tweaking just ONE gene…

…is all it takes to get some of the most recognizable of racial differences between human populations.

via steve sailer, from nicholas wade in the nyt:

East Asian Physical Traits Linked to 35,000-Year-Old Mutation

“Gaining a deep insight into human evolution, researchers have identified a mutation in a critical human gene as the source of several distinctive traits that make East Asians different from other races.

“The traits — thicker hair shafts, more sweat glands, characteristically identified teeth and smaller breasts — are the result of a gene mutation that occurred about 35,000 years ago, the researchers have concluded….

“The first of those sites to be studied contains the gene known as EDAR. Africans and Europeans carry the standard version of the gene, but in most East Asians, one of the DNA units has mutated.

“Seeking to understand if the gene was the cause of thicker hair in East Asians with the variant gene, a team of researchers led by Yana G. Kamberov and Pardis C. Sabeti at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Mass., decided to test the gene in mice, where its effects could be more easily explored….

“The Broad team engineered a strain of mice whose EDAR gene had the same DNA change as the East Asian version of EDAR.

“When the mice grew up, the researchers found they did indeed have thicker hair shafts, confirming that the changed gene was the cause of East Asians’ thicker hair. But the gene had several other effects, they report in Thursday’s issue of the journal Cell.

“One was that the mice, to the researchers’ surprise, had extra sweat glands. A Chinese member of the team, Sijia Wang, then tested people in China and discovered that they, too, had more numerous sweat glands, evidently another effect of the gene.

“Another surprise was that the engineered mice had less breast tissue, meaning that EDAR could be the reason that East Asian women have generally smaller breasts.

“East Asians have distinctively shaped teeth for which their version of EDAR is probably responsible. But the mice were less helpful on this point; their teeth are so different from humans’ that the researchers could not see any specific change….

“A team led by Dr. Sabeti and Sharon R. Grossman of the Broad Institute has now refined the usual scanning methods and identified 412 sites on the genome that have been under selection. Each site is small enough that it contains at most a single gene.

“Each race has a different set of selected regions, reflecting the fact that the human population had dispersed from its African homeland and faced different challenges that led to genetic adaptation on each continent. About 140 of the sites affected by natural selection are in Europeans, 140 in East Asians and 132 in Africans, the authors report in another article published Thursday in Cell….“

so cool!

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linkfest – 11/26/12

i should just move the linkfests to mondays … get it over with. (~_^) (then at some point i’d prolly switch to publishing them on wednesdays or thursdays … and eventually, someday, they’d migrate all the way back to sundays again!)

Are Liberal or Conservative Americans More Likely to Support Restrictions on Racist and Anti-Religious Speech?

Singapore is world’s least emotional country, poll finds – see also steve sailer (who is not the world’s least emotional country).

Does being fat make you more jolly? – “The FTO gene makes a protein associated with obesity and fat mass…. [H]aving one copy of this mutant in your genome decreases the risk of depression by 8 per cent; two copies doubles that dip…. Based on its prevalence among ethnic groups, it should prevent 6.7 per cent of the cases of depression that would otherwise afflict Africans, 5.3 per cent of cases in Europeans, and 2.2 per cent in Chinese.”

Longer life link to low vitamin D – in some dutch people. h/t sean!

Meat, Cooked Foods Needed for Early Human Brain

The Evolutionary Mystery of Homosexuality – i know, i know. greg cochran would say there’s no mystery here. (~_^)

Conservatism is white men – from the awesome epigone.

Why Is Intelligence the Measure of Ultimate Human Worth? – from kanazawa.

Mitochondrial DNA in Ancient Human Populations of Europe (der Sarkissian 2011) – “This work presents direct evidence that Mesolithic eastern Europeans belonged to the same Palaeolithic/Mesolithic genetic background as central and northern Europeans. It was also shown that prehistoric eastern Europeans were the recipients of multiple migrations from the East in prehistory that had not been previously detected and/or timed on the basis of modern mtDNA data. Ancient DNA also provided insights in the genetic history of European genetic outliers; the Saami, whose ancestral population still remain unidentified, and the Sardinians, whose genetic differentiation is proposed to be the result of mating isolation since at least the Bronze Age.” – @dienekes’.

