questions some of us thought to ask

joshua keating wrote on his foreign policy blog last week:

Questions you never thought to ask: Is inbreeding bad for democracy?

heh. (~_^)

well, some of us HAVE thought to ask that very question, a couple of people waaaay before i did — going back to 2002 in fact:

- Consanguinity prevents Middle Eastern political development from parapundit.
- Cousin Marriage Conundrum – from steve sailer. steve’s essay was also included in a volume co-edited by steven pinker, The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2004.

keating is referring to the woodley and bell paper, Consanguinity as a Major Predictor of Levels of Democracy: A Study of 70 Nations, which was published last year and which i blogged about here (and here and here and here) — and steve sailer also blogged about at the time.

just to refresh everyone’s memory, woodley and bell found a negative correlation (r = –0.632, p < 0.001) between the frequency of consanguineous marriages in the 70 nations at which they looked and the level of democracy in those countries. in other words, the greater the amount of consanguineous marriages in a country, the less democracy it probably has.

keating is not convinced:

“As a counterpoint, Iceland — a country so isolated and sparsely populated that people need an Android app to keep them from hooking up with a close relative — has had a representative parliament since the 10th century and a culture of individualism so strong they write Nobel Prize-winning novels about it. So there.”

two things.

first of all, it should be remembered that woodley and bell specifically looked for success at liberal democracy (fwiw, ymmv). from the paper:

“As conceived here, democracy refers to a system in which there is opportunity for competitive elections and deliberative referendums, with broad public participation encouraged for both (Vanhanen, 2003). Democracy in this instance refers exclusively to the liberal variety where the emphasis is on competitive politics, rather than the classical type in which the focus is on consensus building and statesmanship (Werlin, 2002). Two key characteristics of liberal democratic systems include the presence of institutions that permit citizens to express preferences for alternative policies and leaders, and the existence of institutionalized constraints that prevent the misuse of power by an executive elite (Inglehart, 2003; Lipset, 1959; Marshall & Jaggers, 2010).”

secondly, tenth century icelandic democracy was not an example of liberal democracy — and wasn’t right through to 1262 when the norwegian crown took over the governance of iceland. rather, the icelandic commonwealth was a system based on consensus which i posted about previously here.

early medieval icelanders were represented at their alþingi by regional chieftans known as goðar. nobody elected these goðar — they were the local strongmen from various areas of iceland, and they typically inherited their position, although these chieftainships were sometimes sold. you could, in theory, pick your own goði to whom you swore allegiance, but apparently in practice this rarely ever happened — because a lot of medieval icelanders were kin to their goðar [pdf], and it’s almost always bloody awkward to break it off with family — especially when you can’t easily move to the other side of the island or something.

so these early medieval icelandic “representatives” bore little resemblance to the representatives we have in modern, parliamentary systems (h*ck – maybe that was a good thing!). if you were an early medieval icelander, your alþingi representative was likely your kin, and you were probably stuck with him for life — until his son took over. this was not liberal democracy.

did the early medieval icelanders marry their cousins? i’m not sure. it’s very likely that their immediate ancestors from norway did (like the early medieval swedes probably did), and the medieval icelanders ignored many other of the church’s teachings and regulations on marriage at the time [pdf], so i wouldn’t be surprised if they did. the fact that medieval icelandic society seems to have devolved from one in which kinship was comparatively unimportant to a state where large clans controlled the place also suggests to me that they married their cousins — or at least mated awfully closely (they may not have had to marry very close cousins since they were such a small population to start off with).
_____

having said all that, when trying to work out why the medieval icelanders — or any other group for that matter — didn’t/don’t have liberal democracy, it’s not really important whether or not they were marrying their cousins at the time in question. well, it is … and it isn’t. (don’t pull your hair out just yet.)

what is important (i think) is whether or not the medieval icelanders — or any group-X — had been marrying their cousins over the long-term. i don’t think that there’s an instantaneous connection between cousin marriage (or other close mating) and failing to manage a functional liberally democratic system. what i think that there is are longer term evolutionary processes connected to inbreeding/outbreeding patterns and the selection for individualism vs. familism or clannism. and if you have clannism, liberal democracy will just not work.

