Registering the ancestors of each one here in Europe could be tricky. As Jester said, the main source of the most accurate registers is the church. Other types of early registers exist, with some notable outstanding examples, like the Domesday Book ordered by William the Conqueror. But the image of your soul burning in hell for all the eternity could have a tremendous punitive power without the need to use any other enforcement method. Nobody wants to stay apart from the church... Well, let me correct myself, I' been unfair. In the dark times of the Early Middle Ages, living near a church had it's own advantages and not only for the soul. A good number of decree granted a certain security near a church, at marked days. And the churches become the logical centers of the future villages, their inhabitants trying find themselves a little more secure under the shadow of a cross, the only true authority that could restrain the new, rising feudal nobility. At least, this was the way it happens in Catalunya,the southern Frankish territories.
So the most part of old registers were in hands of the catholic church. Fine, but sometimes it has proven disadvantages. I think that the generation of my father is the first generation of Catalans (and Spanish) without living a war in their own territory. And churches, in modern times, have been targets, a way to directly hurt the local population. Burning churches, in my territory, has been a sport practiced by Spanish, French and Catalan (Thirty years war, Spanish Succession war, Napoleonic Wars, Spanish Civil War....etc, etc...). And some of these conflicts (specially the Spanish Civil War) implied a good quantity of anti religious feeling in one of the parts and he churches turned to be a symbol of oppression.The obvious result is that a lot of registers has been lost...Some families have take advantage of the lost of these registers, taking it as a new starting point and creating themselves a new genealogy and thus adding more confusion to the general picture. I'm sure that if all the coat of arms exhibited in some Spanish houses were true, the entire country must have die from starvation long time ago...
And Europe is a place full of exceptions and special cases. My second surname (from my mother) is basque... Even their language is not indo-european! A new obstacle to keep track of my roots, for example.
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