Kai: no, for they are pure mist blood! Or were in any case.
Mei: *grants Nadeshiko Kunoichi Mist citizenship*
Sagisō: *smug*
Seiun: *peers back at Kai* still less weird than trying to keep on a relative, unless you and Tsuki aren't related at all...still feels weird that you share a last name and would consider procreation.
Tsuki: can we change the subject....
Hmmm, actually, considering that a clan starts from a handful of people, and these other factors;
- most of the present clans were already established organizations with hundreds of members during the time of Hashirama (>60 ish years ago)
- Birthrates are generally high as during this point in history having more children was a good thing (especially considering how many died due to war)
- The combination of two clans was able to be considered a 'village'
- Village populations range from several hundred to a few thousand by definition
-Meaning that each clan would've needed at least a few hundred people.
- ~+60 years worth of time to propagate their numbers
-3 Ninja wars | 20 years between each
-The decade or so between the end of the third Ninja war and the start of the series.
- Polygamy wasn't very uncommon in ancient times
-Monogamy was only enforced with the Advent of the Church, and more so in Europe than the Oriental nations
- It was common for Chinese Emperors, in our case Daimyos, (thus to a lesser degree Clan Heads or leaders) to have Harems composed of, on the lower end several tens of women, and on the higher end several hundred women,
-Empress
-Imperial Consorts
-Concubines
Using all this data we can assume that the size of clans should be, statistically, very big. I'd say their numbers should range in the high hundreds to low thousands.
Oh, this doesn't account for subsidiary or distantly related clans.
Example; the other clans that the Byakugan appears in, namely, the Kohinata Clan which is a distant relative of the Hyūga Clan, or the Otsusuki clan which stems from the Same ancestor as the Hyūga Clan.
Including those then 1 'complete' clan, could easily be around 3,000 members, possibly more.
Specifically speaking to noble clans;
Assuming the clans start off with about 300 members (during the time of Hashirama)
and only...half of them...get married, so 150 members married. And only a third of that number marries outside the clan, so 50 members.
Their spouses will likely marry into the clan because noble clans were generally the strongest in the area;
Each couple has around 2 children (Low estimate but seems fairly common -Hinata, Madara, Kiba, Gaara, Sasuke, Asuma, Tsunade, Shino, etc. all had 1 or more other siblings.)
that's 200 kids (100 couples total | the 50 that married outside the clan, plus the remaining 100 who paired up with each other to make 50 other couples)
Means that in one generation (around 20 years), a clan would grow by about a bit over 200 members. (This number gets increasingly larger as time goes on though, but for the period we're talking about, which is only 3 generations, and the numbers we're starting with the increase is negligible.)
Three Ninja wars (3 generations) down the line and the clan would've grown by around 700 people. I'd say the initial 300 should've died of old age by now, and perhaps a few of the first set of kids, so clan numbers should've just barely doubled in these 60 years. So the clan would be at around 600 or so members.
Then do a pretty big low-ball and say it's because of extremely high death rates and I'd estimate a Noble Clan should have around 300~400 members.
Again, this doesn't account for subsidiary or distantly related clans, though their growth rates should've been slower than the main clan.
