What percentage of your ancestors were women? what percentage were men?

Question

http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/08/20/is-there-anything-good-about-men-and-other-tricky-questions/index.html?hp

Do you agree?

Answer 1

The article uses bad semantics. 50% of my ancestors were men. 50% of your ancestors were men. BUT, only about 33% of OUR ancestors were men, because more men had multiple partners and are both your ancestor and my ancestor.

Answer 2

No I do not agree.
He offers no molecular evidence correlating this concept of reproductive gender bias. The numbers posed in the article are pure conjecture with no supportive evidence. If females had twice the reproductive chances then women who had only female children would increase their genetic survival over ones that had males. We would see females born twice as often as males.

Our population tends to stay at about 1:1 male to female for a reason. If was true that females had twice the reproductive success of males then women who only had female offspring would have a huge advantage in ensuring their genetic survival. This would continue to spread until males were in to short a supply to cover all the females. This result means all the males are reproducing but not all the females are. Now the benefit is with the females that produce more male offspring. Now this trait would spread in the population. The population stays in equilibrium because the reproductive benefit of producing male and female offspring is roughly equal.
The census bureau says "The nation's male population grew at a slightly faster rate (13.9 %) than the female population (12.5 %) over the last decade of the 20th century"
In 2000 "male and female populations were 138.1 million
and 143.4 million,respectively."
http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/2001/cb01cn181.html

His idea reminds me of Melvin Konners' book 'Why the reckless survive: and other secrets of human nature'.
The one who dares to hunt the larger prey or sail off into the unknown may get to eat that night or find a tropical island with possible mates who are enthralled by someone different. Risk can offer rewards so the race does not tend toward ever more cautious behavior not a shift in reproductive success in one gender over another.

Answer 3

How can it be anything other than 50:50?

Even from the article, if only about 40% of men reproduced, all of MY ancestors did!

If you start talking about extended families, the answer may be different, but of the people I directly descended from, it's 50:50.

*EDIT* After re-reading, I get what it's saying now. In that case, yes, I agree.

Answer 4

Even for individuals it doesn't have to be 50/50

Adam and Barbara produce Charlotte

Adam and Charlotte produce a child (This may be an "illicit union", but I bet it happened)

Answer 5

60/40

Answer 6

By sheer logic.....half and half,,,,as the other answerers hab¡ve alreadt said...
By the way, your question is not difficult at all...we do need only a man and a woman to procreate another humn being.....not a difficult percentage to calculate....or is it????

Answer 7

I was a test tube baby.... so were my ancestors for the last 200 years.. hmm... does the color of the test tube count? Blue / Pink?

Answer 8

could be

I never thought about that

I guess I'm just in the 60% that didn't I guess

that explains a lot, so maybe now its time to stop trying

Answer 9

that would have to be 50/50. no other way

Answer 10

i tot it must be 50-50.