Geneticist here 🤓 We all have two copies of each gene: one from each of the parents. If one gene is somehow corrupted/dysfunctional, we can use the second copy as a backup. Incest increases the chances of inheriting two "bad" gene copies with no healthy backup
Hi, I took a biology course in college and asked my professor a specific question about incest and he looked at me as if I was a creeper. I was reading about a specific plant which throws its seeds far away from itself to avoid self-pollinating. I read about that unfortunate woman in Austria who was kept hidden in the basement, raped by her dad for 22 years and bore his children. I wondered if there was a theory as to why we haven't biologically evolved to prevent fertilization between gametes that are too close. Perhaps a biological signature or something that could recognize a father/daughter connection for example and create a barrier? I also did an anthropology course and again I wondered if early humans did commit incest? My theory is that maybe this is where genetic diseases like cystic fibrosis or Prada Willi came from? If identical twin girls are adults and one is infertile, if her twin donates her egg and there is a baby, will both twins be the genetic mum of said child?
You gained a new subscriber! As a genealogist, one learns that before the automobile, the vast majority of people rarely moved beyond a 5 or 10 mile radius of where they were born. Thus marriage & sex was all about availability in close proximity. When one my great grandfathers first wife died in childbirth, he married her younger sister. She'd already been living with them as a servant since childhood. So my grandpa had three cousin-siblings.
Hi Kate and Brian! I am a donor-conceived person living in Australia and can perhaps give you some insight. Nowadays, you can order sperm online, but in the 90s, the most popular (read: only) clinic in the state had 8 available donors. There are rules and regulations about how often a sample can be used, and each donor is supposed to only be able to supply 3 families per state (in theory, that's up to about 20 families having kids with the same donor). However, the privilege of knowing who your donor is wasn't seen as all that important, so records were actively being destroyed until at least 2001. Furthermore, clinics were revealed to have ignored these regularions on their own wisdom and some samples were used dozens of times, can you imagine! I have met people in the community who have 40+ recorded siblings, and that's just who they know about! I met one of my biological siblings for the first time at 21 years old. I can, at least so far, confirm that there has been no accidental incest. However, many people don't even find out that they are donor-conceived until they are an adult (some not until their parents pass away!), so it did cross my mind a lot when I was dating. The question, "so, are you sure you know who your father is?" came up a lot in my early dating life!
I think it's a shame you didn't talk more about incest in ancient times. There are a lot of fairly well-documented cases among ancient Egyptian royalty and within the Ptolemaic dynasty. As for the porn thing, I think one of the main reasons why people get off on it is simply because it's taboo and has an air of the forbidden. Plus if it's a step-parent with on of their step-children, there are some inbuilt authority and power dynamics which a lot of people also find quite exciting. I'd imagine that teacher/student is a popular porn trope for similar reasons.
I raced to comment this exact thing and found your comment already here. As a queer sex worker who has talked to many gay/bi men and bi f+m couples, I've never heard an inc kinkster say they want a "step" something. They want a whole something.
And that is why adopted children should know, not only that they are adopted, but who their bio family is! At 45 I found out that I am adopted. Also that I have two older full brothers and a younger sister. I dread thinking what would happen if I had met one of my brothers, and of course not knowing that we are full siblings...oh and we were raised in the same city, so the chances of us meeting were even higher!
With the prevalence of DNA testing and its availability many of us are finding out that our family tree is much more complex than we knew. There are many people that are finding out their father or grandfather isn't who they thought they were. Women cheat. Women get violated. Women marry men that did not get them pregnant. This was probably more common historically than it is today because there used to be a lot of shame around these things. I know two people that found out their father wasn't who they thought he was because of DNA testing. Lots of secrets are coming out. Add to that people who are the product of artificial insemination. If people are really worried they might end up too closely related to someone they are dating they should get tested. There are lots of reasons why bio mothers do not want to be known, that should be respected.
I've had conversation about a subject matter that is misunderstood in much of our society today, and that was t subject of arranged marriage in forgien culture's. What many people have either forgotten/ or never knew, is that in many area's of this world t ability to read may not be common. And even a record of extended family relationships are not well known. So in numerically limited communities it's going to be a group of elders who must come by an agreement for the good of all, who can snd should be a subject of matrimony. Makes sense to think about it that way.
Newgrange, a megalithic structure Ireland predates Stonehenge and the Pyramids of Giza. DNA from human remains found at this site reveals a rare and unexpected incidence of incest. A man buried in the chamber of Newgrange around 5,000 years ago was the offspring of a first-degree incestuous union: his parents were either siblings or parent and child. This finding led the team to speculate that the elite associated with this magnificent monument practised incest as a way of maintaining a dynastic bloodline. Such a strategy, which breaks a near-universal social taboo against incest, was also practised much later by ruling elites in ancient Egypt, in the Inca empire and in ancient Hawaii.
