Quote Originally Posted by Innocentius
I'm sorry to be the first pessimist in here, but: I believe either you or your aunt (or the both of you) are lying. A lot of people want their family trees to be famous and great, and it's not unusual for people to make things up. For example, according to Swedish genealogy about 50% of the Swedish population are related to Birger Magnusson ("Birger Jarl", an important character in Swedish medieval history) and about 10% would be related to Gustav Vasa.

For me to change my opinion, I would like to see some evidence. 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.
Some communities do keep meticulous records of family trees, or at least those which they're keen to keep in mind. I've seen family records which stretch back around 1000 years, with not a single famous individual among them. Insulated communities who have been untouched by war or largescale migrations, but who were keen recordkeepers. I'd imagine that strategically remote areas of China and Japan and other settled civilisations would be prime candidates for millenium-long lists of non-entities. Probably not in Europe though.