random notes: 02/14/13

cousin marriage rates for german jews living in the prussian province of hohenzollern between ca. 1875-1920 (117 marriages):

- first cousin marriages = 16.2% ± 3.4%
- consanguineous marriage up to and including second cousins = 19.6% ± 3.7%

source [pdf]. original source: Reutlinger, W. 1922. Über die Häufigkeit der Verwandtenehen bei den Juden in Hohenzollern, und über Untersuchungen bei Deszendenten aus jüdischen Verwandtenehen. Arch. Rassenb. 14: 301-305.

a little more on these rates from In Search of Jewish Community: Jewish Identities in Germany and Austria 1918-1933 [pgs. 234 and 241]:

“On the other hand, there is considerable evidence to back up the impression that village Jews were marrying cousins and other close relatives in increasingly large numbers.[44] …

“[44] In Hohenzollern, there was an 11 percent rate of marriage to relatives (5 percent to first cousins) among Jewish couples who died before 1922; of those still alive in 1922, the rate had increased to 22 percent (16 percent to first cousins. These rates were several times as high as the rates for Christian marriages. See Wilhelm Reutlinger, ‘Uber die Haufligkeit der Verwandtenehen bei Juden in Hohenzollern und uber Untersuchungen bei Deszendenten aus judischen Verwandtenehene,’ Archiv fur Rassen- un Gesellschaftsbiologie 14 (1922): 301-303, quoted by Marion Kaplan The Making of the Jewish Middle Class: Women, Family, and Identity in Imperial Germany (New York, 1991), p. 273 note 206. See also Cahnman, ‘Village and Small-Town Jews,’ pp. 122-23, for an impressionistic discussion of the same phenomenon.”

so, the rates of consanguineous marriages increased for jews in hohenzollern over the period from 1875-1920. that pretty much mirrors the general trend of increasing cousin marriage rates right across europe at the time, only the actual rates for the hohenzollern jews were much higher than for most europeans — well, at least most germans.

this 11% consanguineous rate (5% to first cousins) for jewish couples who died before 1922 is a lot higher than the only other definite rate i have for european jews which is from alsace-lorraine in 1872-76 (so i’m thinking these might be kinda contemporaneous rates) — and that rate was 2.3% (consanguineous marriages).

see also: jewish mating patterns in nineteenth century russia.
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a bizarre story on a case of cousin marriage and inbreeding depression from china that … well, i’ll just let you read it for yourselves. from A Family That Climbed Out of Inbreeding Depression [pg. 1064]:

“In 2008, a family was fortuitously found in Northeast China. Before the 1948 Revolution, this family was wealthy and owned vast amount of land. After nationalization, the family was given a tiny house with a small plot of land. Subsequently, during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), all landowning families in the country were severely prosecuted and socially ostracized. The social stigma on the members of former land owning families was so persuasive that any form of association with them was deemed as dangerous. At that time, there were two children of marriageable age. As their parents were unable to find unrelated mates from the society, they arranged an intra-family marriage between available first cousins. The union produced five offspring: three mentally retarded girls, one deaf-mute girl, and one mentally retarded boy who did not survive (Figure 1). The consanguineous (first cousin) parents supported their four disabled daughters throughout their childhood. By the time these daughters were of marriageable age, the Cultural Revolution in China was over and the social stigma of land-owning families was lifted. Thus, the consanguineous parents were able to arrange marriages of their four unfit daughters with four biologically unrelated men. The deaf and mute girl was married to a deaf and mute man from the same village. The three mentally retarded daughters were married to healthy men, of low socioeconomic status, and they resided in their husbands’ homes in the same village. The most severely retarded daughter was married to a poor man who came to their family looking for food; he was offered this daughter and accommodation within the family household. After marriages of their daughters, the consanguineous parents continued to support all four families, and each of the four daughters produced one healthy child (maximally allowed number of children in China at the time). The most severely retarded daughter accidentally lost one child at birth. Today, the consanguineous couple has four grandchildren who are attending regular school and are expected to marry to biologically unrelated mates….”

could the cultural revolution have encouraged cousin marriages during the time period in china? at least in some sectors? weird.
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weregilds. did you know that weregild payments were made directly from one clan/kindred member to his corresponding clan/kindred member in the other clan/kindred (whichever was the aggrieved clan)? i didn’t.

i always imagined that all the weregild payments were sorta pooled together and passed from one clan to the other, but no … the father in one clan paid directly the father in the other clan, the father’s brother in one clan paid directly the father’s brother in the other clan, and so on and so forth. at least that’s how it was done in iceland … at least according to phillpotts [pg. 13]:

