more on ibd and historic mating patterns in europe

t (thanks, t!) points me to this article (this story seems to be making the rounds this a.m.):

“All Europeans are related if you go back just 1,000 years, scientists say”

“A genetic survey concludes that all Europeans living today are related to the same set of ancestors who lived 1,000 years ago….

“The researchers were surprised to find that even individuals living as far apart as Britain and Turkey shared a chunk of genetic material 20 percent of the time. To explain that degree of genetic commonality, the researchers say those pairs of individuals would have to have a huge number of common genealogical ancestors 1,000 years ago — a number that takes in everyone who was alive in Europe back then….”

the results of the survey being discussed here have just been published on plos biology: The Geography of Recent Genetic Ancestry across Europe.

before i go on to discuss the bits i’m interested in (the identity by descent, or ibd, rates that they found), i just want to quote something from the plos article related to this business that all europeans share the same set of ancestors that lived 1,000 years ago. yes, we do, but keep in mind that:

“[S]omeone in Spain may be related to an ancestor in the Iberian peninsula through perhaps 1,000 different routes back through the pedigree, but to an ancestor in the Baltic region by only 10 different routes, so that the probability that this Spanish individual inherited genetic material from the Iberian ancestor is roughly 100 times higher. This allows the amount of genetic material shared by pairs of extant individuals to vary even if the set of ancestors is constant.”

in other words, some europeans are more related to one another than to others. but we all knew that already.

anyway…

this is the same (really awesome!) study done by ralph and coop that i posted about last year here and here. (oh, and here, too.) some of the data were available online back then after the researchers had given a presentation somewhere or other [pdf].

i’m interested in ibd data since they, like runs of homozygosity (roh), can give us some clues about how inbred or outbred populations are. it’s not a clear-cut interpretation, though, because both ibd and roh can be affected by other population genetic processes like bottlenecks and migration and simply population size (and probably other things, too, about which i am blissfully ignorant), so one has to make some educated inferences and guesses.

unfortunately, the authors don’t seem to have included in the plos publication the following illustration from their earlier presentation (unless it’s buried in the supplemental data — i didn’t see it there, but there’s a LOT of supplemental data files). that’s a shame, because it’s one of the most interesting:

the map shows the mean ibd rates for each of the european populations studied (the mean length of the blocks was >1 cM). individuals in the populations with higher mean ibd rates (bigger circles) share more identical stretches of their dna with their fellow countrymen than those in populations with low mean ibd rates. lots of outbreeding can lower the amount and lengths of ibd blocks in a population. as i posted previously, i think you can see the historic (since the early medieval period) outbreeding patterns of western europeans in the low mean ibd rates in western europe. this pattern is even clearer when you add the hajnal line to the map (the hajnal line being a good indicator of the geographical limits of the roman catholic church’s/secular authorities’ push to, amongst other things, ban cousin marriage in the medieval period).

now, here from the plos paper is a table indicating “mean number of IBD blocks shared by a pair of individuals from that population (‘self’), and mean IBD rate averaged across all other populations (‘other’)”:

i put the mean ibd “self” (i.e. within a population) numbers on a map and added the hajnal line. (note that the “mean length of these blocks was 2.5 cM, the median was 2.1 cM, and the 25th and 75th quantiles are 1.5 cM and 2.9 cM, respectively”.) [click on map for LARGER view.]:

ralph and coop suggest that the rates are so high in eastern europe, and particularly the balkans, because of the fairly recent slavic migration into the area and the fact that the slavs settled in relatively uninhabited areas. they further suggest that the germanic migrations into western europe are not so apparent in the ibd rates since these were already heavily populated areas and maybe even that the germanics were an heterogeneous group to start off with. those are really good theories (especially the one about the slavs), and i think that — yeah — we are probably seeing signals of those migrations in these data. however, once again, i think you can also see the long-term historic inbreeding/outbreeding (greater cousin marriage vs. little cousin marriage) mating patterns of european populations reflected in the ibd rates. (see “mating patterns in europe series” below ↓ in left-hand column for more details on all the mating patterns which i mention in the next few paragraphs.)

my “core europeans” — the english, the french, the belgians, the dutch, the germans, the north italians (not so much the ones in the alps, though), and to some extent the swiss and scandinavians — have the longest history of outbreeding (i.e. avoiding cousin marriage) in europe beginning in the early medieval period — and they have the lowest ibd rates. the rates are a bit higher for scandinavia since they converted to christianity later and, thus, didn’t adopt the cousin marriage bans until later. same with the irish and the scots (in fact, i think that highland scotland should be indicated as being outside the hajnal line, but that’s a discussion for another day). that the netherlands has a higher ibd rate than neighboring belgium and germany also makes sense if you know about the (probable) late adoption of the cousin marriage bans by those living in the marshes like the ditmarsians.