woodley and bell acquired their consanguinity data from consang.net. here’s a map of those data:

what stands out right away is that consanguinity rates are very high in the arab world, the middle east, north africa, and places like pakistan and afghanistan, while rates are really low in the u.s. and scandinavia. that seems to fit the cousin-marriage-doesn’t-promote-democracy theory. but the cousin marriage rates in china are very low — same range as england and western europe. why don’t the chinese manage to have a liberal democracy then?

what you have to understand is that this map is a snapshot. it is a moment in time (mostly the twentieth century). it doesn’t tell us much about the history of cousin marriage in any of these societies — whether any of it’s been short-term or long-term — and without knowing that, we can’t even start to guess at any effects the mating patterns (and related family types) might’ve had on the evolution of behaviors in these populations, including those related to clannishness.

once you know, for instance, that up until very recently, the chinese actually preferred cousin marriage, then you can — i think — begin to understand why they’re clannish (or, at least, extended family-ish). and why, therefore, liberal democracy doesn’t work there — or didn’t arise there in the first place either.

rinse and repeat for all the other locales on the map.
_____

see also Cousin Marriage and Democracy @marginal revolution.

previously: liberal democracy vs. consensus building and democracy and endogamous mating practices and “hard-won democracy”

_{(note: comments do not require an email. driving in iceland.)}

linkfest – 04/07/13

A Genome-Wide Association Study Identifies Five Loci Influencing Facial Morphology in Europeans – “Our results also suggest that the high heritability of facial phenotypes seems to be explained by a large number of DNA variants with relatively small individual effect size, a phenomenon well known for other complex human traits, such as adult body height.”

The Genetic Correlation between Height and IQ: Shared Genes or Assortative Mating? – “In this study, we used a large (total N = 7,905), genetically informative dataset to understand why two potentially sexually selected traits in humans—height and IQ—are correlated. We found that both shared genes and assortative mating were about equally important in causing the relationship between these two traits.”

ScienceShot: Monkey Smiles Are Contagious – “Previously, only humans and orangutans had been shown to quickly and involuntarily mimic the facial expressions of their companions, an ability that seems to be linked to empathy.”

No evidence for higher testosterone in black compared to white adolescent males – @race/history/evolution notes.

Brain scans decode dream content – “Researchers have decoded the content of people’s dreams using brain scanning technology”

Fertility and Happiness: A Global Perspective and A Fat World – With a Fat Secret? – from jayman (he was on a roll this week!).

Genes behind obesity mapped in large-scale study – “An international research team has identified seven new gene loci linked to obesity.”

Is Psychometric g a Myth? – @human varieties. see also Is the g Factor a myth? from steve sailer.

Darwin: Are the races of man separate species or merely separate subspecies? – from steve sailer.

Inbreeding, race replacement, genetic disease, “diversity” – @race/history/evolution notes.

Wyld Stallyns and House O’Rats and Undecidable Propositions – from greg cochran (he was also on a roll this week!).

Have We Evolved to Be Nasty or Nice? – from matt ridley.

Shocker — married mothers smarter than single moms – from the awesome epigone.

Sex, models and housework – b.s. king takes a critical look at the (suspicious) maths behind that “sex and housework” story that made the rounds recently.

The Parsis – “At present, we simply don’t know enough about Parsi history to understand what social and psychological characteristics may have been favored during the long centuries between the arrival of this community in India and its encounter with the British from the 17th century onward.” – from peter frost.

Mankind’s Collective Personalities – from john derbyshire.

Polynesian mtDNA in extinct Amerindians from Brazil – @dienekes.

Religiosity and fear of death: a three‐nation comparison – “Overall, the patterns in all three countries were similar. When linearity was assumed, there is a substantial positive correlation between most religiosity measures and fear of death…. [F]emales were more religious and feared death more than did males, and Muslims expressed considerably greater fear than did members of any other major religion.” – @mein naturwissenschaftsblog.

Researchers see antibody evolve against HIV

Shocker: Colorado shooter on prescription psychiatric meds – @mangan’s.

