If I were to go back in time to the 9th century ad, would it be biologically possible to have a child with my distant grandfather? How genetically dissimilar are we?
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Focusing on the biologically *possible,* rather than what is safe from an incest perspective as covered by other comments:
Of course! This is proven by the fact that people of very different ethnicities regularly have children together. You are more genetically similar to your 9th century ancestors than you are to people from other parts of the world. Genetic difference is roughly determined by time since the last common ancestor. For your 9th century ancestor and you, well, that last common ancestor is the very person you’re making a baby with, while for two people of European and African descent, the last common ancestor likely lived tens of thousands of years ago. While some people put a lot of emphasis on separating different “races” of humans, our genetic differences are – more or less literally – only skin deep. Even the most distantly related humans are extremely far from being different species, which is roughly what determines if children are biologically possible or not.
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