all out…

party_pants said:

PermeateFree said:

party_pants said:

Exactly. there are too many people for their meagre infrastructure to cope with. Short of killing off the surplus people the answer must lie in bringing the infrastructure up to standard. A reliable supply of elecvtricity for example will reduce the need to go gathering fuel for cooking fires.

That is all very well, but we do not have the luxury of time; the rate of reproduction in Africa is enormous and it is estimated they will far exceed the populations of India and China combined within the next 80 years. Plus there are many other problems currently looming in the world that is going to divert attention away from an overpopulation in Africa. Meanwhile are you suggesting we bring them all here?

Hell no, migration won’t solve the problem. Has to be done from the aim of improving Africa through sensible development. Probably need to shoot a lot of religious leaders along the way.

Fine, I have no problem with that. Only stop the bleeding hearts in Australia that would open all the doors for them.

Tamb said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

Ogmog said:

If you have roughly 11 hours or so
with nothing more pressing to do…
(..and abundant banwidth..)

Listen To This:
A Short History of Nearly Everything
by Bill Bryson

Or read the book?

The Greens are trying to have books banned as an ecological threat.

LOL!
WOW, Did THAT Innocent suggestion/recommendation ever go off-the-rails!
LOL

I linked to the YouTUBE Vid as a relatively inexpensive way
of enjoying a fun book/good read concerning “How We Got Here”
As for “Banning/Burning Books” —-FAR FROM IT!
I’d both Read AND Listened to the book,
having recently switched to AudioBooks diminished eyesight..
..as a way of CONTINUING my enjoyment of “The Written Word”
in a form that I can (mercifully) continue to access.

In fact;
I recently moved.. and found myself without access to the www
or even a TV or even a radio for nearly 2 months. :-/
The only thing I had was my iPod & speakers.

Mercifully, I’d put several of my fave books on my outdated podsey
and allowed it to “READ” me to sleep @ nite like a contented child. :)

Bill Bryson’s 11+ hr book was one of them,
another was T.H. White’s “The Once & Future King”
LOL yup.. all FIVE Books including “The Book of Merlyn” !

IOW
I was IN NO WAY suggesting “THE BANNING of BOOKS”. :-p
..but rather quite the opposite.

Ogmog said:

IOW
I was IN NO WAY suggesting “THE BANNING of BOOKS”. :-p
..but rather quite the opposite.

I don’t think anyone suggested you were.

It all started with Tamb making a little joke.

Tamb said:

sarahs mum said:

Tamb said:

The Greens are trying to have books banned as an ecological threat.

ref?

None whatsoever. I made it up, but with their track record it is a reasonable assumption.

Ah.. OK..

it was just weird watching it
evolve in the direction to took from there. :-/

but adding to the apocalyptic theme from there
‘Soylent Green’ society was forced to rely upon
LIVING BOOKS
and Silent Running wherein the handful of
the last forests on Earth were preserved by
shooting them onto Space.