Archaeologists discover 10,000 year-old home – in scotland.

People who live in tropics more likely to die seven years earlier – “Overall mortality in the region was affected by disease, conflict, poverty and food insecurity….”

Improved Water Supplies In Africa Increase Poverty – ’cause of lower death rates. that s*cks. – from parapundit.

bonus: Fraud fighter: ‘Faked research is endemic in China’

bonus bonus: The Black Cat Analogy – from jayman!

bonus bonus bonus: Think twice before using “mankind” to mean “all humanity,” say scholars – scr*w that!

bonus bonus bonus bonus: Camel Genome Holds Desert Survival Secrets – “[M]any of the Bactrian genome’s rapidly evolving genes regulate the metabolic pathway…. [C]amels can withstand massive blood glucose levels owing in part to changes in genes that are linked to type II diabetes in humans.”

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: Larry Hagman: the superstar who made history – “In 1991, a Bedouin tribe delayed its annual migration across the Sahara because its elders were not prepared to miss the last episode of Dallas.” – heh.

_{(note: comments do not require an email. baby camel – awwww!)}

linkfest – 11/12/12

late again! pretty soon they’re gonna start docking my pay….

Working out who’s top dog – “A new study reveals how the brain interprets information about social hierarchy.” – woof.

Their Right Stuff – “The Grant study has … made the bizarre discovery that subjects’ late-life mental health is strongly associated with the longevity of maternal grandfathers. That indicates a link to both traits somewhere on the X chromosome…. Just as communism, according to an old Hungarian joke, was the long road from capitalism to capitalism, psychiatry now looks like the long road that led from Darwinism to Darwinism.” – heh.

If you are a perfectionist – blame your parents: Aiming to be the best is determined by your genes – “Perfectionists are born – not made – scientists claim”

The genetics of stupidity – from greg cochran.

Research suggests that humans are slowly but surely losing intellectual and emotional abilities – “With the development of agriculture, came urbanization, which may have weakened the power of selection to weed out mutations leading to intellectual disabilities. Based on calculations of the frequency with which deleterious mutations appear in the human genome and the assumption that 2000 to 5000 genes are required for intellectual ability, Dr. Crabtree estimates that within 3000 years (about 120 generations) we have all sustained two or more mutations harmful to our intellectual or emotional stability.”

Some guys get all the babes – not exactly – from jayman. (luv the photo! (~_^) )

Mongolia and the Altai Mountains: Origins of genetic blending between Europeans and Asians – “[T]his blending was not due to an eastward migration of Europeans, but to a demographic expansion of local Central Asian populations, thanks to the technological improvements the Scythian culture brought with them.”

How Do You Raise a Prodigy?

Children suffer effects of parents’ divorce into adult life – “The children of divorced parents can suffer the effects of the break-up well into their adult life, a report has found.”

Culture: Diverse diagnostics – “Perhaps the most dramatic demonstration of this is a study of more than 55,000 children in South Korea, which estimated autism prevalence at 2.64%. That’s more than twice the autism prevalence in the United States estimated by the US Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, and more than 50 times higher than the South Korean government’s figure for autism prevalence of 0.046%. One reason for that higher estimate may be that the researchers screened children in the general population for autism symptoms, rather than recruiting them only from clinics for autism and other developmental disorders.”

Does cloudy weather make you ginger? – “Provisional statistics indicate that between two and six per cent of northwest Europeans are redheads, compared to an average of one or two per cent in the world population. But in the UK the numbers are much higher, with 13 per cent of Scots, 10 per cent of the Irish, and six per cent of individuals in England having read hair.”

