[QUOTE=gilmore;756673]We are all cousins. It's a question of degree. The most recent common ancestor of all humans lived sometime between the 6th millemium BCE and the 1st millenium CE. The most recent common ancestor of all Western Europeans may have lived as recently as 1000 CE. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_re...ommon_ancestor

Put another way, I have read that with a 99+% certainly, any human alive in western Europe in Charlemagne's time either died sine prole (or their descendants died sine prole,thus ending the line), or is the ancestor of every last one of us.

As the number of our ancestors doubles every generation we go back, it doesn't take very many generations to get to a greater number of ancestors than all the humans who have ever lived.