Thought this might be of interest it was sent to me by Ken Johnson. YOU ARE YOUR OWN COUSIN >From the column "Publisher's Corner" by Graham Ponder in the Madisonian, Madison, Georgia. Guy Murchie, in his book "The Seven Mysteries of Life" proves that we are all cousins. Murchie says, "Although few people seem to realize it, man's relation to himself is fairly easy to measure and is surprisingly close. In fact, no human being, of any race, can be less closely related to any other human being than approximately fiftieth cousin, and most of us are a lot closer. It means simply that the family tree of all of us, of whatever orgin or trait, must meet and merge into one genetic tree of all humanity by the time they have spread into our ancestries for about fifty generations." "Just use simple mathematics, 2 parents equal 4 grandparents, equal 8 great-grandparents, 16 great-great-grandparents, etc. The thirtieth power of two 1,073,741,824 is greater than was the earth's population thirty generations ago, in the thirteenth century; great than the world's population at that time. "You cannot go on doubling your ancestors for more than a few generations into the past for inevitably the same ancestors will appear on both your father's and your mother's sides of the family tree, reducing the total number. This does not allow you to double the rate during that generation, and surely this would begin to happen more and more often as you go back in time. Spouses are not just spouses, they also become very distant cousins, not only related by marriage but also by "blood" because somewhere in the past they share ancestors."