Your family tree
Every family branches outward through different places, languages, and faces — and still folds back into common humanity.
Move through the generations and the page explains what each number means in time, scale, and overlap.
Each stop explains which ancestor layer you are looking at.
How this works · sources & limits
The core calculation is 2 to the power of the number of generations: slots in one generation, not the sum of all preceding generations. It models two biological parents per person, not the richness of adoptive or chosen families. Repeated ancestors are known as pedigree collapse.
The explanation cards translate each selected generation into an approximate time span using a simple 25-year-per-generation model. They are for orientation, not a reconstruction of your actual genealogy.
The 8.2 billion benchmark is the rounded UN 2024 world population, not a historical population estimate. Inputs stay in this page’s memory; nothing is sent to a server or saved.
← Explore the map and the story behind One Origin
More ways we’re connected
Your own numbers
The deep record
Two chains, one continentMitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosomal Adam, drawn against time.
The shared ancestor counterType a crowd. Find the ancestor every one of them shares.
Count the hands between usFewer than 50 links separate any two people alive.
Fourteen peoples, one patternStructural universals across five continents.
Shifting the frame
Footsteps of KinshipDrag 300,000 years of leaving Africa, one toolkit at a time.
Root to BranchThousands of languages branching from African roots.
The Deep Time MirrorYour face, aligned with the oldest skulls we have.
The Deep History Time MachineWatch borders, cities and farms fade off the planet.
The Great-Grandparent MultiplierYour family tree has to loop. Here is the maths.
Stardust & SoilWhat you are made of, and where each atom was forged.
The Borderless Night SkySame stars. Many skies. One imagination.
The Reverse Migration PostcardA line from your city back to the Great Rift Valley.
Feel the pattern
The Converging RiversEvery river runs back to the Rift. Drag to pull a thread home.
The Synchronized BreathOne atmosphere. Hold to slow and breathe with the globe.
The Shared LexiconMama, water, fire: one breath, many scripts.
The Erasure of BordersScroll to peel the modern map down to a starlit Africa.
The Mirror of AgesMany shades, one composite face. Unify the spectrum.
