The Second Apocalypse
Earwa => General Earwa => Topic started by: Wilshire on August 10, 2013, 10:43:51 pm
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How many were the original Dunyain refugees?
tl:dr version: I figure as low as 16, but safely 32 families, which is just 8-16 male/female pairs.
The long version:
I’ve ask this question several times and gotten no answer. I’ve also tried to ask a broader question: What is the minimum number of people it would take to get an increasingly diverse population? Put another way, how can you keep from inbreeding with a finite supply of families?
The issue is that in the beginning, the original Dunyain that show up at Ishual is simply described as a “group” (page 3, English small edition). It always seemed to me that any group, isolated for 2000 years, would need to be fairly large in order to sustain viable offspring for dozens of generations. A “group” that large would probably not have made it through the wild, sranc infested North. Also, the terrified boy (our POV) might have used a much grander word if he saw hundreds of people standing outside his walls. Considering that the Dunyain were not overly popular to begin with, I just had trouble rectifying the situation.
I finally sat down and thought about it for a while and here is what I came up with.
BTW for the rest of this, assume the Dunyain don’t care much for love, or have any taboos about age and sex that would prevent them from having children.
I appologize for my inadequacy, but I couldnt figure out how to add the photos so I've just attached them.
Typically, one tends to think of family trees like this: see attachment "Ishual Family A" at bottom of post.
The idea is that each color is a different family bloodline. The circles are male, the squares are female. Every family could have multiple children (but shown as just one for simplicity), but it doesn’t really matter. Each time the children retain about half of each parents genetic code, so everything is just cut in half with each generation. At the bottom you see that after a few generations, all the children are all the same: they each are 1/8 parts of each bloodline.
The problem with this is that in just a few generations, all the children are related, and you have to start inbreeding them. With a setup like that, you need to double the original number of starting “families”, or in this case colors, every time you want to add another generation. After 10 generations you would need an original host of 512 separate bloodlines, or 1000+ parents. Way to many to be wondering around the woods running from the No-God. Even if they did, and they managed to make each generation a full 30 years apart, you’d only get 300 years before everyone was related. Maybe they would all be 1/512 parts related, I have no clue how that would affect things. I’m sure given 1700 years of breeding together fully related children you would eventually end up with a bunch of terrible genetic disorders.
I then decided to look at it a different way. My new goal was to see how many generations I could go without breeding together people that where related at all. If you could keep introducing a new line into the combined lines, you could get wide variance with a small population.
This is what happens: see attachment "Ishual Family Spiral"
Here you can see the same kind of thing as described above, but represented differently. As you can see, the child still has 1/2 of each parent, but since one of the parents is a totally unique line, the new genes are about 1/2, and all the other lines half as well. The fractions show the total amount of genetic space that each bloodline exists within the person.
I thought this was interesting because after about 6 generations the original parent bloodline, 1+F, is down to only 1/32. If you consider that humans have 23 chromosome pairs, I thought that this might be enough to consider it a negligible amount of genetic data (that’s probably a crappy assumption but its all I got ok?).
In this scheme, each new bloodline (1-10) must have been the offspring of the original Dunyain refugees. This causes another problem, because if all those children were born at the same time, even with only 15 years between generations, they would be way to old to breed after about 60 years, or 4 generations of breeding. That only gets you to generation 5, which has an uncomfortable amount of the parent generation’s genes still.
Then I realized that that assumes all the kids were born at the same time and were about the same age. The parents could all have multiple sets of children. The Dunyain women could probably still bare children safely from around 15 years old until they are 40, while the men could keep breeding until they died (I think the oldest human to have a sire a child is somewhere around 95 years old). This means that while there must be about 15 years between each new generation, child could vary in age by 25 years or more.
With all that I came up with this family tree: see attachment "Ishual Family B"
I got to 7 generations with these 8 families before any child was realted to all of the others. Keep in mind that his is only a sample, each could be done in a different order with different parents each time. This makes it possible to have every possible permutation of that final circle: every combinations of colors would be possible to get.
One thing to note is that at generation 6 I stopped breeding the “pure” lines. This is because, at 12-15 years between each generation, those original children would be unlikely to still be alive, but their offspring could still be viable breeding partners.
Once here, it got too complicated for me to draw and harder to visualize. As you can see, the original dark-red/light-red family occupies only 1/64 parts of the whole. I’d say that’s a negligible amount, and you could then breed in a partner who is primarily those two colors (essentially the generation 7’s great great great uncle/aunt). I think that’s viable, since if you say that there are 15 years between generations, it takes 75 years to get to 7, and there are at least 20 years within each generation. This makes a 3xgreat uncle about 60 (still viable partner if it’s a male… maybe).
