Today I thought about how many generations back I need to go before I meet a first person in my family tree that:

• Didn’t have a job (in the modern sense, i.e. living off the land or hunting/fishing)?
• Didn’t know how to read or never read a book or a magazine?
• Didn’t have any kind of official/government contact in their life (a priest, a police, a taxman)
• Didn’t have any kind of timing device? Or any any kind of complicated device/appliance?
• Didn’t live in a house?
• Spoke a language that wouldn’t be mutually understandable with the language I speak?

Where did all those people live? Would I recognize them as my family? Would I have something in common with them? What are the things they took granted and I wouldn’t know