A Freudian studying the Oedipal complex would have a WILD time on Reddit, with all the stories of women showing up at their sons' weddings in wedding gowns and trying to oust the bride...
I believe the video sites have to market incest stuff as “step” for legal reasons or corporate sponsorship reasons. Try AO3 or another site where it’s all in written or drawn format, created and uploaded by users and you’ll find the full-on incest stuff.
Around the world there are many different ways of conceptualizing the family. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinship_terminology In some cultures, some of your cousins are called your brothers and sisters, and some of them are called your cousins. It might be okay for you to marry your "cousin", but not your "brother/sister". This might mean that you can marry your mother's brother's children, but not your mother's sister's children. Or your mother's brother's children are your "cousins", but your father's sister's children are your "aunt/father". Since different cultures don't conceptualize kinship the same AT ALL, the definition of incest is wildly different across cultures.
Darwin himself married his own first cousin. As did some of the DuPonts & Roosevelts to keep the money in the family. These things happened not so long ago .
These things happened "yesterday" and "this morning." :d. I worked in Saudi Arabia. A little demographic blurb on Saudi society appeared in the the English-language "Arab News" which said that 1/3 of all Saudi marriages were between 1st cousins, 1/3 between other degrees of familial relationship, and only 1/3 between people not known to be family members. I can imagine that this is common among tribal, clan, family groups. You don't travel, you are born with a full set of family enemies as well as friends and allies, and it just works out better. The Koran doesn't forbid cousin marriages while it does forbid a lot of other kinds of relationships.
Cousins don't count as incest. Only sex between siblings/half-siblings or parents and children count as incest. While sex between step-parents or step-siblings can be considered pseudo-incest.
Obviously incest has been a constant throughout history, based on the impossible number of antecedents we would have needed for it not to have been a thing. I remember visiting Spanish villages many years ago and noticing the same physiognomy among the inhabitants. I live on a small island and for hundreds of years there were only five families. Also, what about Jeffrey Masson's revelations about Freud when he studied his private letters?
@@What_I_Think_Happened Let's say the Balearics, but the same thing would apply for most of rural Spain. When you fly over, you see villages all spaced roughly the same distance apart and it occurred to me that each village extended only as far as the workers could travel in a day to tend the fields. I think that's where we get the word journey from.
No, the number of antecedents isn't so impossible. So, 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great-grandparents... When you go back 11 generations, you're talking about 2048 people, yes, but amongst them many of the same people appear again and again without their relationship being close enough to be called incest.
The issue of incest we usually think close cousins and immediate family. But in certain countries its still legal in the UK to marry your first cousin. The USA in most states allow you to marry your 2nd cousin. In Mexico I was seeing a lot of cousins marrying in the 300 years it was under Spain and royals were marrying their nieces and nephews as well as their cousins which needed papal bulls, the lower nobility and even normal catholics needed dispensations which are still the approval by the church to marry their relatives within the 4th degree of blood they share. When it came to marry a deceased wife's relative it was considered marriage by affinity which required a dispensation also.
So in your description it says 'we wouldn't recommend bringing it up as an ice breaker on a date' tell that to my ex, who told me her grandparents were cousins pretty much on the first date...
That reminds me, there was a kid on my high school swim team who had webbed feet. The first day, he proudly explained his parents were first cousins, and he and all his siblings had webbed feet. He said this brazenly in front of 50 other teenagers. No one knew how to process this candid moment, and no one really acknowledged it in that moment.
It's call Genetic Sexual Attraction vs Westermarck Effect(being *raised together tends to counter sibling sex) (wikipedia) - That naturally for healthy genetic material to breed with we unconsciously look for sense traits behavior that for us is positive compliments recotgnised. PEOPLE end up doing the Freudian (considers it only mental) but Jungian (sees it as biological) --seeking someone who is like you or a familial friendly positive [safe helpful good stock]; THUS close family ends up VERY much like you even if raised in different places. Proof Fact, years ago began casual friend chatting up a guy store register clerk in my hometown state capital big populations, everytime we got along laughing at similar things(in many ethnic groups POC it's a thing to do this) I asked something abt who their parent family name.....and we realized we were 3rd cousins, I then stopped flirting so much and we just reverted to casual friendly.
Well, it is been around for generations. Ancient Egyptian, Hapsburgs, small villages..ie”the village idiot”…don’t forget the movie Deliverance. That bothered me. Sick. Quite the movie. We must have noticed something, arguments. I think we knew something. Queen Victoria passed on hemophilia . Inbreeding, something is going to happen. The monarchies are related in some way…blood relations. Gene pool gets weird. We all knew something.
I did not hear in the podcast ( nor saw in the comments) about the Kingston Clan, an offshoot of Mormonism where close familial pairings (along with polygamy) are currently practiced.