the ibd rates are higher east of the hajnal line and that, too, makes sense if you know that the eastern orthodox church was both later at instituting and less consistent in enforcing cousin marriage bans. the very high rates in albania and kosovo are probably related to the fact that these populations include a majority of muslims and that muslims typically have no bans on marrying cousins (while the albanians, and likely the kosovans [or whatever you want to call them!], have probably avoided paternal cousin marriage, maternal cousin marriage seems to have been an option, possibly even preferred).

the very low rate in italy is puzzling and, as i have said elsewhere, may have to do with the fact that, as the authors suggest, italy has experienced so many influxes of different populations. alternatively, it may have to do with a sampling bias (i.e. where did the italian samples come from? the more outbred north, or the more inbred south?).

the authors also broke down the ibd rates by several european regions of their own devising: “These five groupings are defined as: Europe ‘E,’ lying to the east of Germany and Austria; Europe ‘N,’ lying to the north of Germany and Poland; Europe ‘W,’ to the west of Germany and Austria (inclusive); the Iberian and Italian peninsulas ‘I’; and Turkey/Cyprus ‘TC.’” here is their table:

i made a map — and added the hajnal line (of course!):

again, there’s the east-west divide that i’ve pointed out before and which, i think, corresponds to the edge of the hajnal line. there also seems to be a north-south divide, which is apparent on both sides of the east-west (fuzzy) border, and which may have to do with long-standing lower population densities in northern europe. (that does make sense if you think about it — smaller populations inevitably experience closer matings or greater “inbreeding.”)

mating patterns matter! particularly long-term mating patterns. i think so anyway.

previously: ibd and historic mating patterns in europe and ibd rates for europe and the hajnal line and ibd rates and kindreds in germanic populations and russians, eastern europeans, runs of homozygosity (roh), and inbreeding and western europeans, runs of homozygosity (roh), and outbreeding and runs of homozygosity and inbreeding (and outbreeding) and runs of homozygosity again

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russians, eastern europeans, runs of homozygosity (roh), and inbreeding

greying wanderer (thanks, grey!) pointed out to me (via) a very interesting study of russian/eastern european genetics which includes some runs of homozygosity (roh) data (which can provide clues of inbreeding/close matings among other things): A Genome-Wide Analysis of Populations from European Russia Reveals a New Pole of Genetic Diversity in Northern Europe. (dienekes has a really good explanation of roh here.)

in this latest study, khrunin et al. took a look at a handful of different ethnic russian sub-populations (from different locations in russia) as well as some other eastern european groups. most of the samples from russia they collected themselves — the rest came from other studies. here’s a list of which groups were included and where they came from:

- russians (n=384) from the archangelsk (mezen district, n = 96), vladimir (murom district, n = 96), kursk (kursk and oktyabrsky districts, n = 96), and tver (andreapol district, n = 96) regions
- veps (n=81) from the babaevo district of the vologodsky region
- komi (n=150) from the izhemski (izhemski komi, n = 79) and priluzski (priluzski komi, n = 71) districts of the komi republic.

all of these samples were collected by the authors — except for those from tver — and the researchers ensured that the subjects AND their parents were originally from whatever region in which they happened to find them (i like that!).

the data from other studies which they used are described in this paper and include:

- finns – samples from helsinki (n = 100) and kuusamo (n = 84) – kuusamo is really remote
- estonians (n = 100) – samples collected across the entire country
- latvians (n = 95) – samples collected in riga – parents had to be latvians
- poles (n = 48) – from the west-pomeranian region, so just on the border with germany
- czechs (n = 94) – from prague, moravia, and silesia
- germans (n = 100) – from schleswig-holstein in the north and the augsburg region in the south
- italians (n = 88) from tuscany – hapmap
- russians (n = 25) from the human genome diversity panel (hgdp) – i believe from the vologda oblast.

the data collected by khrunin et al. are really good, imho, since 1) they went to all the trouble of collecting samples from different regions of russia, and 2) the researchers tried to control for ethnic/regional origin. the quality of the data from all the other studies is kinda mixed, for my interests anyway. for instance, taking in samples in large, capital cities — meh — not so great. the residents of those cities could’ve come from all over the country. the northern versus southern sampling in germany is better; unfortunately, those data sets were combined together in this study (they’re kept separate in another really cool study which i will post about soon!). the estonian data set is interesting because the samples came from across the country. otoh, the polish data set is also interesting because it’s from such a specific region (and right on the border with germany).

ok. one last thing before i show you the results (i made a map!). different researchers define roh differently (*sigh*) — while there do seem to be some standards, there’s also quite a bit of variation, and different researchers choose to look for roh of varying lengths. in this study, the researchers looked for roh that were 1.5Mb in length (i’ve seen other researchers look for 1Mb in length). 1.5Mb is pretty short as far as roh go. if you recall, when a population has a lot of longer roh (like 4-8Mb or more), that’s a pretty good indicator of inbreeding. 1.5Mb — not so much. lots of short roh are a better indicator of something like a population bottleneck in the distant-ish past. but, what’s a girl to do? gotta work with what’s available, and if it’s short roh, so be it.

