![]() ![]() Via Wikimedia Commons Measuring Inbreeding For example, first cousin marriages are pretty common in the Middle East, North Africa, and some other parts of the world.Ĭharles II of Spain was born with severe mental and physical disabilities caused by generations of inbreeding in the Hapsburg family. Royal families like the Habsburgs or the pharaohs of Egypt did it to hold onto power.Īnd inbreeding still happens today. Of course, a small population isn’t the only reason for inbreeding. These groups were small enough that there had to be inbreeding at first. We all started out in Africa when, around 60,000 years ago, small groups left to settle Asia and Europe. This is why European and Asian DNA looks more inbred than African DNA. When that happens, if the group is to survive, some close relatives will probably have kids together. In the past, inbreeding also happened when a small group split off from everyone else. In fact, this “bottleneck” in population size is probably why humans have so much DNA in common. With such a small group, there was definitely a lot of inbreeding going on. Some research shows that the whole human race was down to a few thousand people around 70,000 years ago. Since we are all humans and all share a common ancestor somewhere down the line, we all have some degree of inbreeding. Now having said this, there is no sharp cutoff between inbreeding and not inbreeding. And inbreeding still happens today in many parts of the world. There has been inbreeding ever since modern humans burst onto the scene about 200,000 years ago. It basically happens when two close relatives, like an uncle and a niece, have kids together. First let’s make sure we’re on the same page when it comes to inbreeding. ![]()
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