The average human vagina – yes, there’s a lot of variation down there (sorry, no exciting pics @the link!).

Great Scientist ≠ Good at Math – “E.O. Wilson shares a secret: Discoveries emerge from ideas, not number-crunching” – hmmmm. i still think that (*ahem*) being able to do maths is an awfully handy skill in biology, not to mention population genetics.

Could playing ‘boys’ games help girls in science and math? – “[M]en and women with either a strong masculine or androgynous gender-identity fared better in mental rotation tasks.” – so, the women who were more guy-like were better at the mental rotation tasks. duh!

Global E-mail Patterns Reveal ‘Clash of Civilizations’ – “The global pattern of e-mail communication reflects the cultural fault lines thought to determine future conflict, say computational social scientists.”

In Praise of Kinship – “You don’t have to be a relativist to see that one-size individualism can’t fit all cultures, or that clannish bonds are often deeply fulfilling.” – wsj review of mark weiner‘s book, The Rule of the Clan. see also What Modern Democracies Should Understand About Clan-based Societies Explored in New Book by Rutgers–Newark Law Professor.

bonus: The secret superdads: More than a dozen UK sperm donors have fathered 20 or more children EACH – “Five-hundred men have sired more than 6,100 children in Britain”

bonus bonus: French people mired in ‘collective depression’ – “A new survey published on Thursday found that 70 percent of them see their country as afflicted by a ‘collective depression’, with two thirds believing that France is ‘in decline’…. ‘This deep French depression is explained in large part by a sense of lost identity.’”

bonus bonus bonus: Xenophobia has no effect on migrants’ happiness, says study

bonus bonus bonus bonus: An Emergency Hatch for Baby Lizards – “Unborn lizards can erupt from their eggs days early if vibrations hint at a threat from a hungry predator, new research shows.”

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: Lego pulls toy following accusations of being anti-Islamic – but Lego denies discontinuing Jabba’s Palace over race claims – previously.

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: Boy, 17, builds DNA testing machine [polymerase chain reaction machine] in his bedroom to find out why his younger sibling has ginger hair

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: Chinese president urges openness, respect for diversity – of types of governments! (~_^)

_{(note: comments do not require an email. baby lizards! awwwww!)}

linkfest – 03/24/13

extra-long [insert dongle joke here] linkfest this week since there wasn’t one last sunday (sorry, dog ate it…). note that there (probably) won’t be one next sunday either, ’cause i’ll be too busy hunting for easter eggs…. (^_^)

Common DNA Markers Can Account for More Than Half of the Genetic Influence on Cognitive Abilities – “In the same sample of 3,154 pairs of 12-year-old twins, we directly compared twin-study heritability estimates for cognitive abilities (language, verbal, nonverbal, and general) with GCTA estimates captured by 1.7 million DNA markers. We found that DNA markers tagged by the array accounted for .66 of the estimated heritability, reaffirming that cognitive abilities are heritable. Larger sample sizes alone will be sufficient to identify many of the genetic variants that influence cognitive abilities.” – via race/history/evolution notes.

Genotypes over-represented among college students are linked to better cognitive abilities and socioemotional adjustment – “The present study investigated … genotype frequencies of 284 SNPs covering major neurotransmitter genes in a sample of 478 Chinese college students, comparing these frequencies with those of a community sample (the 1000 Genomes dataset)…. Results showed that 24 loci showed Hardy–Weinberg disequilibrium among college students, but only two of these were in disequilibrium in the 1000 Genomes sample. These loci were found to be associated with mathematical abilities, executive functions, motivation, and adjustment-related behaviors such as alcohol use and emotion recognition.” – via … somebody … can’t remember who. sorry!

Genes and Smarts – from the derb.

Why Bacteria Commit Suicide – “[I]nfected individuals self-destructed before they could spread the virus to others.”

Evolution via Roadkill – “Cliff swallows that build nests that dangle precariously from highway overpasses have a lower chance of becoming roadkill than in years past thanks to a shorter wingspan that lets them dodge oncoming traffic. That’s the conclusion of a new study based on 3 decades of data collected on one population of the birds. The results suggest that shorter wingspan has been selected for over this time period because of the evolutionary pressure put on the population by cars.”