“Each class pays to the corresponding class of the opposite side, thus the father, son and brother of the slayer pay to the corresponding kinsmen of the slain. It is to be observed that the slayer pays nothing, the assumption being that he was exiled and his goods forfeited.”

huh.
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i mentioned over here that edmund i (922–946) seems to have been one of the first anglo-saxon/english kings to have really tried to put an end to the traditional blood feuds in england (which were tied to the weregild payments — see above — if the weregild wasn’t paid when someone was slain, the aggrieved clan/kindred had the right to exact revenge on the slayer’s clan/kindred). re. one of his law codes (from phillpotts – pgs. 218-19):

“Eadmund’s secular laws mark a notable advance in one respect: private warfare between families, as a result of a slaying, is to be stamped out, and the slayer alone is to bear the feud, if feud there is to be.

“II. 1. ‘If henceforth anyone kills any man, let him himself bear the feud, unless with the help of friends he pays full wergild within 12 months, whatever the birth (of the slain man,’ i.e. however high the wergild be).

“It must be remembered that a slayer is not involved in a feud unless he cannot or will not pay wergild; and if he can pay wergild there is no feud. So here we must assume that the slayer has not been able to produce the sum out of his own pocket, and that his kinsmen have been unable or unwilling to help him. That even this secondary liability of the kinsmen is purely voluntary is seen from the next clause:

“1. ‘If the *mægð* [kindred/extended family] forsakes him, and will not pay for him, then I will, that all the *mægð* be without feud, save the actual delinquent, if they give him thereafter neither food nor protection.

“2. ‘If however thereafter any one of his kinsmen shelter him, then let him be liable to the king for all that he possesses, and bear the feud with the *mægð* (of the slain), for they (the kinsmen) had before forsaken the slayer.

“3. ‘If however one of the other *mægð* takes vengeance on any other man than the actual delinquent, let him be outlaw to the king and to all his (the king’s) friends, and lose all that he possesses.’”

so edmund is the earliest example i know of in england of the state trying to position itself in between all of the homicidal lunatics in order to put an end to the violence. he (or the crown, i suppose) would pay the weregild if a clan/kindred wouldn’t in order to stop a blood feud from erupting.

edmund didn’t live very long though — he died (heh) in a fight when he was just 26 — so i don’t know how well-enforced his edict ever was.

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linkfest – 11/04/12

Racial differences in narcissistic tendencies – “Study 1 (N = 367) found that Black individuals reported higher levels of narcissism than White individuals even when controlling for gender, self-esteem level, and socially desirable response tendencies.” – @steve sailer’s.

Genomics: The single life – “‘In recent years we’ve learned that there is considerable variation in the recombination rate between different populations, between the sexes and even between individuals.’”

Moment Magazine’s great (Jewish) DNA experiment – “Moment Magazine … wrote about their Great DNA Experiment, in which they look at the 23andMe results of 15 notable Americans of Jewish ancestry and make some interesting genetic connections…. The piece shows it’s not ‘six degrees’ that separates these individuals from each other, but, in all but one case, no degrees of separation.” – @race/history/evolution notes.

Are the cads outbreeding the dads? – “Is natural selection now favoring the ‘cads’ over the ‘dads’?” – god, i hope not! – from peter frost.

Is there an upside to anxiety? – “[S]ocial anxiety – the fear of interactions with strangers – may have evolved to enable a natural social ranking system in which some people feel most comfortable towards the bottom of the totem pole. This natural shuffling would have made for a less aggressive, more survivable living situation and reduced fighting for leadership.”

Young Children Are More Generous When Others Are Aware of Their Actions – “Adults frequently employ reputation-enhancing strategies when engaging in prosocial acts, behaving more generously when their actions are likely to be witnessed by others and even more so when the extent of their generosity is made public…. Children were consistently generous only when the recipient was fully aware of the donation options; in all cases in which the recipient was not aware of the donation options, children were strikingly ungenerous…. These findings suggest that long before they develop a rich understanding of the social significance of reputation or are conscious of complex strategic reasoning, children behave more generously when the details of their prosocial actions are available to others.”

Evidence of Viking Outpost Found in Canada – “Sharpeners may be smoking guns in quest for New World’s second Viking site.”

Archaeologists unearth 1,300-year-old Anglo Saxon feasting hall inches below village green in first major find of its kind in 30 years

bonus: NYU loses years of scientific research and thousands of mice to Hurricane Sandy – well that s*cks.

bonus bonus: darwin award winners – Celebratory gunfire at Saudi wedding cuts cable, 23 electrocuted – =/

bonus bonus bonus: Where Dragons Come From – “The villains of countless stories, the mythical beasts have roots in Rome’s Pliny — and nature.”

