this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2023
757 points (98.7% liked)

Lord of the memes

7533 readers
980 users here now

The Lord of the rings memes communitiy on Lemmy. Share memes about Lord of the rings and be respectful.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 17 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

Every person on earth comes from a long line of ancestors that goes back to the earliest humans. That means that if you don't have any kids, you'll be the first one ever in your line to not have kids.

Having said that, I would bet that a "line coming to an end" is a pretty common scenario. Even if the average couple has 2.1 kids, there are going to be families with 10 kids, and others with none. I wonder if anybody has ever collected stats on what fraction of people never have kids. Maybe it's something you can search for if you know what the right search term is.

[–] Anyolduser@lemmynsfw.com 12 points 9 months ago (2 children)

The line doesn't go back to early humans. The line goes back to the the very "trunk" of the tree of life, a microbe known as LUCA - the Last Universal Common Ancestor.

Ancestry doesn't just run through the history of man, it runs through the history of all life on Earth.

[–] CurlyMoustache@lemmy.world 4 points 9 months ago

I know a Luca. Nice guy. Horny as hell, but a nice guy

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 0 points 9 months ago

Sure, but at some point there was an ancestor who wasn't human enough to think of it as "a line".