‘Out of Africa’ Story Being Rewritten Again – “Our early human ancestors may have left Africa more recently than thought, between 62,000 and 95,000 years ago, suggests a new analysis of genetic material from fossil skeletons.” – see also Mitochondrial DNA tree calibrated with ancient DNA @race/history/evolution notes and Revised timescale of human mtDNA evolution from dienekes.

How Social Darwinism Made Modern China – “A thousand years of meritocracy shaped the Middle Kingdom.” – good stuff from ron unz. see also the derb and peter frost and anatoly.

Does the Clark-Unz model apply to Japan and Korea? – from peter frost.

Did evolution give us inflammatory disease? – “[S]ome variants in our genes that could put a person at risk for inflammatory diseases such as multiple sclerosis, Crohn’s disease or rheumatoid arthritis, have been the target of natural selection over the course of human history.” – original research article.

Genes may be reason some kids are picky about food – “The study looked at 66 pairs of twins between ages 4 and 7 years old, and found that genes explain 72 percent of the variation among children in the tendency to avoid new foods, while the rest was influenced by environment.”

A Tale of Three Maps – from jayman.

Dan Freedman’s babies and National Character – from greg cochran @west hunter (buy the e-book!).

HVGIQ: The Bahamas – from jason malloy.

The Personality of Tribalism – from staffan.

Remembering Stephen Jay Gould: Bully and Boob – from steve sailer.

Depicting reality or escaping from it? – the awesome epigone asks a good question/makes a good point about something in steven pinker’s Better Angels.

Assortative mating and shared life history strategy – from mr. mangan.

Uh-Oh… – malcolm pollack on why there’s not so much “diversity” in silicon valley: “It’s because Silicon Valley … *is* a meritocracy — you just can’t fake being good at writing code, solving complex engineering problems, or designing high-tech gadgetry….”

Was inbreeding common among early humans? 100,000-year-old deformed skull adds evidence to theory of ‘very small’ communities – “The discovery adds to growing evidence that early humans inbred often” – prolly because populations were small. see also Abnormalities in Pleistocene Homo from dienekes.

Moral Matter – the neuroscience of morality.

Crime and punishment: From the neuroscience of freewill to legal reform

Men programmed to avoid sex with best friends’ wives: study – “Researchers suggest guys may have a biological predisposition against hitting on their best friends’ partners…. A University of Missouri study has found that adult males’ testosterone levels dropped when they were interacting with the marital partner of a close friend.”

Downton Abbey: Earl of Grantham maximizes inclusive fitness – @occam’s razor.

Experts Say Food May Contribute To Anger, Violent Behavior – “Pace and other nutritionists say if you eat plenty of fish, eggs, beans, fruits and green leafy vegetables, you should have the nutrients you need. However, people who tend to eat a diet loaded with processed or packaged foods could find themselves more easily irritated.”

Women abused as children likelier to bear autistic child

One of Us – animals are people, too.

Text mining uncovers British reserve and US emotion – “An analysis of the digitized texts of English-language books over the past century concludes that, since the 1980s, words that carry emotional content have become significantly more common in US books than in British ones.”

Evolution and Existentialism, an Intellectual Odd Couple – “On the basis of evolutionary existentialism, I would therefore like to suggest the heretical and admittedly paradoxical notion that, in fact, we need to teach more disobedience. Not only disobedience to political and social authority but especially disobedience to some of our troublesome genetic inclinations.” – hmmmm….

