Okay. So I read that the north sentilese tribe numbers about 50-100. Amongst them and other uncontacted tribes, I don’t believe they have major genetic issues from inbreeding, how is this possible? Or am I mistaken and they have major inbreeding health issues?
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Since they’re uncontacted, nobody’s gone and done a health assessment or DNA study, so even if they had issues, we wouldn’t know about it.
However, when we talk about “genetic issues from inbreeding” we’re normally thinking of someone marrying their cousin – a single generation, or maybe just a handful, with a lot of non-inbreeding sprinkled into the family tree. With an uncontacted tribe, we might be talking about generations of literally everyone “marrying” cousins. That’s plenty of time for the most serious defects to appear, and then get “bred out” of the population until those faulty genes disappear.
So one wouldn’t expect them to go extinct from genetic defects that come to the fore because of inbreeding. However, the question of whether inbreeding has affected their health will have to wait until they decide the rest of the world is worth saying hello to.
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