I love it when my readers do my hard work for me. I am talking, of course, of Mayank’s comment to my Genghis Khan post. I am reproducing the comment here, with only cosmetic changes. He has done half my work for me.
I did a brief mathematical analysis of this claim. There were around 40 crore people in 1250(source ), after Genghis Khan’s tenure compared to 600 crore people now. So, a simple back-mapping tells us that 1.6 crore men now, will have approximately 10 lakh ancestor males in that population, the assumption being here that the children Genghis khan spawned were not in general more promiscuous than the other contemporary adults. So, this brings us down to account for 10 lakh people with the same Y chromosomes as an immediate result of the sexual excesses of Genghis Khan, his four sons and two grandsons as mentioned in the article. The fact that only Genghis khan is remembered for those brutalities means we can safely assign half of that figure directly to him.
This means one king in 40 years actually spreads his Y chromosome in 5 lakh males. With 40 years meaning arnd 15k days, he actually succeeded in impregnating 33 women per night( or day too, if he had no other job ).
The fallacies in the above simplistic assumptions are not hard to find. We can easily say that the tribes originating from him gave birth to more children etc. But that doesnt make the scenario look any more feasible. Well if he did…. HATS OFF TO HIS STAMINA AND LUCK.
So as I was saying Mayank has done half my work for me. One mistake in his calculations is that if you assume that Genghis Khan had 5 lakh sons, statistically you must also assume that he had as many daughters (unless he practised some kind of sex selection.) And of course, not all sexual encounters result in children, so we may have to scale up the figure of 33 that he got by some factor. That of course, makes the figure even more implausible.
The other assumption (which I have bolded) is actually wrong. If you follow the link to Kuro5hin that Ravages posted (in the same thread), you will realise that Genghis’ progeny were part of ruling clans in Mongolia till as late as the twentieth century, so we can safely assume that they were in general more promiscuous than other contemporary adults.
Does this mean that Mayank is wrong when he says that the scenario won’t look any more plausible if a few of his assumptions are wrong? Let’s see.
There is another way to verify the answer. Look at it this way. Consider a normal woman. How many children would be born to her if she didn’t use contraception? 10? I think 10 sounds plausible. Statistically, of them, 5 would be boys. And how many generations would be there between AD 1250 and AD 2000? Let’s assume that the average gap between generations is 25 years. So we can safely assume 30 generations.
How many male progeny will an average man have if we assume that all his 5 sons succeed in having their quota of 5 sons each generation after generation? Well, you won’t believe the answer. It is 9.31322575 × 10^20!
So Genghis Khan would not have to be particularly promiscuous to ensure that his male descendents numbered 16 million 800 years down the line. He’d just have to ensure that his descendents survived at a rate better than the rest of the population. Partly he managed to do this by having a lot of children and relying on the law of probability. The other part of his trick was that because his descendents were part of ruling clans for an awfully long period, they survived at a rate much higher than the general populace.
But this post isn’t about Genghis Khan. It is about Malthus. So let’s ask another question. If 10 children is a reasonable guess and all ten children survive generation after generation, we’d have ended with that unimaginably huge number right? But the world population did not increase by that unimaginably huge figure. It increased only 15 times. So the question is, how many of your children, on an average must go on to have children for the population to go up 15 times over the period of 750 years? Assuming 30 generations as before, the number we’re looking for is 1.09
Hold that figure in your mind. Of ten children that an average couple had, two went on to have children of their own. One fifth.
What happened to the rest? Did they decide to stay celibate and hence childless all their lives? Unlikely. If celibacy was so widespread in medieval times, we would have heard of the phenomenon. No that can’t be the explanation, and you won’t like the real explanation. They were dying. The lucky ones, 2 out of the ten, used to die as infants. Others must have fallen victim to the horsemen of the apocalypse – disease, war, pestilence, etc.
And also remember that the population rise by a factor of 15, which we think of as meteoric*, but it actually isn’t, really started with the onset of the industrial revolution. Before that the population used to be static over the long term. As we have seen a “static” population actually means that four-fifths of the population on an average used to die before old age. “On an average” means that sometimes things were better and sometimes they were worse. When they were worse, entire populations must have been wiped out in massacres, plagues, famines, etc, as happened in Europe during the plague.