Hacking the President’s DNA – “The U.S. government is surreptitiously collecting the DNA of world leaders, and is reportedly protecting that of Barack Obama…. In the not-too-distant future, they may provide … the basis for the creation of personalized bioweapons that could take down a president and leave no trace.”

Childhood obesity more likely to affect children in poorer neighborhoods

India’s dwindling Parsi population to be boosted with fertility clinics – “The Indian government is to fund new fertility clinics to help save its dwindling Parsi population which is now under threat of extinction.”

bonus: ‘Super-Earth’ exoplanet spotted 42 light-years away – when are we leaving?

bonus bonus: Fungus that controls zombie-ants has own fungal stalker – hyperparasites!

bonus bonus bonus: New carnivorous harp sponge discovered in deep sea

_{(note: comments do not require an email. ping-pong sponge!)}

the semai

some of you have requested/hoped/prayed that, for a change already(!), i would post about some nice group of people who don’t engage in clannish fighting or tribal battles, and who aren’t so retarded when it comes to civicness or familism or corruption (other than my “core” northwest europeans, that is (~_^) ).

well, here they are! the semai of malaysia:

the semai are one sub-group of the senoi peoples who are some of the indigenous groups of malaysia (i.e. they were there before “the malaysians” got there). they’re not related to the indigeneous negritos of malaysia, but rather are another indigenous group that live in the center of the peninsula — they prolly arrived sometime after the negritos. the semai are swidden agriculturalists who also practice a bit of hunting and gathering (at least that’s what they did traditionally).

aaaaaaaand … they are famous for being peaceful. from “Two Paths to Peace: Semai and Mehinaku Nonviolence” in A Natural History of Peace [pg. 161]:

“Violence within and between Semai communities is nearly nonexistent. Husbands do not beat their wives nor parents their children. Neighbors do not fight with one another, nor do communities contest violently. There are no reliable reports of Semai engaging in intergroup or intragroup warfare or raiding. Over the past three or four decades [this was published in 1996 - h.chick], there are fewer than a half-dozen reliable reports of homicides in the entire population, and nearly all of these, in one way or another, involved outsiders (see Dentan 1988)….”

the semai pretty much don’t appear at all on steven pinker’s “deaths during warfare” scale either (from The Better Angels of Our Nature – click on chart for LARGER view):

the semai simply hate conflict. they hate, hate, hate it and do everything to avoid it. from Societies at Peace: Anthropological Perspectives [pgs. 36-7]:

“[In completing a] sentence-completion test … [t]o the item ‘More than anything else he/she is afraid of’, the model response, more frequent than ‘tigers’, ‘spirits’, or ‘death’ combined (all of which were cited), was ‘becoming embroiled in a dispute’….”

so what else characterizes the semai? their individualism and independent mindedness. from Rethinking Social Evolution: The Perspective from Middle-Range Societies [pg. 95]:

“The Senoi value social and emotional isolation as well as personal autonomy. ‘From an early age, the autonomy of the will of the individual is culturally affirmed. No child can be forced to do anything he or she does not wish to do’ (Robarchek 1989, 37). ‘One of the consequences of this reluctance to surrender autonomy is an exteme difficulty in organizing any collective action unless everyone can be convinced that it is in his or her best interest’ (40). At the same time, the desire for autonomy is tempered by the recognition of interdependence between people. This is exemplified by the concept of *pehunan*, the state of vulnerability to dangers that results from frustrating an individual’s wishes. While this concept is central to Senoi attitudes of dependency, it also gives a privileged position to individual’s wishes (38-9). According to Robarchek, ‘The injunctions to share food and to avoid violence are the most important moral imperatives in [Senoi] Semai society’ (34)….”

that’s not to say that the group is ignored or neglected. quite the contrary. the group is important to the semai, but it’s the whole group, not just extended family or clan members [pg. 37]:

