A while ago I published about my wife's 12th Great Grandfather, who is my son's 13th great grandfather (16 generations back). I hadn't thought about it until recently, but we have a lot of 13th great grandparents. Think about it - we have 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great grandparents, 16 2nd great grandparents, and so on. When we get to 13th great grandparents, there are 32,768 ancestors in that generation (assuming no overlap).
That's right, you have well over 32,000 13th great grandparents. So around the time of Elizabethan England (give or take), there were 32,768 people who all contributed to one person - our son. Though to be sure, only some were in England.
In fact, my best guess is that 12,288 of my son's 13th great grandparents were in England. There were 8,192 of his 13th great grandparents in Ireland, 4,096 in Italy, another 4,096 in Ukraine*, 2,048 in Germany and 2,048 in Wales.
*I am still trying to figure out for sure where in Eastern Europe that part of my wife's family is from. Look for more in a future post.
