Of course they have. But no one, that we know about as the church records don't go back before 1500. Given the demographic expansion in Europe in the Bronze age, he or she lived maybe then, or even later. As both come from "old settled land" and I have more ties to "new settled land", I am proably closer related to both. Beware!
If you go 33 generations back (about 800 to 1000 years) your theoretical number of ancestors in this generation is higer than the number of people living on this planet, today. This does not mean, you are related to everyone who lived by then - "everyone in Europe is related to Charlemagne" is a fallacy, but the possibility to be related to someone rises exponentially with every generation you go back.
Many people don't seem to comprehend that all living creatures on earth are probably related, let alone all individuals of one species. Of course the last common ancestor of two human beings can have lived several ten thousand years ago.
Anyone who can trace ancestry to a European aristocrat, which includes anyone with a connection to the early non-Jewish European settlers of New England or the Tidewater region, Quakers in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and many of the Scots-Irish who found their way to the Backwoods of Appalachia can trace ancestry to Charlemagne. The ones that I best know are those who settled in New England. Most were middle-class, which means that they had a genuine aristocratic ancestor as a grandparent or great-grandparent.
But what of the serfs? The population of medieval Europe was much smaller at the critical time of the Black Death, and the serf was typically somehow related to the lord of the manor. Even if the
jus primae noctis was myth, many people of aristocratic origin slipped into the peasantry if they did not join a convent or monastery.
Once one finds the aristocrats, one usually finds a line that goes back to antiquity. The aristocrats kept good records of such. Maybe too good, as the lines that connect through the Normans into Russia and the British isles go back to mythological entities such as "Thor", "Adam", and "Eve", or some vague character as a "Chenk" who came to Georgia (not the state, but the country wedged between Russia and Turkey) from China. Those connected to Spain often go back to Visigoths and (because of some marital alliances made to keep the peace) through Arab aristocrats that include Mohammed as an ancestor. In my case the oldest lines go through the Crusaders (who were murderous thugs)... to about the 5th century AD. Armenia, and not the Roman Empire. Aristocratic ancestors in Hungary and Italy go rather far back too.
Jewish ancestors? So far as I know I have none. A pity, as I would love to be connected to Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein, Gustav Mahler, Anne Frank, Franz Kafka, Golda Meir, Hank Greenberg, and Sandy Koufax. (I have a connection to the late Lauren Bacall, but this is through a very distant relative by marriage). Gypsies? A likely exception about ancestral links to antiquity, which would be India. Who wouldn't like a connection to Julius Caesar, Plato, Tutankhamen, or Moses? On the other hand I am careful about looking too closely in central Europe, lest I find a Holocaust perpetrator. Someone born with my mother's not very common German maiden name was a general in the Hungarian Army during World War II... and was executed by Yugoslavia after the war for war crimes. He was very guilty.
I was satisfied with lines that include Charlemagne, William the Conqueror, and Mohammed. I would love to connect to ancient Greece, Rome, Persia, and Pharaonic Egypt. I am not satisfied with the connections offered.
It's where the female lines are well documented that one gets the best connections. The Vikings did well with that; the Persians didn't.
But you are right about church records, the only sources about peasants and laborers. The Mennonites from which I have significant descendancy kept good records of themselves, but only going back to about AD 1500. I can't trace Dutch or Huguenot ancestors further back than much the same time. German peasants? Sometimes only to about 1750.
...A suggestion to any black people -- you might find a connection to antiquity, but perhaps only through white ancestors that you might find disgusting for having raped your great-great-great-grandmother. Record-keeping by slave-masters about their own ancestry is very good. About the ancestry of their slaves? They often had something to hide about the ancestry of someone with a relatively-pale skin tone, and they certainly didn't want their slaves discussing any connection to tribal chiefs in Africa, so don't expect good documents about really-black ancestors or any admissions of rape or other secretive sex.