“The Semai ethic of sharing mandates that aid be given when it is needed (with the exception, to be sure, that it will be reciprocated by someone at some later date when the giver is in need), but any accounting or direct reciprocation is unacceptable. This was made very clear to me early in my fieldwork when I offended a neighbour by trying to make explicit return of food that had been given to my wife and me. Accepting help thus does not entail an accumulation of debt nor does it imply subordination, and is not a route to subjugation. Nor is sharing or giving help a route to dominance; it is merely what is expected, part of the minimal definition of what it is to be a member of a Semai community….“

of course, a lot of the individuals in a semai village are relatives, but many are often not — or are distant relatives — due to the semai fission-fusion settlement traditions [pg. 330]:

“[L]ocal groups of Semai periodically fission, the splinter group forming a new village or fusing with an already established village.”
_____

the big question, then, is: what are the mating patterns of the semai?! *drumroll please!* … from Migration and Colonization in Human Microevolution [pgs. 98-99]:

“Semai settlements are generally small, ranging from 25 to more than 270 persons. Semai have no formal rule regarding settlement endogamy or exogamy. There is, however, a general mistrust and fear of ‘strangers’ (Dentan 1968) and most Semai would prefer to marry someone they know or know about. This preference translates into a tendency to marry endogamously when possible and often into a family already connected by marriage (Benjamin, 1986 notes this preference for marrying affines among other Senoi of Peninsular Malaysia).

“A stronger rule is that prohibiting marriage between close kin. Semai say this proscription includes *all* relatives but it seems to apply usually to kin within the range of second cousins (in a group of 129 marriages for which genealogical information was sufficient to gauge, no first cousin and only nine second cousin marriages [7%] occurred; Fix 1982a). Since relatives are often localized in the settlement of residence, and the smaller the population, the greater the likelihood of a potential spouse being kin, this rule may have a strong affect on endogamy…. Among the Semai, the strong sense that consanguineal kin should avoid marrying combined with an ideology of kin solidarity leads to an apparent conflict. Coresidents often express their unity by stating, ‘we are all kin here’, by inference, all the members of the local group will cooperate and help each other as would kin. Syllogistically, if *all* members are truly kin, then *no* member can marry any other and the group must be exogamous. When presented to them in this way, some Semai agreed that local groups were exogamous. Actual data on marriages (Table 2.2), however, showed some 45 percent of spouses were both born in the same settlement and a greater number were coresident at the time of marriage. The endogamy rate in any settlement, then, depends on the presence of non-kin in local groups. The fission-fusion structure of Semai settlement histories usually ensures that some more distantly related persons will be available within a settlement….

“To summarize, a Semai preference to marry endogamously is constrained by the proscription on marrying near kin….”

OUTBREEDERS! relatively speaking.

they’re not a large population (ca. 34,000), but they do have a tradition of generally avoiding marrying anyone closer than a second cousin, although that does happen sometimes. and if/when they do marry relatives — distant relatives for the most part — they are maternal relatives [pg. 189]:

“In contrast to the Semang, Semai prefer affinal kin [in-laws, i.e. maternal relatives] as marital partners, a practice that increases the density of the kin network locally.”
_____

and the kicker, from “Two Paths to Peace: Semai and Mehinaku Nonviolence” [pg. 183]:

“Even in a very large and heavily acculturated settlement where consumption of inexpensive Malay palm ‘toddy’ had increased to the point where many Semai men were intoxicated nearly every night, there was little increase in the expression of emotion and virtually no expression of hostility.”

that, to me, sounds like the semai just don’t have (many) “genes for violent behavior” (whatever they might be). even when their inhibitions are drowned in palm toddy, the semai don’t become violent. sounds like it’s just not in their nature.
_____

it should be noted that the semai live in upland, mountainous areas of the malaysian peninsula, and so seem to be a possible exception to the (possible) inbreeding mountain folks “rule.” perhaps the fact that they’re not pastoralists is a clue(?).