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linkfest – 10/14/12

today, some classics (and soon-to-be classics?):

Latitude, elevation and the tempo of molecular evolution in mammals – “[B]ecause climatic variables change with latitude and elevation in a similar manner, our results suggest that climate has influenced the tempo of genetic change in mammals…. These findings provide new insights into microevolution that are likely to have important implications for understanding global patterns of biodiversity and diversification.”

An Asian perspective on early human dispersal from Africa – “Asia might not have been the passive recipient of whatever migrated out of Africa but might have been a major donor to speciation events, as well as dispersals back into Africa. Such two-way traffic is well documented for other mammals in the Pliocene and Early Pleistocene, such as Equus and bovids, with more taxa migrating into than out of Africa. There is no reason why hominin migrations were always from Africa into Asia, and movements in the opposite direction might also have occurred, as has been suggested for the Olduvai OH9 (refs 13, 58) and Daka specimens. We should even allow for the possibility that H. ergaster originated in Asia and perhaps explain its lack of an obvious east African ancestry as the result of immigration rather than a short (and undocumented) process of anagenetic (in situ) evolution (Dennell and Roebroeks 2005:1100-1101).” – see also: Did Early Humans First Arise in Asia, Not Africa?

Recent acceleration of human adaptive evolution – “It is sometimes claimed that the pace of human evolution should have slowed as cultural adaptation supplanted genetic adaptation…. Cultural changes have reduced mortality rates, but variance in reproduction has continued to fuel genetic change. In our view, the rapid cultural evolution during the Late Pleistocene created vastly more opportunities for further genetic change, not fewer, as new avenues emerged for communication, social interactions, and creativity.” – hawks, wang, cochran, harpending & moyzis.

Innate Social Aptitudes of Man: An Approach from Evolutionary Genetics [opens pdf] – w.d. hamilton.

How obedience of marriage rules may counteract genetic drift – “Continuous unilateral or bilateral cross-cousin mating, reflecting the most common form of prescribed marriage, increases homozygosity but at the same time slows down considerably the loss of gene diversity due to genetic drift.”

It’s All Relative: Race as partly inbred extended family – from steve sailer.

Human genetic diversity: Lewontin’s fallacy [opens pdf] – “In popular articles that play down the genetical differences among human populations, it is often stated that about 85% of the total genetical variation is due to individual differences within populations and only 15% to differences between populations or ethnic groups. … This conclusion, due to R.C. Lewontin in 1972, is unwarranted because the argument ignores the fact that most of the information that distinguishes populations is hidden in the correlation structure of the data and not simply in the variation of the individual factors.”

Discerning the Ancestry of European Americans in Genetic Association Studies – “Here we mine much larger datasets (more markers and more samples) to identify a panel of 300 highly ancestry-informative markers which accurately distinguish not just northwest and southeast European, but also Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry.”

Genes predict village of origin in rural Europe – “After excluding close kin and inbreeding, village of origin could still be predicted correctly on the basis of genetic data for 89–100% of individuals.”

E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first Century [opens pdf] – “New evidence from the US suggests that in ethnically diverse neighbourhoods residents of all races tend to ‘hunker down’. Trust (even of one’s own race) is lower, altruism and community cooperation rarer, friends fewer.” – robert putnam.

The Misguided Advocates of Open Borders – “Rising diversity within human societies tends to drive people apart, causing them to take sanctuary in individual pursuits and ethnic communities. The practical consequences are reduced public altruism or social capital, evident in falling volunteerism, government welfare for the aged and sick, public health care and a general loss of trust. Ethnic diversity is second only to lack of democracy in predicting civil war. Globally it correlates negatively with governmental efficiency and prosperity.” – frank salter.

Why g Matters: The Complexity of Everyday Life [opens pdf] – linda gottfredson.

State IQ estimates (2009) – from the awesome epigone.

Inbreeding depression and IQ in a study of 72 countries [opens pdf]. see also Consanguinity and national IQ scores.

