What website?

Question

do i go to to see my ancestors from thousands of generations back

Answer 1

Ancestry.com has some, but no websites goes back thousands.

And if you want to find your ancestors, you will have to do the research.

Answer 2

I'll paste my stock answer,but you can only get back to the 1600's reliably, and you're not going to be willing to to the research. A thousand generations would be about the time your ancestors and mine were walking out of Africa, 25,000 years ago.

There are over 400,000 free genealogy sites. I have links to some huge ones below, but you'll have to wade through some advice and warnings first.

This is a text file I paste. People ask your question 3 - 14 times a day here. By pasting, you get a long, detailed answer, but I don't get finger cramps from typing.

Researching your family tree is harder than posting on MySpace. It is about as hard as researching a term paper in a History class. You don't have to be a Ph. D., but you won't do it with five clicks. Many people stop reading here and pick another hobby.

If you didn't mention a country, we can't tell if you are in the USA, UK, Canada or Australia. I'm in the USA and my links are for it. If you are not, please edit your question to add a country. Or, better yet, delete it and ask again, this time putting in the country. Genealogists from the UK answer posts here too. They are more experienced and more intelligent than I am. I'm better looking and my jokes are funnier.

The really good stuff is in your parents' and grandparents' memories. No web site is going to tell you how your great grandparents decorated the Christmas tree with ornaments cut from tin foil during the depression, how Great Uncle Elmer wooed his wife with a banjo, or how Uncle John paid his way through college in the 1960's by smuggling herbs. Talk to your living relatives before it is too late.

You won't find living people on genealogy sites. Don't look for yourself or your parents. Crooks can use your birth date and your mother's maiden name to steal your identity. If your parents were married in June and your oldest brother was born 4 months later, it isn't anyone's business, which is another reason living people's dates are not on public sites.

So much for the warnings. Here are some links. These are large and free. Many of them have subtle ads for Ancestry.com in them - ads that ask for a name, then offer a trial subscription. Watch out for those advertisements.

If you try the links and don't find anyone, go to

http://www.tedpack.org/yagenlinks.html

It repeats each link, but it has a paragraph of tips and instructions for each one.

http://www.cyndislist.com

Cyndi's List has over 250,000 sites.

http://www.familysearch.org/Eng/Search/f...

The Mormon's mega-site.

http://worldconnect.genealogy.rootsweb.c...

RootsWeb World Connect. The links at the top are advertisements. They mislead beginners. Ignore them and scroll down.

http://www.rootsweb.com/

RootsWeb Home.

This is the biggest free (genealogy) site in the world.

http://www.ancestry.com

Ancestry has some free data and some you have to pay for.

http://www.usgenweb.net

US Gen Web. Click on a state. Find a link that says "County".

http://www.ancestry.com/learn/facts/defa...

Surname meanings and origins, one of Ancestry's free pages.

http://ssdi.genealogy.rootsweb.com/cgi-b...

Social Security Death Index. Click on "Advanced". Women are under their married names. They are under their maiden names in most other sites.

http://find.person.superpages.com/

USA Phone book, for looking up distant cousins.

http://vitals.rootsweb.com/ca/death/sear...

California Death Index, 1940 - 1997.

    

http://www.genforum.com

GenForum has surname, state and county boards.

http://boards.ancestry.com/

Ancestry has surname, state and county boards too. They are free.

Read

http://www.tedpack.org/goodpost.html

before you post on either one.

Read the paragraphs about query boards on

http://www.tedpack.org/yagenlinks.html

before you search them.

      

http://searches.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/lis...

Roots Web Mailing List Archives.

Read

http://www.tedpack.org/maillist.html

if genealogy mailing lists are new to you.

Off the Internet, some public libraries have census image subscriptions. Many Family History Centers do too. FHC's are small rooms in Mormon churches. They welcome anyone interested in genealogy, not just Mormons. They have resources on CD's and volunteers who are friendly. They don't try to convert you; in fact, they don't mention their religion unless you ask a question about it.

Answer 3

THOUSANDS OF GENERATIONS?  The ONLY choice at all would be a DNA test.  Even if you use the Liberal Government estimate of a generation as being 20 years, 1,000 generations X 20 years = 20,000 years.

My first discipline in this old world is etymology; none of the languages extant 20,000 years ago has survived; probably there is no record of any kind that would give us a connection to any of those languages.

Most credible sources give the rise of modern languages at about 4,000 years ago and most of those languages are extinct.

Meaning that there absolutely are no records of any kind to rely upon; just DNA.

I opted for www.familytreedna.com.  If you use that AND go with the National Geographics Genotype Program, you can get a hazy idea where your ancestors were in the remote past.

Answer 4

FamilySearch.com is a pretty good website, its free and pretty easy to use. but you will have to do some research since each persons direct ancestry is custom to you and your siblings only. Good Luck!

Answer 5

None.

There are websites with family trees.  However, any of them that will go back thousands of generations are based on speculation not on documented evidence.

Actually, information in family trees on any website must be viewed as clues.  You cannot take everything as absolute fact. The trees are submitted by folks like you and me and mostly not documented or poorly documented.  You might see different information from different submitters on the same people. Then you will see repeatedly the same information from many different submitters on the same people, but that is no guarantee at all it is correct. A lot of people copy without verifying.  

Most people are doing good if they can get back to the 1600s.  I am almost 73.  In my case that is 13 generations, not including myself.  If you find a royal or noble line in your family tree, you might go back to the late first melennium.  

The only way to know your family history is to trace it starting with yourself and your parents and go back one generation at a time.  

Anytime you see a family tree that goes back to Julius Caesar or the royal line of David, or even Adam and Eve,  it will not meet professional genealogy standards for documentation.  It will be based purely on speculation and jumping to a conclusion.

Anyone that has told you that they have found or their Aunt Sallie has found their complete family tree online, you should tell them that unless they have or Aunt Sallie has verified it with records, they don't know if they have a valid family tree or not.

Also understand if you go back 10 generations you can be directly descended from over a thousand people.  It pyramids.

If you go back 20 generations, you can be directly descended from over a million people.  

See you have 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great grandparents, 16 great great grandparents.  Right there you already have 30 people, add your 32 great great great grandparents and it jumps to 62.