Well, I think it’s also about the level of consanguinity that increases the chances of having incestually related genetic disease. I heard of a story of something recently, where this couple only found out that they were siblings b/c one of them needed some kind of organ transplant.
Here in the UK, I live near a city which has a huge muslim population. Our health service sees numerous cases of people disabled (severely in some cases), as a result of inbreeding. This, I am told, is to keep land in Pakistan in the family etc
This is a big problem in Birmingham, which has the largest UK Muslim population from Pakistan, where first-cousin marriage over generations is a custom. They have a radically higher rate of genetic deformities than the general UK population.
My grandparents were first cousins. My grandfather married a woman (not his cousin) and had three children. When she died while he was overseas serving in WWII, leaving those three children without a mother, he returned and married his first cousin. The marriage took place in a Roman Catholic church, with the permission of the Bishop. I understand that part of the reason that permission was given was that both were in their forties and it was unlikely that they would have children.
In Alaska it's okay for first cousins to marry because of the villages all across Alaska are so small there's not a big dating pool. The topic that always fascinates me the morality of it the legality of it it's just an interesting topic. The porn thing from what I've heard is that it's the taboo of it that makes it interesting to watch.
I studied anthropology academically for many years. I almost completed an MA in that discipline. What I will say what we know about these taboos is that it "seems" (as far as we can say because there really are no cultural universals) that there is one ubiquitous ban on familial intimacy, and that is between mothers and their male offspriing. This isn't just with humans, it is with many mammalian species. It is true of all primates. We do not mate with our male offspring. In fact, if you look at mothers in nature they will chase out their male offspring when they become mating age. I think the Oedipus story is so long lasting because it is our only taboo that predates our species. In nature males will mate with daughters, and siblings will mate. But the big one is between a mother and a son. Are there cultures out there that violate this? Probably. But humans are known to violate other taboos that other creatures do not engage in, for example, most mammals will not cannibalize each other unless there is starvation. But humans will.
Sexual fantasies are not in fact things you really want to do, they are just spicing up the porn by taboo. Incest is taboo so it works, like many other things. vanilla porn may be what young people start with but they keep needing more spice. In the realm of porn the whole naughty stepsiblings are pretty tame even.
[Me only reading genetic studies] the amount of randomizing of mother father genes in their sperm and egg is such their children have a level of genetic difference to equal as if strangers and the matching of dysfunctional genes using those statistics maps increases with EACH GENERATION cross breeding ie aunt/uncle-niece/nephew, 1st-2nd or 3rd cousins breeding across regularly VS a ONE OFF sibling mating(ie GoT where Lannister 1st cousin parents more problem than the offspring frat-twin siblings.). As social humans any of those is problematic but as for like the animal breeding and invitro-sperm injecting keeping track is all that's needed. Now that we have a full planet of people 8 Billion there is NO reason for less than 3rd cousin mating intentionally IMHO BUT since 200k ? HOMO SAPIEN SAPIEN population came from common local tribal INCEST enforced or voluntary till more travel trade happened.
While researching my family I found that a pair of brothers in one family married a pair of sisters in another family. Those marriages resulted in a bunch of double cousins. I don’t consider this incest at all but it illustrates that people were driven by proximity in the Canadian frontier. You marry who you know who live close by.
In regard to Theories of Everything and How We Got How We Are, I recently read a great book (in my view) - "The Invention of Prehistory: Empire, Violence, and Our Obsession with Human Origins" (Stephanous Geroulanos). A lot of the successive theories of human origins say more about the predilections of the theoreticians involved, advancing plausible theories that fit in with their pre-existing notions, rather than proofs falling out of the "evidence". We have little or no idea of what bones, artifacts, pots, and the ruins of structures actually demonstrate about the origins of any primeval incest taboo. I have hopes for archaeo-genetics making things clearer, but only if we can correlate it with other things that are known. "Plausible" is not the same as "proven", just as "preponderance of evidence" is not the same as "beyond reasonable doubt".
The "step-relation" thing in porn is 100% a legal thing. They're just protecting themselves from litigation. It's related to the "Over 18" obsession with who's allowed to have sex. The vast majority of US states and other western countries (like the UK) are perfectly fine with people from 16 having sex. (You can marry at that age so sex is, you know, fine.) The reason for the obsession is Californian law where it's 18 - because that's where the majority of porn is made so they have to say "everybody is over 18". It infects everything. I'm a UK writer, I do some erotica, but had to say right at the start of a book the female character was having her 18th birthday. Let's be clear, in all the sexual encounters she proceeds to have *she* is the instigator and there are no non-con encounters - but she should have been two years younger, which would have made so much more sense for the character. But I'd have been banned.
