One Million Great Grandparents

Is it an oxymoron to say that I have one million great grandparents? OK, let me explain this wild idea. I wanted to find some answers to how I got here.
No, I didn’t try studying how the human race began or how the earth turns. I started looking at the facts. I have two parents and four grandparents. My grandparents, their parents and so on, are deceased.
Between two families, I know I have eight great-grandparents, but I can’t name all of them. They weren’t alive when I was born. But this still doesn’t tell the whole story about how I got here. I don’t think I’ll ever know for sure.
Numbers say a lot. I calculated in my head that I had 16 great-great grandparents living at one time. From here, I took 16 and multiplied by two and got 32, the number of great-great-great grandparents I once had.
I continued calculating until the tenth generation (assuming that each grandparent has two parents) and reached a total of 1,024 great-great…etc., grandparents. That’s impressive (oh, it gets better).
Going back twenty generations, I later learned that I have, well, 1,048,576 great (x20) grandparents. Wow. And that’s not counting all my great aunts and uncles. The number doesn’t stop there.
For me, thinking about the preceding generations is like seeing the effect from holding a mirror up to another mirror. You know, the never-ending idea. Well, sort-of.
I wonder where Adam and Eve and Noah’s children come into the big picture. When I glance at the number of ancestors I have, it amazes me how the truth about one big family doesn’t get any more real than this.