American Murder Mystery – “Why is crime rising in so many American cities? The answer implicates one of the most celebrated antipoverty programs of recent decades.” – h/t anonymous.

bonus: Ethnic differences: Variation in human testis Size – jared diamond.

bonus bonus: Late Middle Eocene primate from Myanmar and the initial anthropoid colonization of Africa

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who’s outbreeding the most?

ron (a little facetiously i think) asks: “Is there any evidence that the Germans in America have become heavy inbreeders?”

i highly doubt it (and no one around here suggested that, btw). but it did get me to wondering which ethnic european-americans (i.e. whites) are outbreeding the most. so i checked the — you guessed it! — gss.

here are the percentages of respondents answering that their spouses were from the same ethnic background as themselves (of course, who knows how many of these people actually have mixed backgrounds):

danish = 9%
french = 9%

swedes = 12%
scottish = 13%
czechoslovakians = 18%

norwegians = 23%
polish = 27%
irish = 29%

netherlands = 31%
russians = 33%
italians = 34%
french canadians = 35%
germans = 36%
english/welsh = 39%

mexicans = 54%

i know — are these mexicans whites? i dunno. whatever. in any case, “white” mexicans marry other mexicans at a rate of 54%. that’s the highest rate for any of these groups.

the english/welsh group and the german-americans place next in the race for marrying their own kind — 39% and 36% respectively. their percentages are prolly so “high” in part because there are a lot of english-/welsh- and german-americans from which to choose.

only 9% of danish-americans are married to other danish-americans. the largest majority of them, 20%, have married german-americans. twenty percent (20%) of swedish-americans have married german-americans, too.

scottish-americans win the prize for marrying the most english/welsh at a rate of 41%. that’s more than the english/welsh marry themselves! (~_^) the czechoslovakians like the english/welsh, too — 21% of them have married anglo-/welsh-americans.

french-americans (not french canadians) like to marry irish-americans — 22% of them are married to irish-americans.

something like half of the russians, btw, are ashkenazi jews, presumably marrying other ashkenazi jews, although i didn’t actually check for that.

what’s pretty obvious from these numbers is that, apart from the mexicans, most white american ethnic groups are marrying out quite a LOT nowadays. dunno how long this has been going on (i tried to sort the data by cohort but that crashed my computer — twice. so i gave up.)

that is all.
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gss nesstar search: RACE + ETHNIC + SPETHNIC
n > 50 in all cases.

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jewish mating patterns in nineteenth century russia

while looking around for books about mating patterns in eastern europe, i came across this very interesting book: Jewish Marriage and Divorce in Imperial Russia.

according to the author, there are, unfortunately, not a whole h*ck of a lot of surviving records related to births/deaths/marriages of russian jews from this era — most were destroyed during wwii. d*mn. however, she did find nearly complete records from a town called korostyshev in the ukraine (pale of settlement).

in 1847, there were 2,657 people (jews — it was a shtetl) living in korostyshev and they pretty much all married locally. now not all those 2,657 people would’ve been of reproductive age — there’d have been children and old folks in there, too. so, i dunno, let’s guess that around a quarter of them were of reproductive age (i don’t know if that’s right — i’m just guessing — take this with a grain of salt). that’s only ca. 664 people mating — 332 couples. that’s a pretty small group, i.e. it would’ve inevitably been pretty inbred.

and the author points out that cousin marriage was reportedly common amongst jewish in nineteenth century russia — and that certain networks of families inbred with each other over and over again. (this is reminiscent of well-to-do families in medieval european cities.)

i don’t know for how long these close mating patterns were practised amongst russian jews. obviously, as a separate ethnic group, ashkenazi jews mostly traditionally bred within their own group. but for how long did they marry cousins/within small family networks/mostly within the shtetl? from the beginning of the pale of settlement? earlier than that? i don’t know. what i do know — what i have learned over these past few months of reading about mating patterns — is that the patterns can change. peoples will alter their mating patterns as their circumstances change, so you can’t assume anything.

russian jews definitely married very closely during the nineteenth century. my guess is that they did so earlier as well, but that’s just a guess.

given the fact that ashkenazi jews in russia (and elsewhere in europe?) bred so closely for probably many generations, it’s not strange that geneticists have found that ashkenazi (and other populations, like sephardic) jews are related to one another within their respective sub-populations, on average, as though they were all fourth or fifth cousins.

here are some excerpts from Jewish Marriage and Divorce in Imperial Russia [pgs. 25-27]:

“Yikus (Family Lineage)

“‘As is well known, Jews are excessively picayune about good lineage,’ wrote a commentator in ‘Evreikoe obozrenie,’ and thus ‘yikus plays an extremely important role in marital matters.’ One need only peruse the genealogical histories of famous Hasidic dynasties or rabbinical families to ascertain the importance of lineage in marital unions. Despite the adage that ‘a shoemaker’s son does not marry a rabbi’s daughter,’ it was possible, if rare, for someone of modest descent to marry into a distinguished family….

