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Comment by Raphmedia | Hacker News Reader

I doubt 20 kids would be enough to qualify. Most people of my grand parent's generation had around 20 kids. It used to be the norm.

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Keep in mind that mortality prior to reaching one's first birthday was upwards of 50% in most premodern societies, so the key factor here seems to me to be not only fertility, but the ability to wield social capital over multiple generations (employing court physicians, wetnurses, etc) to ensure that all those kids actually live to adulthood. Hence why I find this study so interesting - it's using genetic evidence to map the flows of social power across generations (like with the dynasties of Genghis and the Qing).

20 kids!?,the man is a serial rapist.please listen to the wrath of the khan podcast by Dan Carlin

http://podbay.fm/show/173001861/e/1343775512?autostart=1

Once again, not talking about Genghis, the thread refers to Charlemagne.

Oh, this makes sense. I understand how an emperor or an otherwise important figure would be able to have a huge dynasty while being able to have the offsprings stay alive to keep the bloodline alive.

However, in this exemple (Charlemagne), I doubt it unless he had a lot of bastard children.

In the example of my grandmother, she had up to 20 children (excluding those that didn't even make it to birth), but only 17 of them lived. The poor still had a lot of children, albeit with more issues, so I doubt the social capital would help here.

I have no idea, really. But this in an interesting conversation.

> Most people of my grand parent's generation had around 20 kids.

Do the math...this is clearly false.

Depending on the location it could very well be true.

This is true in my area. Not all over the world, of course.

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