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Stormcrow
2007-11-06, 08:55 PM
Oki Dokie. To move away slightly from the usual;

I'm working on a campaign world and my question is thus, can you take four families of 50-100 members each and have them breed nigh exclusively and have each family survive viably. Or is one hundred not enough people to make each family genetically different enough.

In summary.
Each clan is genetically pure. Just that clan's bloodline, is 100 people enough to start that process?

<If you don't know genetics, please don't comment>

Stormcrow
2007-11-06, 08:58 PM
Stupid Work Server, Delete Please.

OneWinged4ngel
2007-11-06, 09:24 PM
As far as I know, inbreeding doesn't cause much problems in and of itself so much as causing recessive traits to show up more often (which can be beneficial OR detrimental.)

Person_Man
2007-11-06, 09:51 PM
The human race survived for millenia in small, in-bred groups of hunter-gatherers. If the group had a recessive trait that was harmful, the clan most likely died off or was killed by predators. Evolution. Non-harmful recessive traits, like red hair, don't harm your chance of survival.

So having four families that interbred with 50-100ish people per generation is quite plausible. (Keeping in mind that any family would increase in size every generation, depending on the replacement rate).

But there are still plenty of genetic disorders linked to recessive genes that lead to degenerative problems, which wouldn't necessarily kill them off immediately, but would still cause all sorts of problems down the line. Hemophilia comes to mind.