[soltice]

and you thought little willie clintoon spread it all around!

[Alexander Rubin]

Holy cannoli. That's a lot of mouths to feed. ;) And it means that this man literally could field an army out of his britches...

[Grut]

Ah. And would this be the famous Won Hung Lo?

[Blue Screen of Death]

I guess that powered rhino horn must work.

[Rome2000]

Geez, thats more than Wilt the Stilt Chamberlain

[emiller]

George Foreman would have named them all- "George."

[CommandoFrank]

Damn, I know what his hobby was...

[Verginius Rufus]

I don't know if I agree with the math. If China's population was 100 then and is 1.3 billion now, it doesn't necessarily work out to each Chinese man of that era having 20 descendants today. Maybe they meant 20 descendants with the same Y-chromosome.

If there were 50 million Chinese males then, some would have died without offspring, or had children but eventually their descendants died out. Say there are 650 million Chinese males today (it may be a little higher because of the one-child rule leading to a surplus of males). Each Chinese male has a Y-chromosome which was carried by an ancestor alive in 1644 (the start of the Ch'ing dynasty), and in nearly all cases that ancestor was Chinese. On average, a Chinese male of 1644 would have 13 descendants today carrying that Y-chromosome, but in fact many would have no such descendants because of families having only daughters, and others would have many more than 13.

Total descendants, including those through female descendants, would on the average be much higher. There are Americans of the 18th century who have thousands of living descendants. It is quite credible that a ruling dynasty would have vastly more descendants because of the imperial harems.

[JRios1968]

"Once upon a time there were 2 Chinese...now look at how many there are."