Hi "cuz"
well, Genealogy is a metamathematical animal. For ex., going from us back to our Mayflower ancestors - any guess as to how many ancestors we have in the one line? (I'm not including ancestral cousins, aunts, uncles etc - only 7th or 8th great great grandparents?
Keep in mind that each one of has the same number of ancestors, starting with 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great grandparents - etc doubling each generation back.
So do you have a guess yet? your first sets of great great grandparents will be the 5th generation back from you - so your 7th or 8th g g grandparents will be 11/12 generations back. In your 12th generation back, there will be: 4096 8th great great grandparents. (Some couples will probably be listed twice and have different lines down to you through different children.)
However, the numbers change dramatically when it switches over to "descendants" as the rule of doubling no longer applies. Now the numbers depend on how many children each couple had...for example: John and Priscilla Alden are one of my sets of 7th great great grandparents. THEY had 11 children - and today, there are tens of thousands of descendants.
Back to the numbers that ARE absolute: AS I mentioned, when you get back many generations, you will find many couples appearing more than once...our genealogical 'tree' is shaped like a diamond. It starts at the bottom point with us and widens as it rises...after so many generations, as the same couples start showing up again and again, the separate names start to get fewer and the shape starts coming in again until it reaches the top point - your FIRST ONE ancestor.
Mathematician's and genealogists maintain that by the time we reach the 33rd generation - which puts us back before medieval days - everyone on the face of the earth is related.
We are, truly, brothers and sisters. Ain't is a shame we can't get along better!
Someone posted to me a few months ago that if we go back far enough, we're all related! So true, lol.
I don't have Mayflower ancestors (as far as I know). My grandfather's immigrant ancestor was sent to Jamestown colony as an adolescent in 1619, probably the result of a sweep of orphans from the streets of London. He settled in Maryland but my grandfather's g-grandfather made his way back to northern Virginia. My grandmother's family came to Virginia to escape Cromwell circa 1660.
I love genealogy!