Families can be shown as hierarchies, with grandparents at the top-level, parents and their brothers and sisters at the next level, and children on a lower-level. Here is a diagram of a family hierarchy, with each level of the hierarchy painted a different color.
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Building things in hierarchies is very common in computer software. One example is the file systems provided by operating systems. File systems have a top-level, often referred to as the root of the file system. Under the root, there are subdirectories like "Program Files" and "Documents and Settings" and under these are more subdirectories.