Interesting topic, allegedly Old Testament law precluded many relationships except for niece and uncle. The end result is there some extreme religious sects the permit this because because they're so fundamentalist that if the Bible doesn't include 45:40 something it must be okay
My great grandparents were first cousins. It was totally normal in turn of the century Russia. Queen Victoria and her introduction of hemophilia to the mainstream world (and yes, after the Habsburg Chin got so bad one couldn't even eat properly), people were more aware of the dangers of intermarriage.
People can take a DNA test nowadays. You are just as likely to discover who your father is by matching DNA data with databases, such as Ancestry organisations/businesses. So many people nowadays have had DNA tests for one reason or another, such as family research, that matching up to particular family groups is getting more possible than ever before. On occassion, one name will come to the fore, or sometimes two... Time itself isn't the barrier, but our lifetime is, as we age out. We want to know before we die. 🙏🏻
I thought there was something about brothers being required to marry the widow of a brother who had died? I thought of this when you mentioned the prohibition on marrying your deceased wife’s sister. It seems like a weird double standard. Interesting show
I find it very strange that you don't mention that first-cousin marriage is very, very common and accepted on the Indian Subcontinent! - and possibly other places too…
Werhner von Braun married. his first cousin don't know if she was a cross or parallel cousin). He was a member of German minor nobility and I think his choices may have been limited by his class and station., He was also a former SS officer and ended up living in the US as the premier rocket scientist, But I digress, He returned to Germany to wed, and then bring his bride back to his new rather forgiving country. In the biography I read of him, it stated that once in the US he and his wife had to keep their kin relationship secret, because first cousin marriages were not as acceptable to mid Century Americans than they were to traditional German nobility and other segments of upper class European societies, Charles Darwin married his first cousin. I think smaller endogenous community, like 19th Century European minor nobility, may tend to marry. closer.
Typically, (legally), the cut-off point is first cousins or 1st cousins once removed. On the religous side iirc the Catholic church will join 1st cousins once removed.
Yeah. My grandparents were first cousins. Had to do with religious, and cultural reasons, along with keeping property in the family (Christians in an ottoman turk territory). My family is crazy
My GGF (GREAT grandfather) married his deceased wife's sister and my maternal GF (grandfather) was the product of that second marriage. This was a family from Bath, England, that migrated to the United States at the turn of the 20th century. I for some reason thought marrying a deceased wife's sister was simply tradition and that everybody did that. I'm surprised to hear that this is incest 🤷♀.
You managed to go thru an entire podcast without mentioning the celebrities who popped to mind: Edgar Allan Poe (EAP), Fatty Arbuckle (was that incest or merely underage?), Jerry Lee Lewis, and especially Woody Allen and Soon Yee - related by adoption, not blood, but with a definite “ick” factor that nearly destroyed Allen’s career.
The Woody Allen thing isn't just about adoptive incest, altho it certainly is partly about that. It's about how he raised this woman from childhood. It's legitimately fucked up, not just some arbitrary quibble.
My fmr hubby is with a Yale fellowship on fertility. He came home a little late for supper one day. I asked if traffic was bad. He said he was with a couple, going to get married and were first cousins. I'm a CRNA and said "
wha? He told me they had taken DNA tests (this was 20 years ago, mind you) to check out any potential future problems. It's safe to marry your 1st cousin now bc the gene pool has had generations without interfamilial marriage. Once I got over my reflexive gut reaction my hcp side kicked in, I understood the facts. I'm glad I learned about this.
Why does everyone have to let us know their gd politics? This guest just HAD to let us know his thoughts on Florida politics. For the love of heaven, stick to your topic. I can already see where THIS guest is going. And the host thinks he is delightfully entertaining as she breathlessly cackles. Ugh.
Geneticist here 🤓
We all have two copies of each gene: one from each of the parents. If one gene is somehow corrupted/dysfunctional, we can use the second copy as a backup. Incest increases the chances of inheriting two "bad" gene copies with no healthy backup
Hi, I took a biology course in college and asked my professor a specific question about incest and he looked at me as if I was a creeper. I was reading about a specific plant which throws its seeds far away from itself to avoid self-pollinating. I read about that unfortunate woman in Austria who was kept hidden in the basement, raped by her dad for 22 years and bore his children. I wondered if there was a theory as to why we haven't biologically evolved to prevent fertilization between gametes that are too close. Perhaps a biological signature or something that could recognize a father/daughter connection for example and create a barrier?
I also did an anthropology course and again I wondered if early humans did commit incest? My theory is that maybe this is where genetic diseases like cystic fibrosis or Prada Willi came from?
If identical twin girls are adults and one is infertile, if her twin donates her egg and there is a baby, will both twins be the genetic mum of said child?
You gained a new subscriber! As a genealogist, one learns that before the automobile, the vast majority of people rarely moved beyond a 5 or 10 mile radius of where they were born. Thus marriage & sex was all about availability in close proximity. When one my great grandfathers first wife died in childbirth, he married her younger sister. She'd already been living with them as a servant since childhood. So my grandpa had three cousin-siblings.