I am not given to hyperbole (I haven’t read the One Book That Cannot Be Named written by The Verbal Terrorist yet), but I hope that I have made the point that things used to be horrible in the past. I can’t even imagine what kind of life it would be where you could expect to see most of your children die young.
The other point I want to make is that population growth is a result of prosperity, not a cause of poverty. So when Malthus was claiming that if population grew too much we’d end up with famine, starvation and disease, he wasn’t predicting the future. He was describing the past and there too he got the cause and effect wrong. The wars, droughts and diseases weren’t occurring because of overpopulation. They were always there, though they did end up “controlling the population”
Now I am not claiming that we can never be overpopulated. I am only saying that overpopulation is a far better problem to have to solve than the alternative.
*I don’t know why a rise is called meteoric when a meteor actually falls.
A: Increase in population
B: Famines etc.
Malthus: A –> B (I)
You: B –> ~A – (II)
You argue the veracity of (II). And then say Malthus got things mixed up with (I).
I hope you realize that (II) was a part of Malthus’s population argument.
A would lead to B. Which would lead to ~A (or a reduction in A). Thus “equilibriumizing” the situation.
Why Malthus is criticized by Socialists is another story.
You’ve modeled the argument correctly, but my issue is precisely with (I). Yes it is true in theory that A will lead to B, but B can happen independently too, and B happening independently has been the norm through most of history.
well.. a few points first
1. The fact that i kept referring to Genghis khan’s luck was precisely bcoz i wanted to allude to the fact that all his progeny were sons only. Probably it was too subtle… anyways…
2. When one assumes Genghis khan’s tribe was not in general more promiscuous than other tribes he is not entirely off the mark. The reason being that while those who remained in the royal clan can afford to have more sex, we are here talking of the descendants of Genghis khan which mingled with common man. A figure in crores can’t be ascribed soley to a royal dynasty. Therefore, while a few thousands in the long chain were more promiscuous, the same was not true for the majority of descendants as they had to take care of their basic necessities too, just like others did. So, my assumption was indeed correct.
well 7*6…. ravikiran is probably right. Malthus had his arguments based on the conditions he saw in world at that time(1776 – 1834). When he argued overpopulation would lead to famines, drought etc. he was correct for his generation as medical facilities and technological advancements were not good enough to take care of a burgeoning population and when he saw his past it was indeed the case. It would have been impossibly hard to imagine(unless u were a Nastradamus) the rapid strides human civilization would take in just 200 years( mind you, thats not a long period in anthropological time frame).
So, while his arguments hold true no longer in present scenarios where famines are completely naural disasters and plagues do not spread merely bcoz of large population, they were true in his time and in his past. We can accuse Malthus of not being too far-sighted,but we can’t decry his theories as fallacious ones per se.
Ravikiran: How do you say that A hasn’t led to B in the past? As Mayank says, it makes more sense for it to have held in the past.
Mayank: It CAN hold in the future too. Basically, “overpopulation” means that there are more people than required to do the “jobs” in an economy.
The key thing to note here is that “food” is no longer the “unit” of sustenance. With rising levels of civilization, the “unit of sustenance” could also increase.
What if, say in 2500, everything is automated except a few select jobs? Wouldn’t the “unrequired” people then starve (of the units of sustenance to be precise), and thereby redress the “imbalance”?
hmmmm…..
As i said before, attempting to forecast future is hazardous and even Malthus failed in it. What is true though is that his theory of overpopulation seeking its own ways to balance itself hasn’t proven true in 20th century. You can see world population charts of past 1000 years to get a clearer picture(the spectacular rise in pop. is quite obvious). Despite that the average standard of living has continued to rise and there is no sign of it abating just because population is going to double in 30 yrs or so. Malthus evidently missed the trick here and underestimated the powers of science.
This brings us round to the 2500 picture. Will history repeat itself and there will again be an upper bound on population just as it was for most of the past millennium? I reckon there will be an upper bound primarily bcoz of lowering birth rates and not because of nature taking recourse to desperate measures like it used to happen earlier(e.g. the black death, namely plague spread so fast in europe majorly due to the overpopulation factor, not enough cleanliness and medical awareness for that large a population). The job scenario we are dreading where most jobs are automated leaving ppl to starve in penury doesn’t appeal to me. Lets see why?
