Famous Relatives - Betty Davis???

The power of exponential numbers comes into play on these things. You have two parents, four grandparents, eight ggrandparents, 16 2nd great grandparents, 32 3rd, 64 4th, 128 5th, 256 6th and 512 seventh great grandparents, the level at which Betty Davis and myself live on this chart (putting me two below Maggie where I belong.)

So with 512 people out there for both parties, there is a decent chance for a connection. The eight great grandparents level (10 generations) has 1024 people at that level, between three and four centuries ago. Go back another ten generations (20 total) or at about 1300 and you have over a million ancestors. Another ten generations (30) is about the year 900 or 1000 and you have a BILLION ancestors or about the same magnitude as the population of the planet. This gets trimmed a bit as cousins no matter how distant encounter each other a become a couple.

But still, everybody is related.