My ancestors traveled a lot thanks to the Erie Canal… yet STILL did this to three sisters!
Ugh
Hi Kate and Brian! I am a donor-conceived person living in Australia and can perhaps give you some insight.
Nowadays, you can order sperm online, but in the 90s, the most popular (read: only) clinic in the state had 8 available donors. There are rules and regulations about how often a sample can be used, and each donor is supposed to only be able to supply 3 families per state (in theory, that's up to about 20 families having kids with the same donor). However, the privilege of knowing who your donor is wasn't seen as all that important, so records were actively being destroyed until at least 2001.
Furthermore, clinics were revealed to have ignored these regularions on their own wisdom and some samples were used dozens of times, can you imagine! I have met people in the community who have 40+ recorded siblings, and that's just who they know about!
I met one of my biological siblings for the first time at 21 years old. I can, at least so far, confirm that there has been no accidental incest. However, many people don't even find out that they are donor-conceived until they are an adult (some not until their parents pass away!), so it did cross my mind a lot when I was dating. The question, "so, are you sure you know who your father is?" came up a lot in my early dating life!
Interesting
I think it's a shame you didn't talk more about incest in ancient times. There are a lot of fairly well-documented cases among ancient Egyptian royalty and within the Ptolemaic dynasty. As for the porn thing, I think one of the main reasons why people get off on it is simply because it's taboo and has an air of the forbidden. Plus if it's a step-parent with on of their step-children, there are some inbuilt authority and power dynamics which a lot of people also find quite exciting. I'd imagine that teacher/student is a popular porn trope for similar reasons.
Agreed on both points
With reference to ancient Egypt, it wasn't only the Ptolemys. They were simply conforming to the standard set by the Egyptian royals of the past.
The reason all the inc porn is STEP is because most banks wont process money for the films if its not STEP.
I raced to comment this exact thing and found your comment already here. As a queer sex worker who has talked to many gay/bi men and bi f+m couples, I've never heard an inc kinkster say they want a "step" something. They want a whole something.
I wish I understood this comment. I'm so curious as to the meaning.
@@SpoodyFlopp I wish I understood this comment. I'm so curious as to the meaning.
And that is why adopted children should know, not only that they are adopted, but who their bio family is!
At 45 I found out that I am adopted. Also that I have two older full brothers and a younger sister. I dread thinking what would happen if I had met one of my brothers, and of course not knowing that we are full siblings...oh and we were raised in the same city, so the chances of us meeting were even higher!
With the prevalence of DNA testing and its availability many of us are finding out that our family tree is much more complex than we knew. There are many people that are finding out their father or grandfather isn't who they thought they were. Women cheat. Women get violated. Women marry men that did not get them pregnant. This was probably more common historically than it is today because there used to be a lot of shame around these things. I know two people that found out their father wasn't who they thought he was because of DNA testing. Lots of secrets are coming out. Add to that people who are the product of artificial insemination. If people are really worried they might end up too closely related to someone they are dating they should get tested. There are lots of reasons why bio mothers do not want to be known, that should be respected.
I've had conversation about a subject matter that is misunderstood in much of our society today, and that was t subject of arranged marriage in forgien culture's. What many people have either forgotten/ or never knew, is that in many area's of this world t ability to read may not be common. And even a record of extended family relationships are not well known. So in numerically limited communities it's going to be a group of elders who must come by an agreement for the good of all, who can snd should be a subject of matrimony. Makes sense to think about it that way.
Thank you for such an interesting, informative, and entertaining video!
Newgrange, a megalithic structure Ireland predates Stonehenge and the Pyramids of Giza. DNA from human remains found at this site reveals a rare and unexpected incidence of incest. A man buried in the chamber of Newgrange around 5,000 years ago was the offspring of a first-degree incestuous union: his parents were either siblings or parent and child. This finding led the team to speculate that the elite associated with this magnificent monument practised incest as a way of maintaining a dynastic bloodline. Such a strategy, which breaks a near-universal social taboo against incest, was also practised much later by ruling elites in ancient Egypt, in the Inca empire and in ancient Hawaii.
If it's a near-universal social taboo why is its practice so near-universal?
A Freudian studying the Oedipal complex would have a WILD time on Reddit, with all the stories of women showing up at their sons' weddings in wedding gowns and trying to oust the bride...
It must surtenly is a beautiful one. Love every minute of it. Thank you for sharing this amazing journée. Mark you rock has always ❤
How did the Hapsburg issues occur with a Papal ban in place? Why was the ban over turned?
I believe the video sites have to market incest stuff as “step” for legal reasons or corporate sponsorship reasons. Try AO3 or another site where it’s all in written or drawn format, created and uploaded by users and you’ll find the full-on incest stuff.
