ELi5: How does our population grow without everyone becoming related? It seems like eventually everyone would become one giant family. Would repopulation be feasible in a post-apocalyptic scenario of only 100 or so survivors?
In: Biology
Inbreeding is an issue only for people who are *closely* related (and primarily if it happens several generations in a row). Any two random people will have a common ancestor. That’s how evolution works. However, that ancestor will tend to be distant enough that it won’t matter.
I heard somewhere that we are all basically like 10th cousins. And that all people with blue eyes are related as they share a common ancestor who had the first mutation for a blue iris.
And you’re almost looking at it backwards. You’re concerned about people repetitively mating with folks who they are related to and not realize it, but the population we know now came from a small group of early Homo sapiens. We’re taking tens, hundreds, a thousand individuals that made us 7 billion today
With enough generations in between, being related doesn’t matter. Obviously 1st and 2nd cousins are too close but with a world pop of 7B, there’s too many options for familial genetics to be a problem.
Yup, but eventually assuming the offspring survived there would be enough new genetic diversity that not everyone is immediate cousins. Eventually…
It’s why it’s crazy in post apocalyptic movies when at the end of the movie there is like four people alive…
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