Ahnentafel Numbers

Ahnentafel is a German word meaning "ancestor table".

Each person in the table has a unique number. Each even-numbered person is male, and each odd-numbered person is female, except person #1, who can be male or female.

Take any individual's number and multiply it by two to find that individual's father, and add one to the resulting number to find the individual's mother.

With each successive generation, there are twice as many ancestors.

Generation	Number	Relationship
1	1	Me
2	2 3	My Father My Mother
3	4 5 6 7	My Father's Father My Father's Mother My Mother's Father My Mother's Mother
4	8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15	My Father's Father's Father My Father's Father's Mother My Father's Mother's Father My Father's Mother's Mother My Mother's Father's Father My Mother's Father's Mother My Mother's Mother's Father My Mother's Mother's Mother
And so on. . . (each generation has double the number of people of the previous generation)

For those who love math equations, each generation contains the numbers from 2^(g-1) to (2^g)-1, where g is the generation.

For instance, if you wanted to find out which numbers are in the 12th generation, figure

	`2^12-1`	to	`2¹²-1`
=	`2¹¹`	to	`4096-1`
=	`2048`	to	`4095`

Number 2048 would be my father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father

Number 4095 would be my mother's mother's mother's mother's mother's mother's mother's mother's mother's mother's mother