I came here to say this. 100% legal "safety".
Around the world there are many different ways of conceptualizing the family. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinship_terminology In some cultures, some of your cousins are called your brothers and sisters, and some of them are called your cousins. It might be okay for you to marry your "cousin", but not your "brother/sister". This might mean that you can marry your mother's brother's children, but not your mother's sister's children. Or your mother's brother's children are your "cousins", but your father's sister's children are your "aunt/father". Since different cultures don't conceptualize kinship the same AT ALL, the definition of incest is wildly different across cultures.
Darwin himself married his own first cousin. As did some of the DuPonts & Roosevelts to keep the money in the family. These things happened not so long ago .
These things happened "yesterday" and "this morning." :d. I worked in Saudi Arabia. A little demographic blurb on Saudi society appeared in the the English-language "Arab News" which said that 1/3 of all Saudi marriages were between 1st cousins, 1/3 between other degrees of familial relationship, and only 1/3 between people not known to be family members. I can imagine that this is common among tribal, clan, family groups. You don't travel, you are born with a full set of family enemies as well as friends and allies, and it just works out better. The Koran doesn't forbid cousin marriages while it does forbid a lot of other kinds of relationships.
Cousins don't count as incest. Only sex between siblings/half-siblings or parents and children count as incest. While sex between step-parents or step-siblings can be considered pseudo-incest.
Obviously incest has been a constant throughout history, based on the impossible number of antecedents we would have needed for it not to have been a thing. I remember visiting Spanish villages many years ago and noticing the same physiognomy among the inhabitants. I live on a small island and for hundreds of years there were only five families.
Also, what about Jeffrey Masson's revelations about Freud when he studied his private letters?
What island do you live on?
@@What_I_Think_Happened Let's say the Balearics, but the same thing would apply for most of rural Spain. When you fly over, you see villages all spaced roughly the same distance apart and it occurred to me that each village extended only as far as the workers could travel in a day to tend the fields. I think that's where we get the word journey from.
No, the number of antecedents isn't so impossible. So, 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great-grandparents... When you go back 11 generations, you're talking about 2048 people, yes, but amongst them many of the same people appear again and again without their relationship being close enough to be called incest.
The issue of incest we usually think close cousins and immediate family. But in certain countries its still legal in the UK to marry your first cousin. The USA in most states allow you to marry your 2nd cousin. In Mexico I was seeing a lot of cousins marrying in the 300 years it was under Spain and royals were marrying their nieces and nephews as well as their cousins which needed papal bulls, the lower nobility and even normal catholics needed dispensations which are still the approval by the church to marry their relatives within the 4th degree of blood they share. When it came to marry a deceased wife's relative it was considered marriage by affinity which required a dispensation also.
Most US states permit 1st cousin marriage
So in your description it says 'we wouldn't recommend bringing it up as an ice breaker on a date' tell that to my ex, who told me her grandparents were cousins pretty much on the first date...
That reminds me, there was a kid on my high school swim team who had webbed feet. The first day, he proudly explained his parents were first cousins, and he and all his siblings had webbed feet. He said this brazenly in front of 50 other teenagers. No one knew how to process this candid moment, and no one really acknowledged it in that moment.
@@SpoodyFlopp Was that why he made the swimming team?
Sex between first cousins doesn't count as incest.
@@view1st Depends on the country. I would say it doesn’t, most Americans apparently think it does.
It's call Genetic Sexual Attraction vs Westermarck Effect(being *raised together tends to counter sibling sex) (wikipedia)
- That naturally for healthy genetic material to breed with we unconsciously look for sense traits behavior that for us is positive compliments recotgnised. PEOPLE end up doing the Freudian (considers it only mental) but Jungian (sees it as biological) --seeking someone who is like you or a familial friendly positive [safe helpful good stock]; THUS close family ends up VERY much like you even if raised in different places.
Proof Fact, years ago began casual friend chatting up a guy store register clerk in my hometown state capital big populations, everytime we got along laughing at similar things(in many ethnic groups POC it's a thing to do this) I asked something abt who their parent family name.....and we realized we were 3rd cousins, I then stopped flirting so much and we just reverted to casual friendly.
Well, it is been around for generations. Ancient Egyptian, Hapsburgs, small villages..ie”the village idiot”…don’t forget the movie Deliverance. That bothered me. Sick. Quite the movie. We must have noticed something, arguments. I think we knew something. Queen Victoria passed on hemophilia . Inbreeding, something is going to happen. The monarchies are related in some way…blood relations. Gene pool gets weird. We all knew something.
I did not hear in the podcast ( nor saw in the comments) about the Kingston Clan, an offshoot of Mormonism where close familial pairings (along with polygamy) are currently practiced.
Well, I think it’s also about the level of consanguinity that increases the chances of having incestually related genetic disease.
