How are we all related?

[ed2288]

If you have ever tried making a family tree you will know that a heck of a lot of people are connected even in quite a small tree. I was just wondering how big you would need to make it to include all the people in England?

[NikkiB]

i can't answer your specific question but I too am fascinated by geneology. I find it amazing to hear of all the links, however tenuous, from one person to another. Not long ago the papers revealed that Madonna and Camilla Duchess of Cornwall are distant cousins, related by French ancestor generations ago. Princess Diana was related to Humphrey Bogart and Colin Powell. Tom Hanks is a descendant of Abraham Lincoln. And a great example of how the melting pot is no myth, Queen Victoria has black descendants in the Deep South of the USA.

[heathfield]

I remember reading that it was theorectically possible to be related to everyone alive in England around 1560.

[SteveD]

Surely we must all be related in some way?

Imagine your family tree. You have two parents; they have two parents each and those parents have two parents each and so on back through the generations.

You don't have to go back all that far relatively (ha ha) speaking before you end up with a number of people greater than the population of the country.

[landie]

If you go back 26 generations you will find that you have 67,108,864 ancestors, not counting siblings.