1. As Maslow’s hierarchy of needs illustrate, most of the world population has risen above the lowermost level of needs and no longer worries about the basic needs. The world might get more skewed in monetary terms but won’t lead the lower segments of population to die of hunger. No one dies for lack of prestigious jobs.. do they?
2. With women getting more and more liberated, not many of them would anyway want to bear the labour hazards more than once. That would actually lead to a dwindling human race and i can see couples resorting to surrogate mothers(who will be very highly paid) more and more, if the female is adamant on not going through those nine months. All this might mean a new market for kids getting developed, whether we like it or not.
3. The basic unit of sustenance might not even be the food as we see now, but rather packaged nutritious capsules, which will take care of our energy needs for the day. As much as I can visualise, the food industry might go for a complete overhaul and there won’t be much of the poverty stricken deaths, as the cheaper capsules will be real cheap, affordable to all.
4. Why will it be affordable to all? Becoz, the jobs lost to robots will be balanced by the new ones created in entertainment industry apart from others. Who could have imagined earlier that so many ppl would earn their livelihood just by playing soccer for clubs. Similarly the fashion industry and mass media will see stupendous growth and there won’t really be a shortage of jobs whatever the cataclysmic prophecies might say.
Is this site dead too? You “cartel” members don’t have a lot to say of late, do you?
Wonderful. I read a similar type of argument in one of the science magazines – don’t recall which one. But it also made the point clear that what Genghis achieved is nothing too spectacular. Am back to blogging and look forward to visiting this blog quite often.
Wonderful. I read a similar type of argument in one of the science magazines – don’t recall which one. But it also made the point clear that what Genghis achieved is nothing too spectacular. Am back to blogging and look forward to visiting this blog quite often.
When will you blog again?
Dear Mr Ravikiran i immensely admire your very objective scientific and thoughtful work concerning the postulated posterity of Genghis Khan. My modest comments: I do believe women may have practiced natural birth control specially Moslem Tartar women AND Chinese women both of whom will have been among Genghis Khan´s secondary wives – Moslems have strict Semitic regulations surrounding abstinence during the period wherein they are monthly affected by what in the Old Testament is described as the “custom of women” Chinese women specially of upper classes and highly cultured background had similar notions as the “Bloody Bowl Sutra” written in China indicates and the post-menses waiting period as practiced in some Semitic cultures may contribute to lower fertility Furthermore with many wives it becomes less likely unless deliberate effort is made in this direction to engage in coitus during the women´s respective fertile periods. Also although he need not have employed any such means mechanical contraceptives for the masculine partner existed already centuries before Genghis Khan in China and some of his wives may even have suggested or peferred their application. I would also like to mention that I think your postulate regarding the higher survival and procreation rate of his descendants is more than true! Nonetheless it may be of interest to you and your excellent and mind-opening website’s audience and contributors the following crude calculation (i have never been to school) Genghis Khan has a minimum of 3 known sons (the historically mentioned 4th son Ogotai appears to have been the hapless result of the abuse of his wife during her abduction by the Merkits) 3 sons have 4 sons each (lets for reasons of averaging forget the record of 40 children fathered by his eldest son , also such records were often the work of Persian historians with lively imaginations and surrogate fantasies in the sphere of the harem or Chinese nationalist puritans (a little tarnished by the liberal way they personally adopted with women upon themselves re-establishing their freedom from Mongol domination plus that they were far more restrictive of women)) But now to business – 3 sons x 4= x 2 sons (for purposes natural gender ratio) = 6, Then again these 6 x 2 sons = 12 sons again x 2 s(s=sons)= 24 s again x 2 =48 sons again x 2 = 96 sons Now 4 generations have got us through the first century (I postulate 1 generation/25 years although Mongols did marry as of ages 13 – 14 which with resultant offspring at age 16 probable could significantly increase fertility per century) Let’s continue Century 2 96 x 2= 192 192×2 = 384 384 x 2 = 768 768×2=1536 Century 3 1536 x 2 = 3072 3072×2= 6144 6144×2 = 1388 1388×2=2776 Century 4 2776×2= 5552 5552×2=11104 11104×2= 22208 22208×2= 66616 Century 5 66616 x2=133232 133232×2=266464 266464×2=532928 532928×2=1065856 Cent.