btw – here is the classic book on the semai – i haven’t had a chance to read it yet: The Semai: A Nonviolent People of Malaya.
_____

update 11/12: see also random notes: 11/09/12

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rido

the philippine government has just signed a peace agreement with some of the muslim rebels — the moro islamic liberation front or (heh) milf (think someone should tell them?) — from the island of mindanao. which is good news, of course — if the peace holds. however, most of the people on mindanao are, apparently, not as worried about the sectarian violence on the island as they are about “rido”:

“Rido, or feuding between families and clans, is a type of conflict centered in the Philippine region of Mindanao, and is characterized by sporadic outbursts of retaliatory violence between families and kinship groups, as well as between communities. … ‘Rido’ is a Maranao term commonly used in Mindanao to refer to clan feuds. It is considered one of the major problems in Mindanao because apart from numerous casualties, rido has caused destruction of property, crippled the local economy, and displaced families….

“There is a widely held stereotype that the violence is perpetrated by armed groups that resort to terrorism to further their political goals, but the actual situation is far more complex. While the Muslim-Christian conflict and the state-rebel conflicts dominate popular perceptions and media attention, a survey commissioned by The Asia Foundation in 2002 and further verified by a recent Social Weather Stations survey revealed that citizens are more concerned about the prevalence of rido and its negative impact on their communities than the conflict between the state and rebel groups….

“Studies on rido have documented a total of 1,266 rido cases between the 1930s and 2005, which have killed over 5,500 people and displaced thousands. The four provinces with the highest numbers of rido incidences are: Lanao del Sur (377), Maguindanao (218), Lanao del Norte (164), and Sulu (145). Incidences in these four provinces account for 71% of the total documented cases. The findings also show a steady rise in rido conflicts in the eleven provinces surveyed from the 1980s to 2004. According to the studies, during 2002-2004, 50% (637 cases) of total rido incidences occurred, equaling about 127 new rido cases per year. Out of the total number of rido cases documented, 64% remain unresolved….”

the population of mindanao is comprised of the moro peoples, some of whom are muslim, but others of whom are christians — but members of BOTH religions engage in rido, so this fighting between clans is not just a muslim thing.

mindanao is a very mountainous island, so if westermeyer is right, we should expect to find a lot of inbreeding amongst the moro (which could account for all the clannishness).

those moro folks that are roman catholic ought not to be marrying first cousins, of course, but who knows (i don’t) if they marry second or third cousins. in fact, nobody nowadays in the philippines should be marrying first cousins because it’s against the law (“up to the fourth civil degree”), but…

“Philippine Muslims very seldom registered births or marriages with governmental agencies.” [pg. 213]

…perhaps to get around the marriage restrictions (given that islam kinda/sorta encourages first cousin marriage — in an indirect way since mohammed married one of his cousins).

i haven’t found any info on how much cousin marriage happens in the moro muslim (or christian) populations, but one of the leading moro muslim political families, the sinsuat family, is “remarkable for the frequency of cousin marriage” [pg. 309], so that might — might — be an indication that cousin marriage is, indeed, common on mindanao. i would bet it has a long history there, too — thus the clannishness.

and clannishness in the philippines doesn’t seem to be restricted to mindanao:

“The Philippine political arena, unlike other democracies, is mainly arranged and operated by families or alliances of families rather than political parties.”

hmmmmm. not very surpising, then, to find books about the philippines titled: An Anarchy of Families: State and Family in the Philippines.

previously: this one’s for g.w. and the flatlanders vs. the mountain people

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clannish dysgenics

here’s another example of potential clannish dysgenics — from Studies on the Population of China, 1368-1953 [pg. 205]:

“[T]he lack of primogeniture and the working of the clan system proved to be great leveling factors in the Chinese economy. The virtue of sharing one’s wealth with one’s immediate and remote kinsmen had been so highly extolled since the rise of Neo-Confucianism in the eleventh and twelfth centuries that few wealthy men in traditional China could escpae the influence of this teaching. Business management, in the last analysis, was an extension of familism and was filled with nepotism, inefficiencies, and irrationalities. These immensely rich individuals not only failed to develop a capitalistic system; they seldom if ever acquire that acquistive and competitive spirit which is the very soul of the capitalistic system.”

previously: a sense of entitlement and inbreeding and iq

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this one’s for g.w.

