Inbreeding and incest have always been hot topics. Even today things like that happen.
But how our prehistoric ancestors managed to reproduce without degenerating, while living in isolated tribes of about 20 to 30 people.
Half of such a tribe must have consisted of kids, then all 15 adults who were able to reproduce had to be close relatives. Therefore, some degree of inbreeding just had to take place. Under such circumstances, how they have survived?
What can science tell about this? On one hand? There is a lot of data on inbreeding in animals.
During the 20th century Some highly endangered species, out of which maybe just 2 or 5 individuals had left, were bred to thousands. This was the case for European bison, cheetah, Mauritius pink pigeon, and for Eurasian wild horses, which were bred from 18 individuals to a herd of 2000. Of course, some inbreeding was unavoidable.
The secret behind this is that inbreeding itself does not necessarily lead to deviations in offspring. Problems only occur if both parents have some recessive mutation trait, which can manifest in their offspring as a dominant trait, and a bad overlap take place.
If this overlap happens, children may suffer from say microcephaly, or some other terrific syndromes. This overlap may also happen without inbreeding, but the chances are higher for close relatives when they mate because relatives are more genetically similar, and the chances for both mother and father having the same recessive traits that are bad, is higher.
Outside of these possible bad genetic traits’ overlap, there is no biological harm of incest and inbreeding at all. So if future parents who are close relatives both do a full genetic sequencing and it shows no possible bad overlap, so no problem! You can go on.)
Now back to our Paleolithic ancestors. Living in small groups where inbreeding was the only way of survival, of course, led to some bad mutations popping out and accumulating. And because of tough life with constant hunger, cold, and no proper medication, these bad mutations could easily lead to the extinction of the whole group.
The tough life of the paleolithic age demanded good genes, and bad genes were discarded by natural selection. So only lucky inbreeders survived)
We all are their descendants)
But in general, inbreeding does not make your offspring any better, it still adds some risk to offspring’s genetic outcome.
So looking for mates outside one’s small group early became a dominant tactic. The recent examination of Cro-Magnon cavemen's DNA has revealed that they preferred to take mates from the most unrelated groups possible.
The genetic composition of Cro-Magnon individuals from, say, Dolnie Vestonice Paleolithic site is very heterogeneous, and most individuals show a great diversity in their maternal and paternal genetic contribution. Looks like they consciously practiced exogamy, and they knew that mating with a close relative was wrong.
But this was not always the case, and there is strong evidence for that. A genetic search of Neanderthals from El Cidron Paleolithic site showed that almost all males of this population were very close relatives, mostly siblings, while most females genetically did not belong to the group, which means they were brought from somewhere outside.
Such a system of finding mates, where males live in a group they were born into, and females are brought from outside, is called patrilocal and seems to be typical for great apes. Chimpanzees and gorillas practice it in a wild, and Australopithecus seem to have practiced it, which is revealed by examining Stronzium isotopes from their skeletal remains. Most males died in the area where they were born, and most females died away from their birthplaces.
But sometimes people were in situations where you just can not bring anyone from outside, for example, when isolated on some island.
One of the most illustrative cases of this is the story of Pitcairn island in the Pacific. About 200 years ago a crew of a British sailboat Bounty rebelled and after they got rid of the officers they captured the ship and sailed to Pitcairn Island, which was totally uninhabited to the moment. On arrival, the crewmen started to fight with each other for various reasons, and after a short time, the newly established population of Pitcairn island consisted of only one British man and about 6 Tahitian women who were previously captured by the crew. To live for longer than one generation, this group just had to inbreed. And they did it successfully! In total isolation.
They multiplied so profoundly that they even populated the nearest island.
This was an example of a successful and to some extent happy inbreeding story.
But there are many examples of unhappy endings for those groups practicing inbreeding.
Some isolated groups accumulate mutations ranging from severe and lethal to mild, but still unpleasant, say, higher incidence of color blindness, deaf-muteness, Huntington’s syndrome, or various bone malformations.
But people with such mild disabilities are still able to procreate, thus transferring their genes to future generations. So, mutations of that sort are bad to live with, but the group affected by such mutations can still exist for hundreds of years if there is no sharp concurrence with other more healthy groups, and the environment is stable. Such cases are rare because people love to migrate, and any isolated group is at some moment discovered by other groups with different genetic compositions.
So, the potential threats of inbreeding have been surpassed by constant migrations, by natural selection, by the fact that inbreeding itself may have no bad consequences, and even if some bad mutations are present in the group it can still exist if conditions are sufficiently mild.
This was the short story of incest in humans. If you enjoyed this video please like and subscribe.
There are more videos to come on hot topics like this. See you next time.