Narrator: Imagine having so many children,
you could run a factory.
That's what Moulay Ismail's family looked like.
He was a brutal emperor of the Moroccan Alaouite Dynasty
from 1672 to 1727,
and he was reported to have had at least
1,171 children.
But he wasn't the only one
who used his power to sleep with hundreds of women,
whether they were interested or not.
Other rulers like Augustus the Strong,
and Genghis Khan had hundreds of children,
and while these were some of the more ruthless rulers
of their time,
it raises a more fundamental scientific question.
Women can reproduce for about half their lifetime
and can only give birth about once every year or so,
so it makes sense that women can only have a fraction
as many children as men.
One study estimated
that women can have around 15 pregnancies
in a lifetime, and depending on how many babies
she gives birth to at a time,
a woman can probably have around 15 to 30 children max.
But the most prolific mother ever,
according to Guinness World Records,
was Mrs. Feodor Vassilyev in 19th-century Russia.
She is said to have given birth to 69 children
over 27 pregnancies.
That's a lot for one woman,
but that's nothing compared to our friend
from earlier, Moulay Ismail.
According to records, he had four wives
and 500 women in his harem,
but there are factors that not even an emperor
can control, like how a man's sperm becomes less mobile
and more abnormal as he grows older,
which ultimately reduces his chances
of fathering children later in life.
In fact, studies suggest that men over 50
have an up to 38% lower chance
of impregnating a woman
compared to men under 30.
For Ismail, he fathered most
of his children relatively young,
so by age 57, he had an estimated
1,171 kids.
But he wasn't the only man in history
with tons of progeny.
Augustus the Strong was king of 18th-century Poland,
and he had a long distance relationship with his wife.
So, of course that didn't stop him
from fathering a rumored 370 children by mistresses,
and Genghis Khan, notorious for conquering large areas
of 13th-century Asia
is estimated to have had between 1,000 and 2,000 children.
In fact, by tracking types of Y chromosomes,
scientists estimate that up to 16 million men today,
who live in regions that Khan conquered,
could have been descendants of him
or his close male relatives.
But did these men really reach
their maximum human possibility?
Turns out the records on Ismail
only spanned 32 years of his life.
By one calculation, he really could have had hundreds more.
If you compare that to men in more modern times,
the most prolific fathers today
have about 200 children.
That's nowhere near 1,171,
and honestly, it's probably for the best.