Speaking of founder effects and population bottle necks....what if there was simply a "social isolation" instead of a geographic one. Couldn't we study the Amish or Mennonite or any other socially isolated group that essentially has been inter-marrying for a couple hundred of year. I believe it was "60 Minutes" a few weeks ago that ran a show about this, where several of the children in these communities are developing several severe and rare mental disorders.
In this case, would you think that the founding population was too small to have a viable gene pool for the long run, especially with what is probably very limited immigration into the population?
Here is the
60 Minutes story I was referring to.
Why do men have nipples?