A mere thirty generations back—in, roughly, A.D. 1066—you had more than a billion direct ancestors in the same generation (2 to the power of 30). Since there were fewer than a billion people alive at that time in the whole world, many of them were your ancestors two or three times over. If, like me, you are of British descent, the chances are that almost all of the few million Britons alive in 1066, including King Harold, William the Conqueror, a random serving wench, and the meanest vassal (but excluding all well-behaved monks and nuns), are your direct ancestors. This makes you a distant
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