The most special group of people in the world

In the United States, there is such a special group of people, they dress simple, have a strictly religious organization, do not like modern facilities, even go out in a horse-drawn carriage, and strictly follow the ancient way of life, life can be self-sufficient, they are the Amish.

Today's Amish are about 300,000 people, but they are almost all descendants of the hundreds of people who immigrated to the United States more than 300 years ago, including 50,000 Amish living in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, only 80 ancestors can be traced.

Although the Amish population has increased, it faces serious inbreeding problems, which has caused the Amish to be plagued by a variety of genetic diseases, such as Ellie veld's syndrome, dwarfism, and Anger man syndrome.

Amish

The Amish are descendants of German-Swiss immigrants and are Christian, "Anabaptist", meaning that believers are voluntarily baptized after reaching adulthood, as opposed to being baptized at birth.

Because of religious factors, Anabaptist were considered religious heretics and were persecuted. At the end of the 18th century, some Amish left their homes and came to the United States, initially living in Pennsylvania on the East Coast of the United States, but later spreading to other states in the United States, and even Canada.

Although living in the United States, the Amish are still significantly different from the typical American. First of all, the Amish dress relatively conservatively, men usually have beards and wear hats; women wear white skullcaps, and neither men nor women are allowed to wear fancy clothes.

Secondly, they refuse to use modern equipment, in the Amish community, will rarely see electric equipment, they go out by wagon, using the traditional way to cultivate crops, and will also use the windmill for irrigation, which looks very retro, nowadays some Amish living communities are also used as tourist attractions.

Although they live a relatively conservative life, but do not reject to deal with modern civilization, and did not close themselves off, and even some families will be mixed with other American families; living place is not isolated deep in the mountains or on a deserted island, but just off the highway, very convenient transportation.

They just don't serve in the military and stop studying when they reach high school, but they can do business and live without falling into poverty, and even live very richly according to their understanding.

The Amish are also very peace-loving, and do not like violence, "if someone hits you on the right side of the face, even turn the left side of the face to be hit by him" way, live a life without resistance.

For example, in 2006, Charlie Robert, a non-Amish driver delivering milk, broke into a school and shot students, killing five people, and the killer shot himself.

Yet after it happened, the Amish, who had experienced the loss of their son, came to the killer's home and instead of blaming his family, they comforted his wife and children, without any condemnation throughout, and even set up a foundation to help his family. What's more, the Amish even attended the killer's funeral and did not make a scene.

Of course, do not think too well of the Amish, because from time to time there is media exposure of Amish incest, including an Amish family, the family's four brothers for a long time to violate the sister, resulting in the sister pregnant with a child, but do not know who the father of the child is?

The Amish do not have an abortion, and with the concept of birth control, the average family will have seven children, but never intermarry with foreigners, which led to what?

It leads to heavy inbreeding!

The Amish Genetic Curse

Because the Amish in the United States today are almost all the originators who came across the ocean to the United States 300 years ago, the number of these people is not large, of which the number of people involved in reproduction is probably only a few hundred.

And these people are scattered to different settlements, and the Amish reject cars and rely on horse-drawn carriages for travel. Horse-drawn carriages also lead to inbreeding in small circles as they have trouble communicating with Amish living elsewhere.

For example, the Amish living in Pennsylvania, USA, now number about 30,000, but most are descendants of the 80 people who migrated from Europe to settle in the USA in the 18th century.

This leads to a "bottleneck effect" in the population, as the Amish used to be very genetically diverse, but the number of Amish from Europe to the U.S. is very small, and individuals who are too old and too young to reproduce also leave fewer individuals in the group to reproduce effectively, leading to a further reduction in genetic diversity.

In this way, even though the Amish population later increased in size, genetic diversity was already lacking.

Long-term inbreeding has led to a "genetic curse" on the Amish, with studies finding that infant mortality rates are about twice as high as normal when first-generation cousins marry.

Multi-generational inbreeding, in addition to increasing infant mortality, also causes the group to suffer from a variety of genetic diseases. The Amish have a very high incidence of dwarfism, Gentleman's syndrome, and various metabolic disorders, which most Amish refer to as "God's will.

Because of the inbreeding of the Amish and the fact that they do not take medical exams before marriage, do not take pregnancy tests, do not have abortions, and do not do genetic testing on their unborn children to detect genetic diseases in advance, the Amish population has a very high number of genetic diseases and is increasing every year.

They are aware of the dangers of inbreeding and will intermarry with Amish from other regions to avoid inbreeding in small circles, and are willing to participate in research on genetic diseases and receive modern medical treatment.

Today the Amish are still living traditionally and fighting the "curse of inbreeding".