So Many Ancestors, So Little Time People have many reasons for
doing genealogy. Some want to learn more about themselves by
studying their ancestors. Some are curious about what their
ancestors did or how they fit into history. Other like solving
mysteries, working out puzzles, and genealogy provides clue
after clue to keep one going forever. Genealogy is the hobby
that never ends due to the number of ancestors we each have.
Going back just 20 generations you could find 2,097,152
ancestors - if you could find them all - highly unlikely, even
if you had a whole team of researchers working with you. Going
back a thousand years ago, each of us has over a trillion
ancestors, more people than were alive at the time. In that
thousand years, you would find many persons duplicated many
times in your ancestry. You would also realize how truly we are
all members of "the family of man" as we are all related to each
other multiple times. That incredible number of ancestors means
we are all descendants of Charlemagne, Bri