Well, yes, you make a valid point, but it's been close to 1000 years since Luthair Pendrag leashed the first damane, or at the very least, several hundreds of years. In all that time, no one put two-and-two together and realized that sul'dam and damane run in families, however infrequently? It speaks of an incredibly close-minded culture, with a self-imposed thought police.

For Papazen, while I have spoken of souls being born with the ability to channel in response to questions, I think of it as being genetic also. In the Age of Legends, between 2 and 3% of people had some ability, following a bell curve distribution in strength. For over 3000 years, though, Aes Sedai have been removing men who actually learned to channel from the gene pool. They have been very efficient at this. As a result, the “present day” sees about 1% of the population who can learn to channel, with a much, much smaller percentage of that being born with the spark.