A lot of people misunderstand figurative bottlenecks too. The "7 women" does not mean anything like "only 7 women existed at the time". Particularly: * other

A lot of people misunderstand figurative bottlenecks too. The "7 women" does not mean anything like "only 7 women existed at the time". Particularly: * other women existed who only had sons, or whose daughters only had sons, etc. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galton%E2%80%93Watson_process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galton%E2%80%93Watson_process (about surname extinction, which is basically the same thing other than sex-specific polygamy effects) * other tribes existed (or split off) who later faced extinction due to being outcompeted by these 7 tribes.