You know how they say that inbreeding causes retardation? That if there was some sort of disaster, leaving small isolated pockets of humans to only be able to interbreed with themselves, that eventually the species would "go sour" and die out...well, why is that? I mean, archaeologists say that 50-80 thousand years ago humanity almost died out, due to some supervolcano that went off. Population estimates are in the area of only 10,000 people left alive. Why weren't all their offspring retarded and why didn't we die out?
because everything you see an read an dig an ponder about the evolution of humanity is an will remain theory for each one of us who has a brain to ponder.. if ya git my drift?? luv n lite..
The reason you'll die out is because evolution says survival of the fittest, if everyone related to you has the same traits, then when that one sickness you're all susceptible to comes along, you have no genes that can protect you from it.
Inbreeding does not damage a gene pool if the survival condtions are extreme. If the geneticaly damaged offspring die before they can breed, inbreeding actual improves the gene pool. Line breeding is a comon technique for stock breeders.
Maybe populations of ten thousand people interbreeding aren't as bad as say, your mom and sister being the same person. Who knows... Peace and love
No, I'm saying that everyone has slightly different traits, if you inbreed, you're entire family will have one set of traits, so you will have no immunity to certain things, while other people, who don't inbreed will be immune.
If you want to maintain a set of traits then inbreeding is good as Mike stated. However for genetic diversity then its better to mix and match. Either way a population of tens of thousands isnt statistically that bad, there are species on this planet that are existing with less than that.
Tens of thousands is a lot, and can allow genetic mutations to change some, but in an inbreeding situation, where it will usually be very small numbers, the chance of mutation is greatly reduced.
Probably not. Hitler should have put himself in a concentration camp if he really believed that, since he was of Jewish heriatige himself. Peace and love
He certainly wasn't aryan, anyways. But as far as my question goes. It seems that if everyone was breeding with each other in small groups during the near-die-off of humanity way back then, why didn't the species end up retarded? The human genome is remarkably uniform compared to say, chimpanzees; which is sort of proof of this bottleneck. So why aren't we all fucked up?
Because populations of ten thousand aren't enough to cause gene issues. They need to be more closely related to have those issues. Like, your mom is your sister... peace and love
Retardation is a perspective and an extreme. Technically, it's more accurate to describe the effects of inbreeding as mutation, and it is a natural safeguard against genetic purification. Mutation preserves diversity.
Really what happens is that inbreeding just increases the risk of loss of heterozygosity. From here recessive traits that are a detriment(such as many forms of mental retardation) become more prevelent. I thought it would be easy to explain but now that I've started I realise that there is a lot of backgroud that I would need to start with and move from there gradually getting more complex. It would essentially fill a chapter in a biology textbook. To much effort, lazieness is winning out. I'm done.