Forbidden City – “The left-wing stranglehold on academia.”

bonus: Life found deep under the sea – “Oceanic-crust microbes survive on hydrogen and carbon dioxide.” in other microbial news: Mariana Trench: Deepest ocean ‘teems with microbes’ – “The deepest place in the ocean is teeming with microscopic life, a study suggests.”

bonus bonus: Palestinian Mother Speaks Out About Daughter’s Honor Killing – “[H]onor killing defendants [are] usually given light sentences. Three years in prison was the stiffest in these cases. Life sentences or execution were never a consideration…. Offenders receive reduced sentences pursuant to Article 18 of Penal Code no. 74 of 1936, which is entitled ‘Necessity.’ The article provides for ‘leniency in punishment for crimes that offenders have committed in order to avert consequences, which could cause irreparable damage to their honor, money, or the honor of those such offenders are obliged to protect.’”

bonus bonus bonus: The Hate List – “[T]he [$]PLC’s site explains that it counts counted ’1,007 active hate groups in the United States in 2012,’ including ‘organizations and their chapters.’ But ‘The Year in Hate and Extremism’ did not make the ‘chapter’ distinction explicit. It is rarely drawn out in the organization’s frequent media appearances, nor was it mentioned in a letter from the SPLC to the Justice Department warning of the growing threat.” – see also What’s hate got to do with it? @bad data, bad!

bonus bonus bonus bonus: Amazing photographs reveal the lost world of the Omo tribes of Ethiopia

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: A Tiny Village Where Women Chose to Be Single Mothers – “30 years ago in this bucolic village in northern Vietnam, the fierce determination of one group of women to become mothers upended centuries-old gender rules….”

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: Cannibals of the Past Had Plenty of Reasons to Eat People

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: Phallus-shaped fossils identified as new species [insert dongle joke here]

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: Global Internet Porn Habits Infographic – ‘sup finnish people?! and romanians and hungarians (“mom and son”?!)?!

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: i love the ukrainian parliament. no, i really do! (~_^)

_{(note: comments do not require an email. double dongle.)}

“the rule of the clan”

john derbyshire pointed out this new book to me (thanks, john!)…

The Rule of the Clan – What an Ancient Form of Social Organization Reveals About the Future of Individual Freedom

…written by a fellow named mark weiner.

(clans are so IN nowadays! (~_^) )

here’s a little taste of what’s in the book — from the introduction [kindle locations 120-140]:

“What exactly is the rule of the clan? When I refer to the rule of the clan, I mean three related contemporary phenomena.

“First, and most prominently, I mean the legal structures and cultural values of societies organized primarily on the basis of kinship-societies in which extended family membership is vital for social and legal action and in which individuals have little choice but to maintain a strong clan identity. Today these societies include many in which the United States and its allies have a major strategic interest, such as Afghanistan, Yemen, Nigeria, and Somalia, but they have existed across history and throughout the world. Sometimes they are described as ‘tribal,’ though I tend to avoid the term because in English it carries a host of negative and racialist connotations. This strict form of the rule of the clan also includes the traditional Hindu caste system and Indian joint family, despite the manifest great differences between tribal societies and rapidly modernizing democratic India.

“Second, by the rule of the clan I mean the political arrangements of societies governed by what the Arab Human Development Report 2004 calls ‘clannism’….”

“clannism.” i like that.

“These societies possess the outward trappings of a modern state but are founded on informal patronage networks, especially those of kinship, and traditional ideals of patriarchal family authority. In nations pervaded by clannism, government is coopted for purely factional purposes and the state, conceived on the model of the patriarchal family, treats citizens not as autonomous actors but rather as troublesome dependents to be managed.

“Clannism is the historical echo of tribalism, existing even in the face of economic modernization. It often characterizes rentier societies struggling under the continuing legacy of colonial subordination, as in the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa, where the nuclear family, with its revolutionary, individuating power, has yet to replace the extended lineage group as the principle framework for kinship or household organization. A form of clannism likewise pervades mainland China and other nations whose political development was influenced by Confucianism, with its ideal of a powerful state resting on a well-ordered family, and where personal connections are essential to economic exchange….”

uh huh. additionally, actual clans have also been making a comeback in china as of late.