“The emerging class of Jewish entrepreneurs, intent on gaining elite respectability, place a high premium on family status in choosing partners. According to Aleksandr Poliakov, his grandfather’s cousins — the illustrious bankers and railroad financiers Iakov, Samuel, and Lazar Poliakov — married off their daughters to ‘different dynasties of European bankers, as well as French and German aristocrats.’ Bound by commercial as well as cultural ties, upper-class Jews often met in salons or over intimate Sabbath dinners, where their children were introduced to one another. Aleksandr Poliakov’s own father met his wife, Flora Shabbat, the daughter of a prominent first-guild merchant, over a Sabbath meal in Moscow.

“No matter how distinguished the family lineage, it had to be ‘pure’ — that is, there was to be no suspicion that ‘he or she was the offspring of an illicit union’ or a convert from Judaism. One way to avoid a ‘tainted’ individual was to limit marriages to relatives or a close circle of known families. Judaism even encouraged cousin marriages, particularly during the Middle Ages, when relatives were given priority over strangers. These marriages were deemed advantageous not only because they strengthened common bonds but also because they provided an opportunity to combine assests and expand markets.

“Although data on consanguineous marriages in Russia are lacking, contemporaries claimed that they were ‘very common,’ largely because of the narrow circle of eligible partners for any given class of Jews. This geographic endogamy impelled one Jewish observer to write that ‘the expression “Kol Yisrael ahim” or “all Jews are brothers” is true in this sense, that Jews [who] belong to one strata of society and reside in one area, always find out that they are related when discussing their family backgrounds.’ The strategy of marrying relatives was particularly pronounced in small towns. It was due to concerns about family lineage, as well as to restrictions on geographic mobility (i.e., legal restrictions on residency, poor communications and transportation, and the high costs for travel).

“That observation indeed finds confirmation in the metrical records. These archival materials are unusually complete for Korostyshev, a small town in Kiev province with 2,657 Jewish residents in 1847. Unlike many Ukrainian towns where the metrical records were destroyed during World War II, Korostyshev preserved metrical books from the mid-nineteenth century to 1915, thus representing some of the most complete runs of Jewish metrical books in the entire Ukraine. Significantly, they reveal that most residents married locally — that is, to people from Korostyshev or, at most, from nearby villages and towns (Zhitomir, Berdichev, and Radomysl’). Still more striking were the marital bonds between small family networks — for example, the countless marriages among the Fuksmans, Gershengorens, Trakhtenbergs, and Ratners (all of whom lived in Korostyshev or nearby Zhitomir). Another network included the Vinikurs, Tsiponiuks, and Abrumovichs; this cluster overlapped with a group that included the Kagans, Umerskiis, and Peigers. And so on until, several decades later, many Korostyshev residents were distant or even close relatives. Devorah Baron’s description of small shtetl families was indeed perspicacious: ‘In our little town, families joined together by marriage ties often resembled well-fitted but separate sections of garment; all that was needed was the skillful hand that would join the seams.’”
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“Jews [who] belong to one strata of society and reside in one area, always find out that they are related when discussing their family backgrounds….” sounds like what happens to me whenever i travel back to the “old country.” (~_^)

previously: jewish inbreeding and jewish endogamy on mallorca and cousin marriage rates amongst nineteenth century english and english jews and inbreeding in nineteenth century alsace-lorraine (including jews)

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linkfest – 11/06/11

Siberians share DNA with extinct human species

Fossil Teeth Put Humans in Europe Earlier Than Thought

Ethnicity and camping – from the inductivist.

Is mental time travel what makes us human?

Lynn On The Jews: Yes, It’s Intelligence—But There’s Something Else Too – review of richard lynn’s latest book, “The Chosen People: A Study of Jewish Intelligence,” from steve sailer.

The ‘rich club’ that rules your brain

Decoding the Brain’s Cacophony – “Scientists now know that the brain runs largely on autopilot; it acts first and asks questions later, often explaining behavior after the fact. So if much of behavior is automatic, then how responsible are people for their actions?”

Are birds’ tweets grammatical?

Back to the trees – greg cochran on the flores hobbit.

Bones reveal 18th and 19th-century breastfeeding fads

Exercise Cuts Risk From Obesity Gene – “The obesity risk of a genetic variation can be least partially offset with exercise.” – from parapundit.

A Brief Guide to Embodied Cognition: Why You Are Not Your Brain

Sperm Whales Really Do Learn From Each Other – “Sperm whales, Earth’s biggest-brained animals, live in far-flung clans with lifestyles so different and vocalizations so complex that it’s natural to think they have culture.”