This setup takes 8 bloodlines, or 16 parents.
If you don’t like that, or still think that 1/64 is too similar to breed with someone who is 50/50 that genetic material, you can double the whole thing with another 8 bloodlines. This doubles your total parents to 32, and gets you 1 additional generation if you combine the two multi color bloodlines, and it makes the children 1/128 parts of the original 4 parent’s bloodlines.
I think this at least shows that you can get some extreme variation with just a small starting pool of genetic data of sufficiently different parents. None of this accounts for dominant/recessive traits, or cross-linking of chromosomes, or mutation, which would increase diversity and (probably) decrease the amount of time you would need to start breeding with an ancestor. Note that any debilitating genetic disorder would have been removed via the Dunyain’s Thousand Thousand halls (their version of accelerated natural selections and/or eugenics). Even diseases that are dominant should be able to be weeded out that way if the affected children die in the Halls before they breed. Again, I think that would further decrease the real number of generations required.
Anyway, that was long winded and I probably forgot some things that I assumed, or left out a certain bit of reasoning that makes none of it make sense. Oh well. What do you think? Possible? Stupid? Huge waste of time? Yeah probably, but it was fun.
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Found this somewhat interesting link that supports some of what I was saying, though mostly tangentially.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Founder_effect
Basically a small subset of a population that goes and isolates itself can end up being extraordinarily different than the parent population after a period of time.
Interesting to note:
1) Rare genes tend to two extremes, either they die out quickly or they become much more prevalent.
If you consider that perception of the onta is kind of a genetic trait (after all, how could the Inchoroi developed this if it where not tied to genetics?), then you can say that most of the Dunyain could have been schoolmen. We know that there are only a few Few, and that both the original Dunyain that we know of were of the Few. Clearly the trait didn't die out, so maybe this ability was bred into all of them.
2) Polydactyly (extra toes, etc) was specifically mentioned in the wiki page as being more common in Amish groups because they have "grown from a very few founders, have not recruited newcomers, and tend to marry within the community". Reminded me of Esmi.
3)Isolated populations tend to speciate if separated for long periods of time. I think its likely that the Dunyain have trouble breeding with normal humans because they are nearly a different species (or the whole nonman thing, but thats a story for a different time).
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I have family in town (my Mom, who I see once a year, and my nephew, who I just spent a month and a half with recently living at my sister's, but who has never visited me while I've been in school). I've found myself reading the forum regularly on the smartphone but unable to partake in any meaning capacity.
Excuses for engagement aside, this is awesome work, Wilshire. I will give it an indepth session in a few days, after my life regains its habitual dimensions.
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Thanks ;) i don't know how well this fits into reality, but I didn't have internet or cable at my house for a week, so on the fifth day I spent several hours thinking about this and decided to write it down.
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I figured it was around two hundred refugees, and in contemporary times the overall community is around 2000. They have to have some way of providing food, working metal, etc, if the contemporary population is only limited to a few hundred there is not enough to sustain all the things Ishual is supposed to have.
The Merchant Prince series by Charles Stross outlines a complex genetic 'braiding' of bloodlines that allows them to breed for their ability without inbreeding, I figured the Dunyain would have something a few orders of magnitude more complex than that.
There's also the possibility that the Dunyain have developed their own form of Tekne, and have 'axlotl tanks' that allow them to clone people.
A trail had been scuffed across the hide of ancient dust—and by someone, Kellhus realized, who possessed a stride and gait identical to his own. Following it, he pressed deeper into the derelict mansion, knowing that he walked in his father’s very footsteps.
His father’s voice—so much like his own—swelled to seize all the dead Nonmen spaces.
“Nayu,” the blind face said in recognition. Kellhus’s voice! Kellhus’s features! When had the son become the father’s mould?
Bakker, R. Scott (2008-09-02). The Thousandfold Thought: The Prince of Nothing, Book Three (Kindle Locations 7545-7546). Overlook TP. Kindle Edition.
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Well if you consider any ability at all to preserve sperm/egg that could be kept after the owners death, even for just an extra 1 or 2 generations, there would be little chance of any real inbreeding. Stretched to the very limits, I came up with 5 generations separating potential partners.. If that could be extended to 6 or 7 you would be fine with an extremely small number of original families.
I was more focused on the number of bloodlines/families, rather than total number of refugees, though it is almost the same question. There were likely not many children or elderly in the group, but there could still have been 1-5 members of a family. 5*32=160.
