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Jacquesatoutfaire t1_j1pou69 wrote

Reply to comment by thegagis in What does it mean for a population to be "genetically diverse"? by MysteriousLeader6187

To piggy back on this, genetic diversity increases survivability of a population. The population of Finland before this ancient famine was probably much more diverse. The famine was a bottleneck event which only allowed the survival of a certain group of people with genetic and/or social [read: monetary] advantages survived.

Fast forward to some hypothetical future calamity/bottleneck event and, if diversity has not recovered enough, the entire population could die out if they don't have enough people with advantageous genes to survive.

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perta1234 t1_j1r33h3 wrote

By the way, famines used to be very common just 200 years ago, or even less. There were several per generation, also but not only in Finland. Basically that is why agricultural subsidy systems were created. Either there was way too little food or there was way too much food. Trade was not able to balance things enough.

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