# How many founding families/individuals are now said to have established the American continent's pre-Columbian native American tribes?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-founding-families-individuals-are-now-said-to-have-established-the-american-continents-pre-columbian-native-american-tribes/968950>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [August 2, 2022, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-founding-families-individuals-are-now-said-to-have-established-the-american-continents-pre-columbian-native-american-tribes/968950 "2022-08-02T00:11:58Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Octagon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/2acd7d/32.png) [@Octagon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Octagon)\
**Post date:** [August 2, 2022, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-founding-families-individuals-are-now-said-to-have-established-the-american-continents-pre-columbian-native-american-tribes/968950/1 "2022-08-02T00:11:58Z")

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I heard Neill de Grasse Tyson mention that America’s native tribes trace back to 8 founding families. I haven’t been able to find any confirmation of that. The science keeps changing on the issue. What is the consensus today on how many individuals/families were the founding ancestors of the indigenous tribes of the Americas?

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**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\
**Post date:** [August 2, 2022, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-founding-families-individuals-are-now-said-to-have-established-the-american-continents-pre-columbian-native-american-tribes/968950/2 "2022-08-02T00:32:35Z")

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I assume he was referring to a theorized population bottleneck that occurred in human populations in the American continent:

> **[North America Settled by Just 70 People, Study Concludes](https://www.livescience.com/289-north-america-settled-70-people-study-concludes.html)**
>
> DNA analysis finds evidence for very few folks who crossed a land bridge from Asia during the last Ice Age.

I’ve no idea this if this still considered likely (I know a lot has changed in how scientists view the early history of the Americas, including pushing back the date of the first humans to settle here).

I do note that in the [“Population Bottleneck”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_bottleneck) wiki the theory that the human race was reduced to small numbers by the Koba Supervolcano has been largely disproved.

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**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\
**Post date:** [August 2, 2022, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-founding-families-individuals-are-now-said-to-have-established-the-american-continents-pre-columbian-native-american-tribes/968950/3 "2022-08-02T00:58:36Z")

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This is a very recently published book that does a good job summarizing the current state of the field:

> **[Amazon.com: First Peoples in a New World: 9781108735476: Meltzer, David J.:...](https://www.amazon.com/First-Peoples-New-World-Populating/dp/1108735479)**
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> Amazon.com: First Peoples in a New World: 9781108735476: Meltzer, David J.: Books

It’s been a hot minute since I read it, but as I recall the founding populations are currently believed to be small but not that small.

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**Author:** ![Octagon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/2acd7d/32.png) [@Octagon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Octagon)\
**Post date:** [August 3, 2022, 9:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-founding-families-individuals-are-now-said-to-have-established-the-american-continents-pre-columbian-native-american-tribes/968950/4 "2022-08-03T09:14:15Z")

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Thanks MandaJo. I’ll order it.