I heard of a story of something recently, where this couple only found out that they were siblings b/c one of them needed some kind of organ transplant.
the "step" element in the titles are mainly to skirt legal regulations
Here in the UK, I live near a city which has a huge muslim population. Our health service sees numerous cases of people disabled (severely in some cases), as a result of inbreeding. This, I am told, is to keep land in Pakistan in the family etc
This is a big problem in Birmingham, which has the largest UK Muslim population from Pakistan, where first-cousin marriage over generations is a custom. They have a radically higher rate of genetic deformities than the general UK population.
My grandparents were first cousins. My grandfather married a woman (not his cousin) and had three children. When she died while he was overseas serving in WWII, leaving those three children without a mother, he returned and married his first cousin. The marriage took place in a Roman Catholic church, with the permission of the Bishop. I understand that part of the reason that permission was given was that both were in their forties and it was unlikely that they would have children.
In Alaska it's okay for first cousins to marry because of the villages all across Alaska are so small there's not a big dating pool. The topic that always fascinates me the morality of it the legality of it it's just an interesting topic. The porn thing from what I've heard is that it's the taboo of it that makes it interesting to watch.
I studied anthropology academically for many years. I almost completed an MA in that discipline. What I will say what we know about these taboos is that it "seems" (as far as we can say because there really are no cultural universals) that there is one ubiquitous ban on familial intimacy, and that is between mothers and their male offspriing. This isn't just with humans, it is with many mammalian species. It is true of all primates. We do not mate with our male offspring. In fact, if you look at mothers in nature they will chase out their male offspring when they become mating age. I think the Oedipus story is so long lasting because it is our only taboo that predates our species. In nature males will mate with daughters, and siblings will mate. But the big one is between a mother and a son. Are there cultures out there that violate this? Probably. But humans are known to violate other taboos that other creatures do not engage in, for example, most mammals will not cannibalize each other unless there is starvation. But humans will.
Sexual fantasies are not in fact things you really want to do, they are just spicing up the porn by taboo. Incest is taboo so it works, like many other things. vanilla porn may be what young people start with but they keep needing more spice. In the realm of porn the whole naughty stepsiblings are pretty tame even.
[Me only reading genetic studies] the amount of randomizing of mother father genes in their sperm and egg is such their children have a level of genetic difference to equal as if strangers and the matching of dysfunctional genes using those statistics maps increases with EACH GENERATION cross breeding ie aunt/uncle-niece/nephew, 1st-2nd or 3rd cousins breeding across regularly VS a ONE OFF sibling mating(ie GoT where Lannister 1st cousin parents more problem than the offspring frat-twin siblings.). As social humans any of those is problematic but as for like the animal breeding and invitro-sperm injecting keeping track is all that's needed. Now that we have a full planet of people 8 Billion there is NO reason for less than 3rd cousin mating intentionally IMHO
BUT since 200k ? HOMO SAPIEN SAPIEN population came from common local tribal INCEST enforced or voluntary till more travel trade happened.
While researching my family I found that a pair of brothers in one family married a pair of sisters in another family. Those marriages resulted in a bunch of double cousins. I don’t consider this incest at all but it illustrates that people were driven by proximity in the Canadian frontier. You marry who you know who live close by.
Peculiar topic, but interesting nonetheless. Thanks!
So many commercials 🙄
In regard to Theories of Everything and How We Got How We Are, I recently read a great book (in my view) - "The Invention of Prehistory: Empire, Violence, and Our Obsession with Human Origins" (Stephanous Geroulanos). A lot of the successive theories of human origins say more about the predilections of the theoreticians involved, advancing plausible theories that fit in with their pre-existing notions, rather than proofs falling out of the "evidence". We have little or no idea of what bones, artifacts, pots, and the ruins of structures actually demonstrate about the origins of any primeval incest taboo. I have hopes for archaeo-genetics making things clearer, but only if we can correlate it with other things that are known. "Plausible" is not the same as "proven", just as "preponderance of evidence" is not the same as "beyond reasonable doubt".
The "step-relation" thing in porn is 100% a legal thing. They're just protecting themselves from litigation. It's related to the "Over 18" obsession with who's allowed to have sex. The vast majority of US states and other western countries (like the UK) are perfectly fine with people from 16 having sex. (You can marry at that age so sex is, you know, fine.) The reason for the obsession is Californian law where it's 18 - because that's where the majority of porn is made so they have to say "everybody is over 18".
It infects everything. I'm a UK writer, I do some erotica, but had to say right at the start of a book the female character was having her 18th birthday. Let's be clear, in all the sexual encounters she proceeds to have *she* is the instigator and there are no non-con encounters - but she should have been two years younger, which would have made so much more sense for the character. But I'd have been banned.
