Charlemagne and William the Conqueror descent

It's actually a result of something called "pedigree collapse" or "implex", due to the absolute impossibility of having that many separate ancestors that long ago (the "rice/wheat on a chessboard" exponential thing).

Sooner or later (*much* sooner in the case of nobility, who were always having to send off for Papal dispensations), two people related in some degree come together, get married and have children, lather rinse repeat until everyone is at least distantly related to everyone else.

My paternal grandfather and grandmother were 8th cousins, although they probably never knew it. And as for my mother's side of the family - that was one reason among many why people started *leaving* Calitri, to find people to marry who weren't too closely related to them.

Paternal grandmother, in fact, had a rather nasty little Nest in her recent background - *her* paternal grandfather and grandmother were half-first cousins! (That's the lower Eastern Shore for you - too many people, too little space, and no wonder they started leaving in droves about that time.) Not that she knew *that* either.

Try it yourself with a calculator. Keep multiplying 2 x 2 and see how fast it gets out of hand. :-)

Jessica Christophe-Dymock Paternal Ydna QM 242 and Private User - I think it is so true that we find these interconnections from generations back. My father's family is so entrenched in the Southeastern US descending from Welsh, Scots, English, and a smattering of German that it was a situation many times in families of cousins marrying cousins knowingly and most often unknowingly. He always said he went as far away as possible in finding a wife who was a first generation American with parents from western Finland.

Geni has given me a different perspective as I find my father's Scottish roots have the blood of Vikings and yes, I am finding connections by blood and marriage to some of my Finnish/Swedish tree. So I suspect the reality of "pedigree collapse" is more common than we can imagine. I have come to appreciate Maven's post of "I'm My Own Grandpa" more every day.