I just don't know how popular the Dunyain cult was, and how sranc infested the north was when they chose to flee. Those original Dunyain were only marginally more gifted than normal people, if any at all, so a fair number of them should have died on their trek through the wilds (Anyone ever played the old Oregon Trail game?). They may or may not have had a destination, and even if they did think they knew where they were going (ishterebinth? some other abandoned city?), they probably took a roundabout way to get there.
I want to say that I feel like 200 is too much, but then again a tiny group is more susceptible to failure due to accident/disease, while a large group can survive some misfortune. If most/all the weapon races were tethered to the No-God farther south, a large group could go through the North unchallenged. Its also likely that the Dunyain cult was comprised of whole families, like your standard religious family, so a medium-large size group isn't unreasonable.
I'm torn :P
I'm just glad I thought through the thing and was able to figure out how a small group could keep themselves producing viable offspring for at least a 100 years with only a little bit of creativity. Once you get past 100 years, it gets more complicated, but the Dunyain certainly had the foresight to breed themselves in such a way to preserve themselves for 200-400 years. By that time they should have started becoming smarter/faster/stronger.
I'd say 10-20 generations is enough to see some results, so they may have been able to plan much farther into the future. They are in the mountains after all, and freezing some sperm isnt so high-tech. If they ever discovered how to do that, it would be smooth sailing from then on, they could just always breed with older/uncrossed family lines, and never have to breed together children that had the more complex bloodline mixtures.
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The Merchant Prince series by Charles Stross outlines a complex genetic 'braiding' of bloodlines that allows them to breed for their ability without inbreeding, I figured the Dunyain would have something a few orders of magnitude more complex than that.
btw, never heard of it, but sounds interesting. Was it a series worth reading?
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All six books are very pulpy fast reads, entertaining, excellent world building, cool extrapolations of thoughts, but a bit strained at times in its politics and how modernism conflicts with traditionalism, particularly on the role of women and all the loaded sexual dynamics the series explores.
Also, it's really anti-Bush/Cheney, so that's fun.
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Lol, I figured this must be a pretty frequently asked question in anthropological circles and turns out, it is ;).
From some cursory readings of the literature I'd say you'd need somewhere between 150 - 200 initial population, with almost as much genetic variance as possible, but some hazard as low as 80. This ignores discussion of genetic bottlenecks, where species suffer and recover from near extinction numbers and MVP algorithms (Minimum Viable Population), which suggest needed upwards of thousands of initial population to account for inbreeding and defective or recessive genes.
Some studies cite examples as low as bottleneck numbers (under a 100, basically), though.
I should mention these speculations seem to operate under the assumption of attempted longevity.
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But their disadvantage is they aren't super humans with the goal of isolating a population for thousands of years. They also have moral codes and feelings.
If a normal population could go with 150-200, the Dunyain should be able to do it with far less. At least half :P
But im no biologist, and im certainly not an anthropologist
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Lol, Wilshire, I wouldn't buy the thoughts of an anthropologist or biologist over yours.
But seriously, no one should discount their own thoughts. Genius is a cultural handicap. Just nurture all cognitive function - in yourself and whomever else. The success of genius is often simply not conforming.
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Yeah I think 200 is a very low number, but population genetics isn't my thing. 1000 years is a long time and they'd have a very recursive family tree. I might believe 200 families but not 200 individuals. Even better would be a grand apocalyptic exodus of a few thousand Dunyain, hopefully drawn from a genetically diverse urban population instead of a bunch of iron age villagers that are probably all at least 3rd cousins even before they start inbreeding.
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So, I'm not a biologist, as I've already written in another thread. But I happen to know a bit about inbreeding, although in relation to household pets. Namely, I have a few friends who breed pedigree cats and they claim that, when done properly, inbreeding can be quite useful.
First of all, it is useful to actually remove defective genetic stock from the pool. If you have a line of cats that you suspect of carrying defective genes, you breed two closely related cats from that line (mother/son or father/daughter work the best). And if their offspring shows signs of for example musculoskeletal problems, you remove the whole line from your breeding programme.
On the other hand, selective inbreeding is also used to make a desirable feature (like deeply green eyes or rich fur) stronger in the population, so that it does not get lost when new blood is added.
Of course, this can apply to dunyain only if we assume that they have absolutely no sexual taboos and someone keeps track of their selective breeding programme throughout the yeats.
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Even better would be a grand apocalyptic exodus of a few thousand Dunyain, hopefully drawn from a genetically diverse urban population.
Of course, this can apply to dunyain only if we assume that they have absolutely no sexual taboos and someone keeps track of their selective breeding programme throughout the yeats.
Dunyain Nostradamus ;D!
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Dunyain Nostradamus ;D!
Dunyain Bene Gesserit and Kwisatz Haderach?
