The word genealogy comes from the greek for "Generation Knowledge." Before you start researching records your Genealogy goes back as far as you remember details and stories about your family, but it is impossible to tell how far back your genealogy can go.
I compare it to going to a yard sale and buying a plastic bag of puzzle pieces. Some pieces may be missing and never found, some will be mixed up from other puzzles, some will be missing the pieces that connect them to the rest of the puzzle. and without the box you don't know what it is supposed to look like, or how big it is supposed to be.
How far back your genealogy can go will be influenced by what countries your ancestors resided in; Some countries started keeping accurate records of people and archives before others did. It will depend on the social class of your ancestors - lineages of nobles tend to be well documented and preserved, peasants were often not recorded in enough details for our use today/. Has anything happened to the records e.g. a lot of early records from Toronto, Canada were destroyed in that cities "Great Fires", Some records are lost, misfiled, illegible, or erroneous.