Interesting topic, allegedly Old Testament law precluded many relationships except for niece and uncle. The end result is there some extreme religious sects the permit this because because they're so fundamentalist that if the Bible doesn't include 45:40 something it must be okay
My great grandparents were first cousins. It was totally normal in turn of the century Russia. Queen Victoria and her introduction of hemophilia to the mainstream world (and yes, after the Habsburg Chin got so bad one couldn't even eat properly), people were more aware of the dangers of intermarriage.
People can take a DNA test nowadays. You are just as likely to discover who your father is by matching DNA data with databases, such as Ancestry organisations/businesses. So many people nowadays have had DNA tests for one reason or another, such as family research, that matching up to particular family groups is getting more possible than ever before. On occassion, one name will come to the fore, or sometimes two... Time itself isn't the barrier, but our lifetime is, as we age out. We want to know before we die. 🙏🏻
18:42 It is legal on in 19 states to marry your first cousin.
There was one prominent case of brother sister incest in Germany. But in this case they knew they were siblings.
I thought there was something about brothers being required to marry the widow of a brother who had died? I thought of this when you mentioned the prohibition on marrying your deceased wife’s sister. It seems like a weird double standard. Interesting show
I find it very strange that you don't mention that first-cousin marriage is very, very common and accepted on the Indian Subcontinent! - and possibly other places too…
Werhner von Braun married. his first cousin don't know if she was a cross or parallel cousin). He was a member of German minor nobility and I think his choices may have been limited by his class and station., He was also a former SS officer and ended up living in the US as the premier rocket scientist, But I digress, He returned to Germany to wed, and then bring his bride back to his new rather forgiving country. In the biography I read of him, it stated that once in the US he and his wife had to keep their kin relationship secret, because first cousin marriages were not as acceptable to mid Century Americans than they were to traditional German nobility and other segments of upper class European societies, Charles Darwin married his first cousin. I think smaller endogenous community, like 19th Century European minor nobility, may tend to marry. closer.
Saint Dymphna defend us ❤
Aren’t a lot of English royalty related.
I lived in Cairo for several years... they still talk about "marrying" their cats to each other.
it _is_ known as animal _husbandry_ after all... lol
So entire royal family are cousins 👀
Typically, (legally), the cut-off point is first cousins or 1st cousins once removed. On the religous side iirc the Catholic church will join 1st cousins once removed.
Gives a different view of the nomadic nature of mankind. Just thinking?
Someone did a study whereby women in estrus sniffed sweaty T-shirts. The women rejected the smell of their brother's laundry.
Yeah. My grandparents were first cousins. Had to do with religious, and cultural reasons, along with keeping property in the family (Christians in an ottoman turk territory). My family is crazy
Why leave home right? 🙈🐕💨💨
Exactly dnt say all people did this. THEY DIDNT
My GGF (GREAT grandfather) married his deceased wife's sister and my maternal GF (grandfather) was the product of that second marriage. This was a family from Bath, England, that migrated to the United States at the turn of the 20th century. I for some reason thought marrying a deceased wife's sister was simply tradition and that everybody did that. I'm surprised to hear that this is incest 🤷♀.
This is not incest, and it's practiced in many societies.
IN THE BIBLE ITS FROWNED UPON
Talking shit to who me ??? Oh y'all are funny
You managed to go thru an entire podcast without mentioning the celebrities who popped to mind: Edgar Allan Poe (EAP), Fatty Arbuckle (was that incest or merely underage?), Jerry Lee Lewis, and especially Woody Allen and Soon Yee - related by adoption, not blood, but with a definite “ick” factor that nearly destroyed Allen’s career.
The Woody Allen thing isn't just about adoptive incest, altho it certainly is partly about that. It's about how he raised this woman from childhood. It's legitimately fucked up, not just some arbitrary quibble.
Dude, there is no letter T in the word, cousin!
Mostly sounds like excuses to make incest accepting. Similar to the excuses why making pedfilia accepted.
Why don’t you finish off and find out about that couple..how did it all end. Please finish off your statement.
My fmr hubby is with a Yale fellowship on fertility.
He came home a little late for supper one day. I asked if traffic was bad. He said he was with a couple, going to get married and were first cousins.
I'm a CRNA and said "
wha?
He told me they had taken DNA tests (this was 20 years ago, mind you) to check out any potential future problems.
It's safe to marry your 1st cousin now bc the gene pool has had generations without interfamilial marriage.
Once I got over my reflexive gut reaction my hcp side kicked in, I understood the facts.
I'm glad I learned about this.
This guest makes a lot of grammatical mistakes while speaking.
Your wrong
Why does everyone have to let us know their gd politics? This guest just HAD to let us know his thoughts on Florida politics. For the love of heaven, stick to your topic. I can already see where THIS guest is going. And the host thinks he is delightfully entertaining as she breathlessly cackles. Ugh.