(=century)6 1065856 x 2 = 2131712 2131712 x 2= 4263424 4263424 x 2= 8526848 8526848 x 2= 17053696 (!!!) Cent. 7 17053696 x 2=34107392 34107392 x 2 = 68314784 68314784 x 2 = 136629568 136629568 x 2 = 273259136 Cent. 8!! 273259136 x 2= 546518272 5465l8272 x 2 = 1093036544 1093036544 x 2 = 2186073088 2l86073088 x 2= 4372146176…/ Now it’s crude and without the proper mathematician formula I do admit also please check for the inevitable arithmetic errors – i have checked my results in a patchy fashion being mindful that I use a public computer with limited usertime and also I have done it all mentally without a calculator i’m sure the computer has one but i am a computer autodidact and am not sure how to use it quickly- still I find it’ s not uninteresting specially as the wildly proliferative and exceeding Centuries 7 and 8 would seem to at least partially cover infant mortality, death in battle or due to disease, natural impotency of some descendants not that seems to have been a big problem in the Genghisid line death in wholesale slaughters such as those organized by the conquering manchus in China or during the Ghaznevid suppression of the Mongol (pre-Babur) uprising in Delhi where 30000 Mongols originally settled due to a genghisid incursion were wiped out if i am not mistaken by the Sultan Tughlak bin Aibak By the way the gentleman ( right now I don´t remember his name but he is a Britisher I think) sponsoring the studies culminating in the 16 million descendants of genghis khan “discovery” also has written a popular book “the 7 daughters of Eve” covering the origins of European womanhood as traceable through DNA I cannot help saying that his findings there show what to me is a historically very difficult to substantiate Neolithic race ancestry given the “ethnic-cleansing” (a euphemism!) policy of invading Celtic and Germanic hordes Now I don’t know about Y chromosomes and it´s all fascinating but somehow if such projections whether really true or not can be theoretically true for Genghis Khan then it would look that the world’s men could eventually all derive their Y chromosomes to a handful of foreFathers, AND WHAT HAPPENED TO ALL THE OTHER SURELY ALL NOT SO UNSUCCESSFULL HUNDRED THOUSANDS OR CRORE MAN ANCESTORS? Besides you of India the land of mighty calculators who influenced such as Pythagoras and raised up by mathematical genius such temples as Ajanta still today displays which did not even flinch before the ravages of the Ghaznevids nor of the Ephtalite Huns before them and still today contibute as your great mathematician did to the theory of Einstein in the 20th century and now your thousands of software scientists who evn now make my little contribution here possible see if there is truth in my cave age style calculation and if you can build further upon it If true it would look to me that no unusual excesses or abuses would have had to be undertaken to achieve this figure of the 16 million descendants today after the circa 8 centuries Genghis Khan died 1227 at age 65 born 1162 – by the way if he still married during his later campaigns the ability to father children decreases with age some marriages may have been purely political and formal AND HE IS SAID TO HAVE HAD 6 MONGOL WIVES ESPOUSED I PRESUME DURING HIS YOUNGER YEARS by which he could easily have fathered all together some 18 children quite legitimately in a polygamous society 9 of whom can have been sons – now as to those lurid violation accounts firstly although his descendant i AM NOT LOOKING TO WHITEWASH HIM but his own laws the Yassa are siad to have decreed the death penalty for FORNICATION so if he married those unfortunate women and in his society marriage by capture was tolerated he was not abusing them in the eyes of his age and place also most I believe appear in Persian and other Islamic chronicles – and Moslems being always preoccupied with feminine purity and codes of gender relations commonly impute offences in that sphere to their enemies even doing so in 1947-8 in regard of conservative often deeply religious Rightist Israeli defenders of the infant Israeli state under Arab attack when Judaism is at least as prohibitive of abuse of women as Islam the proven violator is to be stoned ordains the Torah the 5 books of the law of Moses and in a very cultured attitude for ancient times Deuteronomy permits only the following in regard of women captives (paraphrased as close as I can, I do not Have the Old Testament here) If you see a woman among the captives that is beautiful and you desire her to be your wife take her with you to your home where she is to remain in mourning for a month for her parents then she is to change her clothes she must not wear the same clothes as she was wearing when she was captured and she is to bathe and comb her hair and cut her nails and then