IT IS ALL RELATIVE

So tell me if this makes sense to you. 
How many people had to procreate to make any of us possible?  Obviously two, who were your parents.  To make your parents possible, 4 people, your grand parents, had to make the leap.  If you assume about 50 years for a generation this takes you back to about the time of the Wright Brothers.  If you are still with me it gets better.  8 great grand parents required 16 great, great grand parents and they all had to pair up and create at least one child for you to exist.  Assuming a 50 year generation interval this brings you back to when Napoleon was being crowned as Emperor in 1804. 

The geometric progression marches on with 32, 64, 128 and 256 people by the year 1600 all working to support your existence.  Skipping a bit we have 2,048 relatives about the time Columbus sales from Spain in 1492 and 16,384 when Marco Polo went on tour in 1300.  65,536 predecessors had to successfully mate when the Magna Carta was signed in 1215 and 524,288 distant relatives contributed when the Battle of Hastings was fought in 1066. 

Now it gets interesting.  The estimated world population when gun powder was invented in 650 AD was 230 million and 67,108,864 of these were your distant relatives.  If this progression is accurate, everyone in the estimated world population of 210 million, shortly after the last Roman Emperor reigned in 476 AD, were our direct ancestors and had to contribute a little bit to make each one of us. 

Even taking into account an incest factor, we come to the same result within a limited number of generations further into the past.  Either the world ancient population is very much under estimated or very incestuous or we are all related. Things that come to mind if this is true. If you could go back in time to 476 AD you would have to be careful to not prevent anybody living from dying or otherwise becoming incapable of procreating before creating one child or you would not exist. Since all the worlds population in 476 AD must mate to create you, the same is also true for everyone alive in 2017. Thus, everyone alive in 2017 is related. We all share the same set of ancestors that were alive in 476 AD. Since it is reasonable to assume that there were babies who died shortly after birth or people who died before mating in 476 AD and in all years before this not everyone in the estimated population could have participated in your creation; therefore it is also reasonable to assume that the world population must have been much greater than current estimates.

Essence

Life clings to cool damp niches on clumps of solid matter that aggregate in orbits about suns.  Sheltered from the radiation that permeates space by a thin layer of gasses expelled from the solids as they bake in the heat of their star, this thin layer of scum thrives.  On the scale of most things in the universe, this life and all its creations are invisible.  Left to itself with the proper environment, it multiples to a fault to ultimately decay and collapse from within and leave peripheral remnants to carry on or perish.  More prolific specimens exploit various means to disperse through space and colonize new cool damp locations.  Local extinctions are unavoidable but the resilience of this life increases exponentially with the volume of the space it occupies.  Stars die and worlds end in sublimation.  Organics coating these solids contribute to the complexity of the plasma storm that expands and dissipates.  The cool damp spaces not sterilized remain ready to begin again when seeded.  Life again collects in gravity wells, compressed and exuding its essence to fuel the engines of evolution.