Does Inequality Make Us Unhappy?

Scientists and autism: When geeks meet – “Psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen thinks scientists and engineers could be more likely to have a child with autism. Some researchers say the proof isn’t there.” – this week’s issue of nature is all about autism.

bonus: There’s just something about him… – the latest on the wonderfully weird Toxoplasma gondii from carl zimmer.

bonus bonus: An Unexpected Alliance – “Lee Siegel considers the weird comedy of letters between T.S. Eliot and Groucho Marx”

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inbreeding in nineteenth century alsace-lorraine (including jews)

another bit on nineteenth century european consanguineous marriages from joseph jacobs [pg. 53]:

“Consanguineous Marriages — I have previously given reasons for believing that English Jews marry their first cousins to the extent of 7.5 per cent of all marriages as against a percentage of about 2 per cent for England generally, as calculated by Prof. G. H. Darwin (Fort. Rev. July, 1875). The only other detail on this point that I have been able to find is given by W. Stieda ‘Die Eheschliessungen in Elsass-Lothringen 1872-76‘ (Dorpat 1878) who gives the proportion of consanguineous marriages among Jews as 23.02 per thousand against 1.86 for Protestants, and 9.97 for Catholics.“

so, here we have figures of 0.186% consanguineous marriages for protestants and 0.997% for catholics in nineteenth century alsace-lorraine. dunno if the assumption would be correct or not, but i’m going to guess that the protestant figure goes for ethnic huns german alsatians, while the catholic figure goes for the ethnic froggies french. for the jews in alsace-lorraine, stieda has a figure of 2.302%.

jacobs doesn’t make clear what “consanguineous marriages” means here — is it just first-cousin? up to second-cousin? dunno. i also don’t know how stieda arrived at these figures ’cause i haven’t seen the original publication (drat!), so i don’t know how reliable or not they are. for comparison, the consanguineous marriage rate for spaniards (presumably all catholics) up to and including second-cousins between 1874-1884 (similar time period) was 3.44%.

and speaking of reliability, the more i think about the way jacobs calculated the cousin-marrying rates for english jews, the more i don’t like it. jacobs based his calculations on g.h. darwin’s calculations. g.h. darwin had worked out the rate of cousin marriage amongst the english by looking at the rate of same-name marriages. BUT, he had worked out what percentage of same-name marriages were actually cousin marriages via a little survey (i.e. he contacted a certain percentage of same-name couples and asked them if they were cousins). so, his rate for the english is prolly pretty right. but then jacobs uses the english rate to calculate the jewish rate? meh. that’s exactly what he was trying to figure out — how many jewish marriages were between first-cousins — but then he based his calculation on what the english were doing.

i have to say that, unfortunately, i don’t think jacobs’ numbers are very reliable.

edit: boilerplate and boilerplate 2.0

previously: cousin marriage rates amongst nineteenth century english and english jews

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cousin marriage rates amongst nineteenth century english and english jews

here is a rather long excerpt from a publication from 1891 entitled “Studies in Jewish Statistics, Social Vital and Anthropometric” by joseph jacobs.

i’m cutting and pasting such a large section from the publication because jacobs: 1) recounts the methods and results of g.h. darwin‘s study of first-cousin marriage amongst the english upper- and middle-classes; 2) describes in detail the process he used to come to a figure for first-cousin marriage amongst upper- and middle-class english jews; and 3) because it’s such a delightful read. (^_^)

jacobs concluded that the rate of first-cousin marriage amongst upper- and middle-class english jews was something around 7.5%, roughly double that of upper- and middle-class englishmen and five times that of the average londoner. (jacobs doesn’t have any figures for other classes of english jews.) not sure i’m completely convinced by his methodology — was it right to use the same-name marriage/cousin-marriage rates of the native english as the basis for calculating the cousin marriage rate for english jews? dunno. but it’s a start anyway. seven percent is pretty high for northern europe; but, for comparison, the rates for many (especially southern) regions of italy were well above 10, 20, and even 30% as recently as the early 1960s.

one shouldn’t extrapolate based on the evidence from one country to the whole of europe, but if the situation for nineteenth century jews in other european countries was similar (i.e. they married their first-cousins at considerably greater rates than other european populations), then it’s not surprising that recent genetic studies have found that, within the different jewish populations (like the ashkenazis of europe), the members are genetically similar to one another to the degree of fourth- or fifth-cousins. not strange if they’ve been inbreeding for longer(?) and more recently than many other europeans. plus, as a group, they’re obviously quite endogamous in their marriage practices in general — at least up until recently when the numbers of out-marriages have increased.