you may marry her and you will be her husband and she will be your wife however if after you have married you then find you do not like her you may not sell her as a slave for by obliging her to have sexual relations with you you have disgraced her so she must go free, so even 2000 years earlier in far more barbaric times when wholesale eliminations of poulations who had reused to surrender were permitted by Deuteronomy to the Israelites barriers had been raised to protect women from random spur-ofthe-moment abuse such as Moslem enemies later accused their Jewish (often fanatical religious seminary or university student rightist) opponents of by way of a propaganda device) and then there are also hinese (I think) accounts but some Chinese historically themselves often have a record in such matters and people often are not too original when attributing misdeeds to those they find undesirable (Kuomintang captains after suppressing Mongol rebellions in the 1900s shared out seized Mongol women among themselves like objects to keep them as concubines, please see the beginning to middle of the popular book “Wild Swans” the authoress´’s´ surname I don’t remember but she is herself no pro-Mongol rather the opposite and her first name is Jung and her parents had some difficulties during the Cultural Revolution ) Of course there IS (I saw it mentioned on a hstoric website so I suppose it is true i have not read the SECRET HISTORY)a reference in the contemporary SECRET HISTORY OF THE MONGOLS to the reserving of beautiful women (seen as spoils) for Genghis Khan but this may have been largely ritualistic namely more symbolic giving him the opportunity to pick a wife from among them and besides if it was a single encounter or 2 or 3 such unions(such as practiced by the apparently very morally liberal grandson KUbilai KHaN) it need not have resulted in progenyAlso the Yasa in a manner similar to the Koran and in some ways but much freer than the Code of Manu only much more so is very much concerned with improving in its way conditiond for women under the Mongols women were empowered (the yassa gives them a place as traders and besides though not in the Yassa which enjoins men to dedicate themselves to war and the chase probably to protect women from becoming military servants and courtesans and ensure their ability to occupy the primary feminine role as yet irreplaceable namely the maternal function for which women are obviously formed . ,, women throughout genghis Khan’ s campaigns when they wished fought at the side ofhusbands and relatives like much later it is said of Mumtaz Mahal of Taj Mahal fame wife of the Mogul Shah Jehan descendandant of Timurlaine and Genhis Khan and in supportive roles carrying equipment etc. in ways unheard of among the Turkic peoples in cities where women’s place was in the harem or generally was undesired in China with its 3 Obediences (to father husband and son) ideas and Genghis Khan did seem to love Burte his chief wife and respect her and his mother All in all i have digressd too much in feminine fashion and i am also not Gargi my main hope is to have made a very primitive but meaningful mathematical contribution to your admirable logical enlightened research but i suppose then in my ancestral line one did nore mathematics in practice than in theory!! sincerely inez altar
ERRATA:I remembered that in Ms Jung Chang’s “Wild Swans” (i looked what her name is on my copy of “Wild Swans” at home this book is her autobiography with a little family history) WARLORD OFFICIALS & OFFICERS and NOT K u o m i n t a n g o f f i c i a l s are mentioned as seizing Mongol women and taking them as concubines. Also in the name of Truth I would like to point out should Genghis Khan have violated women or even otherwise led them into semi-imposed physical relations they themselves did not desire quite a few will have aborted or murdered their babies (in East Asia a not uncommon practrice in extreme circumstances wherein it was not considered criminal similarly as many worldwide nowadays tolerate abortion – even for far lesser reason). Of course it can be said that women would not have dared to murder Genghis Khan’s babies but with the privacy customarily accorded women during parturition in those regions and times – often being solely attended by close relatives or midwives of their own ethnic origin; Chinese women often preferring to return to their parental home for childbirth – it will not have been hard to allege a stillbirth or even that the infants had been suddenly taken ill a day or two later and died. As to abortion it was well known and practiced in Asia definitely in Genghis Khan’s day prior to any Buddhist conversion and basic prohibition (even in modern Buddhist Mongolia where also there has reigned till recently a Communist pro-birth policy with a prohibition on abortion, abortions are so much in demand that unfortunately some women die yearly as a result