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Lol, Alia, have you not stumbled across the Herbert and Bakker (http://second-apocalypse.com/index.php?topic=889.0) thread?
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I did, only haven't time to read it whole so far.
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Oh well. I look forward to any additional commentary you might have, whenever you read it.
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In an interview Bakker mentioned that Kellhus is/was some kind of prodigy child, so I pretty much extend that to him being the Kwisatz Haderach.
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I should really add my own commentary to Herbert/Bakker but...
Associating Kellhus with the Kwisatz Haderach suggests to me that the Dunyain were expecting a Kellhus... Why would they send him to Moenghus, if that wasn't part of the Pragma's overarching plans...
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Either it was part of the plan, or Kellhus was a generation early ;) and the Pragma didn't realize what they were setting loose.
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I don't know at what point this kind of thing just becomes a "there were some people" thing. I know Bakker thought out Earwa really really really well, but maybe he just imagined a vague breeding population and that was it?
That nonman blood is involved is great--would love to see that be part of the reveal.
As far as breeding stock goes, I don't know that Ishual is as closed as Kellhus has been conditioned to think. Who knows? Maybe the dunyain have been adding new blood from Atrithau whenever they needed it. Maybe there are Ketyai dunyain too! Kellhus would like us to believe that he's the first person to think up transposing.
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I don't know at what point this kind of thing just becomes a "there were some people" thing. I know Bakker thought out Earwa really really really well, but maybe he just imagined a vague breeding population and that was it?
This is the explanation that I find most likely. Like I said in my first post, I didn't have internet for 2 weeks and I was bored :)
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there are more questions to Ishual than just breeding stock. Carrying capacity of the valley, how do they hide agriculture from aerial observation, do they have aquaculture as well, what about livestock? Where do they get the animal fat to make their seeming infinite supply of candles? they clearly don't hunt, which is bizarre (they're simply too tall and too strong to be vegetarians). why have they maintained smiths and iron/steel working knowledge? Do they also mine ore? How do they make clothes? Even maintaining a self sufficient community of 1000 is tricky and involves an enormous variety of specialization and skill sets in just providing basic necessities. I presume that since Non Man mansions are so ginormous that beneath the Thousand Thousand Halls is the actual non man mansion, and since non man mansions were able to sustain subterranean communities of vast scales, there must be some ways of aqua culture, agriculture and animal husbandry etc that can be done deep in the bowels of the earth. and it's down there that Ishual really is, all unbeknowst to Kellhus because he never thought about where his sword came from, where his clothes came from, where his food came from etc. He was your typical privileged git, totally ignorant of everything that provides for his existence, all those come before him. ;)
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I've heard investigations into human genetics have suggested we were down to a near extinction level of only two thousand individuals in the distant past.
So were all pretty much inbred right now, (distant) cous!
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A very interesting point, locke.
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there are more questions to Ishual than just breeding stock. Carrying capacity of the valley, how do they hide agriculture from aerial observation, do they have aquaculture as well, what about livestock? Where do they get the animal fat to make their seeming infinite supply of candles? they clearly don't hunt, which is bizarre (they're simply too tall and too strong to be vegetarians). why have they maintained smiths and iron/steel working knowledge? Do they also mine ore? How do they make clothes? Even maintaining a self sufficient community of 1000 is tricky and involves an enormous variety of specialization and skill sets in just providing basic necessities. I presume that since Non Man mansions are so ginormous that beneath the Thousand Thousand Halls is the actual non man mansion, and since non man mansions were able to sustain subterranean communities of vast scales, there must be some ways of aqua culture, agriculture and animal husbandry etc that can be done deep in the bowels of the earth. and it's down there that Ishual really is, all unbeknowst to Kellhus because he never thought about where his sword came from, where his clothes came from, where his food came from etc. He was your typical privileged git, totally ignorant of everything that provides for his existence, all those come before him. ;)
All very true. Ishual must have been much more than a Castle on the side of a Mountain. They might not have had much experience with metal working, since who knows what riches might remain in the bowels of a Mansion, and I doubt the lose many artifacts on expeditions south. A nonman armory might be large enough to supply the Dunyain with all their metal-worked goods for thousands of years.
The problem of food an hunting are much more important though. Maybe they just had all the 'failed' Dunyain preform all the menial tasks, and they left all the philosophizing to the brilliant?
I've heard investigations into human genetics have suggested we were down to a near extinction level of only two thousand individuals in the distant past.
So were all pretty much inbred right now, (distant) cous!
This is part of the problem I didn't really bring up (or maybe I did and forgot). There must be some critical mass of genetic data that leads to increasing diversity overtime, rather than decreasing diversity. I wish I knew what that number was, but in absence of that I was just trying to figure how to keep the Dunyain from being a bunch of autistic hill-people after a few generations.
