Quote Originally Posted by Innocentius
There is pretty much no way you can track any families except royal families back to the 11th century and there is pretty much no way you can track any "ordinary" family further back than to the 16th or 17th century.
I beg to differ, in the UK it is relatively (pardon the pun) simple to get a basic outline of a family for two reasons:

1) The Doomsday book, the huge register implemented by William the Bastard.
2) Birth and Death registers of churches across Europe.

These two things combined with the fact that people generally didn't travel make the task of getting a basic outline fairly simple but expensive to research.

Using these two methods and also other documents I know I come from a rather boring family of coal miners and peasants. But I'm also related to Rowland Hill and we even have some of his paintings and to some of the first British/Irish settlers of Southern Africa, (I'm directly related to them and can prove it with a multitude of family heirlooms).