without further ado, mr. jacobs [pgs. 2-5]:

“In the many discussions about the alleged evil effects of consanguineous marriage, the Jews are referred to by both parties in support of their views. The assertion is often made and as often denied that Jews suffer more from deaf-mutism, idiocy, etc., owing to the fact that consanguineous marriages are more frequent among them. Yet until we know the proportion of consanguineous marriages among Jews and the proportion of the offspring of such marriages among Jewish deaf-mutes, etc., we cannot establish any causal connection between the two facts. The mere assertion that there are more such marriages among Jews and more of their results among the afflicted classes does not help us until we know how much more. For if there is only the same proportion in the two cases, the relations of cause and effect is by no means establsihed…. It is clear, therefore, that the first stage in any such enquiry is to determine the proportion of consanguineous marriages. This I have attempted to determine for English Jews in the following manner.

“In 1876, Mr. G. H. Darwin, son of the great naturalist, read a paper on marriage between first cousins before the Statistical Society and summarised his results in the ‘Fortnightly Review’ for July of that year. Examining some marriage lists in the newspapers he observed that several occurred between persons of the same surname and on determining the proportion of these ‘same-name marriages’ he found that they occurred in far larger numbers than could occur by chance. By circulars and other means Mr. Darwin calculated that of these same-name marriages 57 per cent were between first cousins. Now, in marriage between first cousins the bride has the same name as the bridgegroom only when she is the daughter of his father’s brother, while there remain the daughters of his father’s sisters and of the maternal uncles and aunts who may likewise form first cousin marriages. It would thus seem that same-name marriages between first cousins form a fourth of such marriages. But there are less paternal than maternal uncles and more paternal aunts than maternal, because father and mother have to be subtracted from their respective families for the purpose of this inquiry. It follows, therefore, that same-name marriages between first cousins form less than a fourth of such marriages, and Mr. Darwin, by some very ingenious formulae calculated that they form on an average only a fifth of all marriages between first cousins. If, therefore, we multiply the number of same-name marriages by 2.85 (= .57 x 5) we should get, on this method, the number of all marriages between first cousins.

“Mr. Darwin applied his method to several classes of Englishmen with the following results:

“In the case of the Peerage Mr. Darwin examined only the same-name marriages between first cousins and multiplied this at once by 5. His method is to some extent confirmed by his results which are what one would have anticipated, the peerage intermarrying most, the landed gentry next, then the upper middle-class and so on.

“It occurred to me that it would be desirable to apply the same method to English Jews and, with the aid of a friend, I examined all the marriages contained in the ‘Jewish Chronicle’ from the beginning of the New Series in 1869 to the present time with the following results:

“Thus, it would appear that of all marriages between English Jews, 7.5 per cent are between first cousins, a proportion more than half as large again as that occurring among the aristocracy, and five times as great as the proportion calculated for the inhabitants of London. The result completely justifies the popular impression that Jews marry among their own families more than the rest of the population, and if confirmed by wider induction, may serve as the basis of investigation into that much vexed question, the effects of marriage between near kin.

“Before, however, accepting even this provisional result, it is desirable to take into account an element in the calculation, which Mr. Darwin considered that he could neglect in his investigations, but which may not be so unimportant in the case of English Jews. Finding from one of the Registrar-General’s Reports that one in every 75 Englishmen in named Smith, 1 in 76 Jones, 1 in 115 Williams, and so on, Mr. Darwin calculated that the chance of a Smith marrying a Smith was represented by the square of [illegible], that of a Jones-Jones marriage [illegible] and so on; and adding together all these fractions, the chances of a same-name marriage occuring was found to be only one out of a thousand marriages. This Mr. Darwin neglected, as he did not profess accuracy to the second place of decimals, and, besides, he only considered that 57 per cent of same-name marriages were between first-cousins, the rest being between more distant relations.