“Third, and most broadly, by the rule of the clan I mean the antiliberal social and legal organizations that tend to grow in the absence of state authority or when the state is weak. These groups include petty criminal gangs, the Mafia, and international crime syndicates, which look a great deal like clans and in many respects act like them….”

and, of course, the mafia, and many other international crime syndicates (like balkan criminal gangs which have spread across europe during the past decade or so), ARE extended family-/clan-based. make no mistake — a lot of these groups are not just clan-like.

looks to be a very interesting book — and information packed! i look forward to reading it, and no doubt i’ll have more to say about it soon! (^_^)

_{(note: comments do not require an email. yemeni clansmen/tribesmen.)}

linkfest – 03/06/13

sunday linkfest on wednesday evening. what is the world coming to?

rand paul ftw, btw! (^_^)

We Aren’t the World – a W.E.I.R.D. article.

African-American’s Y chromosome sparks shift in evolutionary timetable – “Scientists say an African-American male’s odd genetic signature suggests that the human Y chromosome’s lineage goes back further in time than they thought — perhaps due to interbreeding with other populations such as Neanderthals.” – see also dienekes: Extremely old (237–581 kya) root of human Y-chromosome phylogeny.

Counting blue gods – more pie(-chart)s than in a pie-eating contest! from the awesome epigone.

For every person that doesn’t want kids there are 25 that do. Is that so? – from jayman.

It’s not because research is cheaper there – “Perhaps among the many genes with small effects [on iq] there are a few with big effects….” – @evoandproud.

HVGIQ: Jamaica – from jason malloy. see also steve sailer: Average IQ in Jamaica.

How much mental illness is lifestyle-related? – from mangan.

Genomewide diversity in the Levant (Haber et al. 2013) – “Our results show recent genetic stratifications in the Levant are driven by the religious affiliations of the populations within the region…. Levant populations today fall into two main groups: one sharing more genetic characteristics with modern-day Europeans and Central Asians, and the other with closer genetic affinities to other Middle Easterners and Africans.” – @dienekes’.

5 Disorders Share Genetic Risk Factors, Study Finds – schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, autism, major depression and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Single gene might explain dramatic differences among people with schizophrenia

Is “Natural Law” Anti-Nature? – @occam’s razor.

Feet on the Autism Spectrum – “Psychotherapist Cary Terra works with adults with autism spectrum disorder…. Over many years, she’s noticed what she calls an ‘unmistakable trend’: that her patients have a tendency to sit with their feet stacked.” – *hbd chick looks down* – oops!

Rape on the Reservation – “…one in three Native women is raped over her lifetime….”

Month a baby is born ‘suggests what career they will have’ – “The time of year a baby is born can shape what profession they will embark on in later life, a new study has suggested.” – via mangan.

Lack of sleep ‘switches off’ genes – “One week of bad sleep can ‘switch off’ hundreds of genes and raise the risk of a host of illnesses including obesity and heart disease, scientists claim.”

bonus: In China, ‘red nobility’ trumps egalitarian ideal – “Relatives of communist China’s founding fathers enjoy privileged status in politics and business that runs counter to party ideology.” – this one’s for luke and anatoly. (^_^)

bonus bonus: China imprisons four men for ‘ghost marriage’ corpse bride trafficking – “Yanchuan court jails men for digging up and selling bodies in afterlife custom of matching dead women to deceased bachelors.”

bonus bonus bonus: At Largest Religious Festival, Some Abandon Elderly – “At the Maha Kumbh Mela in India, families ditch older relatives in the crowds.”

bonus bonus bonus bonus: Beppe Grillo: Cronyism has hurt Italian science

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: Why Did (or Didn’t) the Meerkat Cross the Road? – hierarchy’s a b*tch.

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: Giant ancient camel remains discovered in Canadian Arctic <<- best headline of the week!

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: Report: Chinese Third-Graders Falling Behind U.S. High School Students in Math, Science (~_^)

_{(note: comments do not require an email. but you already knew that, didn’t you?)}

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.
_____

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.
_____

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.
_____

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.

