ok. so, first we looked at all the outbreeding amongst the germanic folks in europe since the early medieval period. then i started looking at the inbreeding that continued for longer around the periphery of western europe — ireland, spain. and i promised to look at italy next. so here we go…
well, if the marriage practices of medieval spain were muy, muy complicado to understand, then italy is impossibile! native latins, lombards, ostrogoths, saracens, greeks — mamma mia! if you think i got a handle on all that after a couple of weeks of reading — was the matter wit you? fuggedaboutit!
i couldn’t even find any good books/articles on the topic of marriage/family/kinship in medieval italy (like i did for the germanics and spain and ireland). can it be that no one has studied la familia in italy in the middle ages?? maybe all the books are in italian, i dunno (if anyone has any good references, please let me know). ima gonna look back at jack goody’s books on the development of the family in europe to see what he had to say (if anything) about italy, but until then i ain’t got much to say about marriage in medieval italy, capiche?
what i do have for you, tho, are some numbers on cousin marriage in italy in the 20th century.
cavalli-sforza, et. al., took a look at the catholic church dispensations for cousin marriages throughout italy between 1910 and 1964. the data were published online back in ’04 but seem to have disappeared since then. but i found the webpages on the internet archive (three cheers for the wayback machine!).
below is a little chart i worked up of the percentages of first cousin marriages for all the regions for the first (1910-1914) and last (1960-64) of the time periods at which they looked. i included only the first cousin marriages since first-cousin-once-removed (1 1/2C) and second cousin (2C) marriages were not included for sicily and i wanted to be able to compare all the regions. note that the reason cavalli-sforza, et. al., didn’t include 1 1/2C and 2C marriages for sicily is that sicilians are exempt from having to get dispensations to marry those family members, so presumably the rates for those marriages are pretty high!
first, here’s a map of the regions and provinces of italy in the year 1961:
and the chart:
as you can see, the numbers for southern regions like sicily and calabria in the ’60s are ridiculously high! 48.74% in agrigento? — and 48.49% in reggio calabria? and that’s just first cousin marriages! those rates are like the rates for saudi arabia and pakistan today! i have no idea what the contemporary rates for italy are, but enquiring minds want to know.
(edit: i forgot to mention that i believe that the type of cousin marriage that is most common in sicily is cross-cousin marriage — that is either father’s sister’s daughter [fzd] or mother’s brother’s daughter [mbd] — but i’m not sure which one. i’m gonna put my money on mbd marriage since fzd is similar to the dreaded father’s brother’s daughter [fbd] marriage which seems to produce the extremely clannish/tribal/paternalistic societies like we find in saudi arabia and afghanistan. sicilians are a little macho and paternalistic, but sicilian women ain’t walkin’ around in burkas. fbd marriage is, of course, the common form in saudi arabia and pakistan.)
the lowest rates in the ’60s occurred further north in italy, like in emilia-romagna, which is described in wikipedia like this:
“Emilia–Romagna today is considered as one of the richest and most developed regions in Europe and has the third highest GDP per capita in Italy. Bologna, the region’s capital, has one of Italy’s highest quality of life, and has highly advanced and modern social services. Emilia–Romagna is also a major cultural and touristic centre, being the home of the oldest university in the Western World, containing numerous Renaissance cities (such as Modena, Parma and Ferrara), being a major centre for food and automobile production (Emilia–Romagna is home of numerous iconic gastronomical and automotive industries, such as Ferrari, Lamborghini, Maserati and Ducati)….”
somebody oughta compare these inbreeding rates, which are higher in southern italy than in the north, with italian iq scores … which are reportedly lower in southern italy than in north. (can you say: inbreeding depression?) hmmmmmmmmm.
ciao, miei amori!
edit: boilerplate and boilerplate 2.0
update 11/11: see also m.g. miles’ map of average consanguinity (first-cousin marriage) rates in italy based on cavalli-sforza’s data in this post @those who can see.
(note: comments do not require an email. awesome!)
I notice the Wikipedia article on cousin marriage has nary a word about the adverse social consequences of high rates of cousin marriages, concentrating entirely on the alleged genetic costs at the level of the individual, which are being challenged. It mentioned in passing that half of the Pakistani marriages in Britain are between cousins, with no hint of the effects this might have on assimilation. Ignorance is . . . what?
Good work.
Sicily doesn’t surprise me. You need close-knit families to sustain the cosa nostra
Southern Italy and Sicily by the way are famous for their “amoral familism.” Look it up.
@luke – “Southern Italy and Sicily by the way are famous for their ‘amoral familism.’ Look it up.”
yes. i’ve heard people use that phrase about the chinese, as well.
“The Moral Basis of a Backward Society”
@luke – “I notice the Wikipedia article on cousin marriage has nary a word about the adverse social consequences of high rates of cousin marriages….”
well, it’s just not on anybody’s radar at all. the only people aware of stuff related to inclusive fitness are biologists and us crazy hbd-ers.
maybe i should do a little wikipedia editing…. (~_^)
It’s probably worth noting Sicily’s history of control. While for most of recorded history, it was in the power of Rome or Italy, it initially had a large Phoenician settlement and the first Punic War was waged between Rome and Carthage for control of Sicily. There was also period of about a century that Sicily was controlled by the Saracens (Arabs) followed by Norman rule. Obviously, the Arabs did not have the same impact on Sicily as they did on Malta, which has a variation of Arabic as its national language despite being a Christian state, but Sicily’s history does separate it in some ways from the rest of Italy.
@r.a. – absolutely!
I really wonder if in-breeding suppresses IQ to a certain extent.
“can it be that no one has studied la familia in italy in the middle ages?”
I think you may have answered your question in the earlier sentences. I bet there’s books on medieval family structures in Lombardy and others on Sicly and others on other regions because it’s so varied and complex.
@g.w. – “I really wonder if in-breeding suppresses IQ to a certain extent.”
i’ve been thinking about this lately, and i even wrote about it somewhere on the blog here, but i don’t recall where just now (might’ve been in a comment).
inbreeding obviously doesn’t necessarily depress iq — look at ashkenazi jews.
otoh, what about the effects of tribalism on iq — vs. being more of an independent individual? as an independent individual, you’ve got to make it more-or-less on your own or not — and succeed in raising kids and passing on your genes. if you don’t make it, then neither do your genes.
if you’re in a clan or a tribe, almost EVERYBODY can go along for the ride, and maybe even get to mate ’cause they’ll just marry the slightly loser son off to one of the slightly loser cousins. and the whole extended family helps the couple to raise their kids. see what i mean?
actually, i just thought of the perfect analogy for it — the tribe is like the nanny state — dysgeneic ’cause it carries along the not-so-smart — and even helps them to reproduce.
“inbreeding obviously doesn’t necessarily depress iq — look at ashkenazi jews”
My gut feel is you’d need conscious eugenics to counter the effect but that is entirely evidence-free at the mo.
.
“see what i mean?”
Yes. It creates a fundamentally different kind of society – maybe worse in some ways – but infinitely more productive.
@g.w. – “…but infinitely more productive.”
infinitely more reproductive, anyway. (~_^)
This would have been a much better post without all the asinine “Italian” clichés. You could at least have spelled capisci correctly. How hard is it to eschew reducing an entire people to a caricature drawn entirely from talmudvision, f’crissakes.
Amend this base characterization at once else I gonna whack u!!
@uh – “You could at least have spelled capisci correctly.”
i spelled it the italian-american way ‘cuz … well, just ‘cuz. (~_^)
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