(^_^)

from Ecological Sensitivity and Resistance of Cultures in Asia (southeast asia in particular) published in 1978(!):

“Ecological influences on culture have been demonstrated by several investigators. Many such studies have been done in Asia where two ecological niches extend over vast areas. One of these is the highland or mountainous territory 500 meters above sea level; the other consists of plains and plateaus under 500 meters….“

“…The HRAF files were used to compare cultures in the highlands with those in the lowlands. The files indicate that certain items may be ecology sensitive (that is, more apt to change with ecologic shift). These include agricultural methods, sociopolitical organization and preferred marriage forms….

“Sociopolitical Organization. … Lowland societies had larger communities, larger states, more nonhereditary local head-men, complex social distinctions, and exogamy. More lowland [sic - should be upland] groups had small communities, small states, hereditary headmen, no exogamy, and less complex class distinctions.

“Family, Marriage and Kinship. … Eskimo/Hawaiian cousin terms corresponded to the quadrilateral/nonlateral cousin marriages found in lowland cultures. Iroquois/Omaha/Crow cousin terms were found in association with matrilineal/patrilineal cousin marriages in the highlands….”

eskimo kinship terms are the ones that we use in the anglo/western world, and the eskimo kinship system is a very generalized one — eg. we don’t distinguish between maternal or paternal cousins, they’re all just “cousins.” so lowland southeast asians have similar kinship terms to us — or they use the hawaiian system which is even more generalized — all your brothers and male cousins are just “brother” and all your sisters and female cousins are just “sister.”

the iroquois, omaha, and crow systems used by the uplanders are all more complex, each distinguishing cousins in different ways — but none of them are as complex as the sudanese system which is the one used in the arab world — and in china. and it used to be used by the anglo-saxons before the Big Change in kinship terms in medieval europe.

“…Discussion

“As observed by previous students of southeast Asia, the most parsimonious explanation for these sociopolitical and marriage findings is the production of surplus food in the lowlands. Intensive agriculture favors both increased population density and increased total population. Communities become larger, nation states are formed, and kingship comes into existence. The cetripetal nature of kingship government probably accounts for nonhereditary local headmen replacing hereditary headmen. Surplus rice allows a money economy, towns, a priestly class, social stratification, teachers, and writing.

“Swidden agriculturists in the highlands, on the other hand, maintain simple social and political organization. Small groups migrate more easily, keeping themselves politically and socially intact during and after the move. Each family, even that of the village chief, must raise its own food. Class stratification is simple and large towns are nonexistent. There are part-time shamans, but no priestly class. Even though writing systems (such as Chinese ideography) are near at hand and readily usable, absence of surplus food and large communities obstruct the development of literacy. Such small autonomous communities, numbering between 50 and 400 persons, do not form nation states.

“These data again demonstrate the political role of preferred marriage forms. Exogamy and lack of cousin marriage within large lowland nation-states aid in uniting disparate clans and villages. By contrast, the absence of exogamy and the presence of preferred cousin marriage intensify relationships within the small upland social units. Among both societies, the preferred marriage types comprise a social strategy that reinforces the political organization of the group.“

yup!

i wonder if these se asian “swidden agriculturalists” are/were also pastoralists (since cousin marriage and pastoralism seem to go together — see the arab world), or if just living in a marginal — and remote — upland environment is enough to push a group towards inbreeding, irregardless of whether one’s group is pastoralist or agriculturalist?