_{(note: comments do not require an email. lotr weregild.)}

chumps

we’re a bunch of chumps.

from geoffrey miller @the edge (via steve sailer) — in answer to the question “What *should* we be worried about?”:

“Chinese Eugenics”

“…The BGI Cognitive Genomics Project is currently doing whole-genome sequencing of 1,000 very-high-IQ people around the world, hunting for sets of sets of IQ-predicting alleles. I know because I recently contributed my DNA to the project, not fully understanding the implications. These IQ gene-sets will be found eventually — but will probably be used mostly in China, for China. Potentially, the results would allow all Chinese couples to maximize the intelligence of their offspring by selecting among their own fertilized eggs for the one or two that include the highest likelihood of the highest intelligence. Given the Mendelian genetic lottery, the kids produced by any one couple typically differ by 5 to 15 IQ points. So this method of ‘preimplantation embryo selection’ might allow IQ within every Chinese family to increase by 5 to 15 IQ points per generation. After a couple of generations, it would be game over for Western global competitiveness….”

see? chumps.

one interesting point wrt the eugenics program in china: “He [Deng Xiaoping] liberalized markets, but implemented the one-child policy — partly to curtail China’s population explosion, but also to reduce dysgenic fertility among rural peasants. Throughout the 1980s, Chinese propaganda urges couples to have children ‘later, longer, fewer, better….’”

hmmm. later may not (prolly does not!) mean better — not iq-wise anyway. the chinese might’ve screwed up there.

another side-note: the chinese marriage law was amended in 1980 to ban cousin marriage — another part of their eugenics package? hard to know how well that’s being enforced though (enforcement is difficult in a nation of that size and that is … let’s admit it … given to corruption).

read the whole edge article there.

_{(note: comments do not require an email. bgi.)}

linkfest – 01/14/13

late linkfest again! sorry. (*^_^*)

Group Selection (and homosexuality) and Homosexuality, epigenetics, and zebras – from greg cochran. also, from jayman -
A Gay Germ? Is Homophobia a Clue?

The Trouble with Epigenetics (Part 1) – “[E]ven though epigenetic mechanisms may be involved in maintaining some stable traits over the lifetime of the animal, they are just that: mechanisms. Not causes. Epigenetics is not a source of variance, it is part of the mechanism whereby certain environmental factors or experiences have their effects.” (in other words, epigenetics is not magic.)

DNA ‘identichip’ gives a detailed picture of a suspect – “The VisiGen team tested the chip on more than 3000 DNA samples collected around the world, and found that it was 99 per cent accurate at predicting gender. The chip also predicted European or East Asian ancestry with an accuracy of 97 per cent, and African ancestry in 88 per cent of cases. However, it was only 63 per cent accurate at predicting blond hair….”

What did our ancestors look like? – “A new method of establishing hair and eye colour from modern forensic samples can also be used to identify details from ancient human remains….”

Black homicide rates by state – from the awesome epigone. compare to his White homicide rates by state. also, from hail: White Murder Rates by U.S. State, 1960 (vs. 2010).

People With Brown Eyes Appear More Trustworthy, But That’s Not The Whole Story – “‘Brown-eyed individuals tend to be perceived as more trustworthy than blue-eyed ones,’ explain the authors. ‘But it is not brown eyes that cause this perception. It is the facial morphology linked to brown eyes.’” – see also dienekes.

Networking Ability a Family Trait in Monkeys – “Social behaviors have been acted on by natural selection”

Cheating — and getting away with it – “Scientists have found a gene that allows amoebae to pass on more than their fair share of their genes but doesn’t make them less fit in other ways”

Banded mongooses structure monosyllabic sounds in a similar way to humans

America’s Real Criminal Element: Lead – “New research finds Pb is the hidden villain behind violent crime, lower IQs, and even the ADHD epidemic.” – maybe.

Darwin Was Wrong About Dating – maybe.

How Did Humans Figure Out That Sex Makes Babies?

bonus: #overlyhonestmethods is the PostSecret of the science world, and it is amazing – heh. (^_^)

bonus bonus: Why I Am Not an Atheist – from kanazawa.

bonus bonus bonus: Immigrant mothers in Britain could be aborting unwanted girls, ministers admit after study of birth rates

bonus bonus bonus bonus: Why is gingerism so common in Britain? – from ed west.

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: China’s one-child law: Less competitive adults?

_{(note: comments do not require an email. now that’s what i call a BIG turban!)}