of cheaper illegal abortions while others are suspected of inducing t r a d i t i o n a l a b o r t i o n s themselves without Western medical procedures perhaps for reasons of modesty or fear of lack of personalized and sensitive medical care or a low opinion of the clinical results of Western procedures for this purpose). Abortion will at times have been an almost necessary option for Mongol women given their nomadic and martial way of life and the rigours of climate in their home grounds in an age without modern contraceptive knowledge or techniques and a time often not as yet on the spiritual level which abstinence entails. So little impediment will have existed for those women supposedly violated by Genghis Khan to induce an abortion themselves by herbal or mechanical means or to seek the aid of midwives, physicians or shamans for this purpose- abortion in the non-Christian non-Islamic Mongol realms I believe was not subject to criteria other than that of the parents’ wishes and as to Genghis Khan if all he sought was some sort of a transitory outlet will probably not have insisted upon the children thus conceived being born and even had he the women could have claimed sickness or indisposition and Genghis Khan was by and large a considerate person with such people as he had established some form of intimate relation with provided they remained loyal to him- specially as even would he have violated those women it would rather have been the result of uncontrolled passions rather than deliberate sadistic cruelty. However caution all this may yet be nonsense – Because Tatar women were Moslem women and the Koran forbids abortion – but then many Tatars were very relaxed in their practice of Islam – they drank liquor – strictly prohibited in the Koran – they tortured prisoners – forbidden in the Koran – they slew women and children in war – forbidden in the Koran unless first attacked by such – Tatar women often exposed twined plaits of hair – prohibited by the Koran. However most definitely the Koran did restrain the majority of Tatar women from infant murder and unlike in rural China this was considered as serious murder as in our day – So they will NOT have murdered Genghis Khan’s babies., although some of the less strict may have decided to abort them, or even tragically themselves to commit suicide. As to Chinese women infant murder was more a frightful behaviourism which force majeure had introduced among the oppressed peasantry while the women who may have been presented to Genghis Khan will have been of very wealthy or aristocratic background; and in many such cases they will have in the manner of innumerable Chinese women (who often even in peacetime were destined to a life as concubines without even the rights of secondary wife laid down in Genghis Khan’s code the Yassa which seems to preclude the very low quasi-courtesan status of concubine) welcomed babies as a focus of real love in their unhappy traumatized and lonely lives speciaslly if they (as most of the educated classes) were at least partial followers of the Confucian ethos which embodies the perfect and exalted meaningful fulfillment which motherhood concedes as nothing else to Woman. Furthermore cultured devout Buddhists not rare among the aristocracy would have hesitated to abort or even murder any children conceived . IN OTHER WORDS I tend to think such a theory of abortion/infant murder -as -response-to-violation can only possibly apply to a fringe minority SPECIALLY ALSO as some women (particularly in the Turkic-Chinese mediaeval feminine world ) will have viewed becoming mothers to Genghis Khan´s children (even more so given that he conceded status to all children regardless of who the mother was in the Yassa) as a means of obtaining better treatment and even status and position. SO ALL THIS DEMENTS ANY THEORY OF VIOLATIONS UNPROVEN & TRACELESS DUE TO ABORTION OR MURDER OF RESULTANT PROGENY. Just one more comment – as to this standard 50/50 boy /girl ratio freaks of Nature do occur not so uncommonly: Thus in recent years 2 trustworthy radio senders (BBC is one of them) reported in recent years 2 villages in the Iberian Peninsula where the population’s adult offspring were … ALL OF MASCULINE GENDER n o t s i n g l e w o m a n – in the years these men were conceived modern ultrasound technology which has so shortsightedly wrecked the boy/girl ratio in parts of Asia was not available in the then relatively backward Iberian Peninsula Well and recently one of my dogs had 5 puppies … ALL 5 BOYS… (and earlier her mother had had 7 puppies – 5 boys 2 girls) ..And a man we buy food from has ..2 SONS and possibly 1 DAUGHTER and i am not even sure he has one or it is a daughter-in-law. Sincerely inez altar
super maths going there! will take me a lifetime. Let’s just say, Mathusian theory has been de-bunked and only some wannabe economists use it when in doubt! But good writing anyway! like it….
cheers,m