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crash course in chinese clans

reading greif and tabellini, one would be left with the impression that clans in china are eight hundred or so years old. nothing could be further from the truth. afaict, clans have been around in china since at least zhou dynasty days (1046–256 b.c.).

first, from g&t [pgs. 3-4, 17]:

“In China settlement was “based on kinship ties and migrants ‘constructed a new kin-group on the frontier for the purpose of land clearance and developing an irrigation infrastructure’” (Rowe, 2002, p. 534). The hallmark of the emergence of clans during the Song Dynasty (960-1297), is that commoners began keeping genealogies. At that time, European commoners were adopting surnames for the …first time. In sharp contrast to China the most common surnames do not designate common-descent (e.g., Smith, Clark, Draper, Taylor)….

“Table 1 reveals that clans …first emerged in the east and south — —areas that attracted migration during the Song (960-1279) –— and not in the north, the birthplace of the Han people that during this period were out-migrating to the East and South. The table presents the percentage of each region’s genealogies –records of a clan’s members –that trace the clan’s origin to a given period. Thus, for example, about 40 percent of the sample genealogies from the east trace the clan’s origin to a year prior to 1644. The data thus suggests that prior to 1368, clans prevailed in the east and south. They emerged in the north and west only by the Ming period. This period witnessed a large migration back to the north and west, following depopulation due to the Yuan-Ming and the Ming-Qing westward expansion….

“Chinese clans relied on voluntary contributions to …nance their activities. The Chinese ‘clan trust ’was fi…rst introduced during the Song Dynasty (960-1279) and it enabled clan members to jointly hold property. Trusts were endowed by wealthy clan members and some clans, particularly in the south were very wealthy.”

so, something interesting apparently did happen with clans in china during the song dynasty. there were these migrations of clans, but also the clans became more formalized — or something. not sure how to put it.

but that doesn’t mean that there weren’t clans in china before the tenth-thirteenth centuries. the zhou dynasty’s fief system, fengjian, forms of which, from what i understand, were also utlized by other dynasties at various points in time during china’s history, was based on clans and kinship and lineages [pgs. 31-32]:

“The Zhou systems of government adopted quite a few of the political patterns of the Shang Dynasty, retaining and modifying their methods of controlling the internal and external areas under their sphere of influence. The central area where the Son of Heaven of Zhou lived was called King’s Land, the environs of the capital city, beyond which were the areas governed by the lords on behalf of the Son of Heaven. Of course, many Zhou institutions differed from those of the Shang Dynasty in a number of aspects. The establishment of those new institutions was significant in the history of the Zhou, and even influenced the entire course of development in Ancient China.

“To strengthen their power, King Wu and King Cheng enfiefed their sons and other people they considered suitable as lords and dispatched them across the country to act as a protective screen for the Zhou royal house. This kind of feudal system was called the feudal fief system. An important model of Zhou governance, the feudal fief system was close to the Shang system of appointing officials to outer regions to subdue barbarians, but was also quite different from it in that the fief system was built on close clan and blood relationships….

“The Zhou Dynasty mainly enfiefed descendants with the same surname, which was quite closely related to the clan system practiced in those days. According to the principles of the Zhou clan system, Zhou Son of Heaven was the supreme head of the Zhou people, and his sons were sub-heads, fiefed across the country, defending the territory of Zhou. The fiefed lords gave themselves the title of head of their respective clans. They then enfiefed their land to their sons, who became ministers and senior officials, who, in their turn, enfiefed their land to their sons, called intelligensia. Subsequently, from the Son of Heaven to lords to minister and senior officials to intelligensia, a strict hierarchical system based on blood relationships constituted the essential basis of the Zhou rulership.“

(see also zongfa — the clan law.)

my point is that clans and clannishness have been around in china for a loooooong time.

various dynasties have, however, tried to curb the powers of chinese clans. examples of which i am aware: the qin dynasty which tried to put an end to the zhou fengjian system; possibly during the tang dynasty when cousin marriage may have been banned; definitely during the ming dynasty when cousin marriage was banned — this ban was reversed during the following qing dynasty and it doesn’t seem to have been very well enforced anyway; finally, in 1980 with the communist government’s ban on cousin marriages.

previously: the return of chinese clans and the return of the return of chinese clans and abridged history of cousin marriage in china

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