That's true. I simplified for the sake of not delving too far into the details, because it makes sense at the smaller level. It's also true that a commit isn't

That's true. I simplified for the sake of not delving too far into the details, because it makes sense at the smaller level. It's also true that a commit isn't always just one pointer to the commit that came before it, in a merge there are two pointers, from commit_head and merge_head