Consider: 2 parents; 4 grandparents; 8 g-grandparents; 16 g-g-grandparents; 32 g-g-ggrandparents. In my case this gets me back to around 1815 for the great-great-great-grandparents' birth years - which, in genealogical terms, is a snip.

Consider further: 64 g-g-g-g-grandparents; 128 g-g-g-g-g-grandparents... and so on...

Unless you know the origin of every single one of those ancestors and their ancestors - and so on for all of time back to dear old Auntie Mitochondrial Eve - then you don't really know your origins. You know a little, just a very little, of where you came from

I by-passed all that. I know from the Bible that eventually all those long lines of antecedants converge on Noah, Shem, Ham & Japheth!