Being 'related' to someone is a vague qualifier at best. I wish I knew what % shared genetic data qualifies individuals as 'related' such that there is a high chance of birth defects in offspring.
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Some of those recent dunyain failures could probably put Maithanet to shame.
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Where do they get the animal fat to make their seeming infinite supply of candles?
Great questions, lockesnow, but didn't we decide that the candles in the Unmasking Room were sorcerous?
As always, love your undermining Kellhus' perspective.
A nonman armory might be large enough to supply the Dunyain with all their metal-worked goods for thousands of years.
Sweet.
The problem of food an hunting are much more important though. Maybe they just had all the 'failed' Dunyain preform all the menial tasks, and they left all the philosophizing to the brilliant?
Again, this fits right into my Ishual is the City from the Republic analogy.
Overall, thoughts on the Thousand Thousand Halls. I've always thought it was a Mansion or at least an extension of Ishterebinth? A friend of mine is adamant that the Dunyain built the Thousand Thousand Halls.
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Difficult to say either way. The problem with the Mansion theory is that they would have needed to map it out, in its entirety, before they were capable of using it as their little training maze. If it is anything liek Cil'Aujas, it would have been quite some time before they where able to map and then modify it to suit their needs.
Though they could have continued to use it for centuries unchanged. To account for increased intelligence, they could have tested the children at younger and younger ages, and made rules like 'no lights in the labyrinth' to up the difficulty.
Either theory is plausible, but I want it to be a Mansion.
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Maybe the whole 'nonman blood in the Anasurimbor line' caused some of the dunyain to 'think' similarly to their nonman antecedents. So, the similarities Kel notices between the TT Halls and the mansion were a result of subtle genetic coding of dunyain thought patterns through nonman DNA, and was evidenced in their architectural and philosophical similarities.
Hey, it could happen. Seriously.
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There it is, a blending of the outcomes. I could see it happening... Stranger things have occured in Earwa. I really want there to be nonman blood in that famliy tree. It would let my brain relax and allow "fantasy" to be a satisfactory answer.
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Notation that I had mentioned elsewhere but I do think we need to consider Yatwer's role in Dunyain pregnancy.
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Nonman blood in the Anasurimbor line might make the nonmen more disposed to strike a deal with Celmomas on the construction of Ishual above a mansion.
Celmomas "Can I build a secret fort on top of your old place?"
Nil'giccas "Sure cuz, you family."
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Or "Sure, but only if I can have secret breeding program with the goal of eventually reviving the Nonman race"
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Or "Sure, but only if I can have secret breeding program with the goal of eventually reviving the Nonman race"
Sweet! If that actually works, I would love for Bakker to write a book about the New Generation of nonmen and how different they are from the last remnants of the old. I think they could have a hard time understanding each other. :P
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Notation that I had mentioned elsewhere but I do think we need to consider Yatwer's role in Dunyain pregnancy.
I never got the impression that Kellhus was at all surprised at his breeding difficulties. He was exceedingly careful in choosing Esmenet as his mate in the first place. So either Yatwer fucks up ALL Dunyain pregnancies, not just Kellhus' and Moe's, or it really is just genetic drift.
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Technically, we don't really know if Esmenet's nameless ones are different from traditional Dunyain defectives and so far in TAE we don't really have Kellhus' reaction to anything to substantiate our thoughts either way.
I'm interested to see how the Yatwer/genetics interaction plays out...
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Not sure on Yatwer genetics, seem more technical than fantasy.
Typical defective Dunyain is an interesting idea. I doubt the Dunyain would have been able to survive 2000 years if they had the same frequency of birth defects as Esmi has had. Though it is possible that it has slowly gotten worse over time.
Maybe Moenghus was sent out to see if the worldborn women had the same problem bearing Dunyain children.
If it where my money, I'd still put it on genetic drift until we get more info. The particular set of dominant/recessibe traits, as well as strickt breeding controls, might have been enough for the Dunyain to suppress breeding issues. Who knows, maybe without those careful controls the Dunyain would have similar defects as with Esmi's children. Kellhus sees it as worldborn women being inadequate, but maybe its just the screwed up Dunyain lineage.
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The Dunyain could have been an experiment of the Nonmen to try and breed out whatever the Inchoroi did to them. That way, there would be Nonmen blood still flowing and eventually revive the Cunoroi race.
Has this already been though of and brought up? It sounds familiar.
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Nonman experiment, yes, but as a way to breed out the inchoroi infection, I don't think so. A GJ original.