“But among Jews it is a familiar fact that surnames are fewer than among the general population, and it remains to be considered how many of the 42 same-name marriages in the ‘Jewish Chronicle’ were due to the greater chances of such unions owing to the paucity of surnames among English Jews. Taking the 4,720 names contained in the Reports of the Board of Guardians for 1889, the Jews’ Hospital for 1878, and the Anglo-Jewish Association for 1877-8 (London, Birminham, Liverpool, and Manchester only), I found the most popular names among English Jews to be the following:

“The proportions given are too high for English Jews in general, since many names recur in the three lists; the lists themselves are not representative of the whole community in point of names, and we should for the present purpose distinguish between double forms, like Isaac and Isaacs. But the names, on the other hand, are drawn from the very class who are likely to advertise their marriages in the ‘Jewish Chronicle,’ and for that reason I accept the above estimate in default of any other. It may be added that the order of most frequent names and approximately the proportions are nearly the same in the longest of the lists — that of the Jews’ Hospital Report. With regard to one name the proportion is still too high. There are special reasons why the name ‘Cohen’ should occur in the reports of two of the above institutions in more than the usual proportion. I am inclined to take the proportion given by the Report of the Anglo-Jewish Association, viz., 1 in 30, as more near the truth. In the largest list of contemporary Jewish names with which I am acquainted — Lippe’s ‘Bibliographisches Lexicon’ — the Cohens, even with the addition of the Cohns and the Kohns, make up only 103(?) out of the 4,600 names, which would give a proportion of about 1 in 45 for Jews in general.

“Accepting the proportions in the above list, we find that without any intermarriage a Cohen-Cohen marriage would occur in every 900(?) marriages if we accept 1/30 as the proportion of Cohens to the general Jewish population. One marriage out of 1,024 would be between persons of the name of Davis, one out of 1,225 between Levys; there would be in the natural course of events one Joseph-Joseph marriage out of every 2,209 marriages and so on. Summing up the squares of 1/900 + 1/1024 + 1/2209 + 1/2704 + etc., we find that about 5 same-named marriages would occur by chance in every 1,600 Jewish marriages, and, therefore, about 8 in the 1,589 examined in the investigation. This would leave only 34 marriages to be accounted for by the method employed above, and we should have instead the of the figures above, 34 same-name marriages out of 1,581, i.e. 2.18 per cent and, therefore, only 6.07 per cent of first cousin marriages, the paucity of surnames among Jews causing a difference of one and half per cent in the percentage of first cousin marriages.

“But against this correction we have to set other factors which in all probability counterbalance it. It frequently happens among Jews that two brothers adopt entirely different surnames, and any union between their offspring would fail to appear among same-name marriages. Further it has become recently the fashion ofr English Jews to remedy the paucity of surnames by adopting others of similar initial, a fashion satirised by the dramatist in calling a Jewish character “Isidore Montmorenci.’ It is probable, e.g., that the name ‘Moses’ would be higher up in the above list if all those who could rightfully claim it had been added to the number of those who still retain it. The children of two brothers, one of whom had adopted a various reading of his name would therefore not come under the category of same-name marriages. In the ten volumes of the ‘Jewish Chronicle’ examined by myself, I noticed 4 such marriages of the ‘Moses-Montmorenci’ type, and doubtless others escaped my noticed by the very nature of the case. Supposing a couple more to occur in the remaining four volumes examined by my friend and only two more the names entirely different to lurk unseen in all the fourteen volumes of the new series, and we would have eight names missing from the list of same-name marriages owing to change of name to counterbalance the eight which might occur by chance owing to the paucity of surnames.

“I am inclined, therefore to reject the correction which seems at first sight due to the few surnames current among Jews, especially as the fractions which give the corrected estimates are probably too large as an examination of the 42 names would show. Only 14 of these marriages are between persons with names from the above list, the remaining 28 having more unfamiliar names, and only 8 are from the first 10 names. Further, we only assume that 57 per cent of these same-name marriages are between first cousins and this constant is by no means certain and may be too low. The percentage of first cousin marriages as originally determined may therefore be still retained and we may say that of every two hundred marriages among English Jews of the upper and middle classes fifteen are between first cousins.

“It by no means follows that the same proportion holds for all the Jews in England. The marriages advertised in the ‘Jewish Chronicle’ are only about one-third of all Jewish marriages in England as given in the Reports of the Board of Deputies. The above conclusions only hold, therefore, for the ‘upper third’ of the Jews in England, the original ‘English colony’ as we may term them. What may be the amount of intermarriage in the large ‘foreign contingent,’ which, probably form the remaining two-thrids it is impossible to say, without consulting the registers of the Great Synagogue. I merely wish to guard against the precipitate conclusion that is likely to be drawn from the above investigation, that all the Jews in England marry their first cousins to the extent of 7.5 per cent in all marriages. It is needless to add the caution that still less do these results apply for Jews universally….

“As has been vaguely conjectured but never hitherto proved, English Jews have the largest number of such marriages among all classes of the population.“

previously: but what about the english? and jewish inbreeding and inbreeding and the ancient hebrews (and the arabs)

update 09/12: see also inbreeding in nineteenth century alsace-lorraine (including jews)

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