Mayer Amschel Rothschild.

There’s rich, super rich, and then ridiculously-unfathomably rich. This last category could best describe the members of a recently published list of the richest people of the last one thousand years by Brian Warner over at Celebritynetworth.com.

Coming in at number two, just behind a West African king whose 13^th century fortune would be equal to $400 billion today, is the Rothschild Family, who today, according to the article, are considered the wealthiest family alive with total assets equal to $350 billion.

The article describes the family thusly: “As a European banking dynasty, of German-Jewish origin, they established European banking and finance houses starting in the late 18th century.”

The “established” part can be credited to Mayer Amschel Rothschild, who was born in 1744. He developed a finance house and dispatched his five sons to all corners of Europe to advance business interests.

But alas, though the family was at first successful in consolidating the fortune with arranged marriages and the like, through the years all that money has been diluted through its division amongst hundreds of descendants. So, though the family is rich in name, no Rothschild is likely to compete for wealth supremacy with other members of the Daily Mail’s list such as Bill Gates (#12) or Warren Buffet (#25).