here (finally!) is the map. i took the data from this table. the map (first column of data) is of the average number of roh (of 1.5Mb) found in individuals in the different populations (nROH):

the most obvious thing to note is that the small, endogamous groups (the veps and the komi) have more roh than any of the other populations, except for the finns up in kuusamo (and i think that that’s probably due to a bottleneck — ethnic finns really only migrated to, and began to settle in, the area seriously in the 1600s, and i imagine it wasn’t very many of them — and being so far away from anybody else!). the veps and the komi are small populations and, historically, they didn’t marry out much (that’s why we have veps and komi people today), so they are somewhat inbred. definitely more so than the surrounding population.

another curious thing is the pretty high number of rohs in the baltic populations: latvians=0.58, estonians=0.61, and finns in helsinki=1.13. wow! what happened there? that’s something like three to five times the number of roh we see in italians (from tuscany) or germans.

the most interesting point for me, though, is that there is an east-west divide. it’s kinda vague, maybe, but i think it’s there: italians (tuscans) and germans at ca. 0.20, and then the czechs and poles right next door at 0.35 and 0.51 respectively. and everyone to the east, except the russians in kursk, higher again than those two figures. i think these results hint at what i’ve found in the history books on medieval europe, i.e. that western europeans began outbreeding earlier than eastern europeans and as a result wound up being more outbred. (see, for example, here and here — and the “mating patterns in europe series” below ↓ in left-hand column.)

finally, the authors of the study point out how it appears that the average number of roh in individuals in a population increases with latitude — and they mention that this has also been shown elsewhere (i’ll be posting on that paper — very soon!). if you look at the various ethnic russian populations, for instance, the russians down in kursk (Rus_Ku=0.28) and murom (Rus_Mu=0.39) have fewer roh than the russians further to the north in tver (Rus_Tv=0.49) and way up in mezen (Rus_Me=1.63!). however, the hgdp russian samples, apparently from the vologda oblast which is pretty far north, have relatively low numbers of roh (Rus_HGDP=0.44), so that doesn’t seem to fit. still, it does look like a real pattern to me. the authors suggest that this is due to the general pattern of how europe was settled (from the south to the north), as well as the fact that the farther north you go, the fewer people there are to mate with (so the more inbred you wind up being).

as i’ll show in my next post, though, while there does seem to be a north-south pattern to roh frequency in europe with more roh in populations to the north than the south, curiously the numbers seem to increase in southern europe as well (as compared to places in central europe like germany and france) — and strangely in the balkan region as well. i can’t imagine why! (^_^)

previously: ibd and historic mating patterns in europe and ibd rates for europe and the hajnal line and runs of homozygosity and inbreeding (and outbreeding) and runs of homozygosity again

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ibd rates and kindreds in germanic populations

i’ve inserted phillpotts’ “end of the germanic kindreds” dates on top of ralph and coop’s “mean within-country ibd rates” map — just ’cause i could. here’s what it looks like:

the idea is that greater inbreeding ought to lead to greater “clannishness” — i.e. a greater prevalence of kindreds in the case of the germanics, and kindreds for longer the longer the inbreeding happened — while outbreeding ought to lead to less “clannishness.”

this map maybe kinda/sorta shows that (i think).

if you look at, for instance, the region from france through belgium and up through the netherlands towards dithmarschen (the black square on the map and “ground zero” for clannishness amongst the medieval germanic populations), the pattern does seem to hold: where there are lower ibd rates (i.e. suggesting lower inbreeding), as in northern france, the kindreds disappeared earlier (1300s) than where there are higher ibd rates, namely friesland (1400s). and the ibd rates increase the closer you get towards dithmarschen.

germany, too, has low ibd rates (relatively small green circle centered on berlin there — smaller than friesland’s circle), and, according to phillpotts, kindreds were pretty much gone in central/southern germany by the 1200s.

and norway has lower ibd rates than sweden, and the kindreds disappeared there sooner (1200s) than in sweden (1300s).

i would’ve predicted lower ibd rates for england, especially now given what phillpotts said about the kindreds in anglo-saxon england being gone by the 600-700s — although perhaps that had to do with their migration over water like she suggested and wasn’t related to whether or not they were inbreeding or outbreeding at the time. on the other hand, lorraine lancaster argued that kindreds were actually still around in england into the 1000s, so perhaps that explains the ibd rates a bit better — or vice versa, rather (but see below).
_____

btw, i looked a little further into the sources of the genetic data that ralph and coop used for their ibd study [pdf]. the data came from popres (The Population Reference Sample), and afaict (correct me if i’m wrong) the european data in the popres collection came from two sources: the london-based Lolipop Study and the swiss-based CoLaus study.

the lolipop study surveyed both indian asian and white european individuals living in london [pdf] — i’m sure ralph and coop used only the white european individuals for their study of europe, of course. only europeans having four grandparents born in the u.k. were included, so i guess that must make them all british (english, welsh, scottish, northern irish) — but they could also be irish. the inclusion of welsh, scottish, and/or irish individuals could’ve skewed the ibd results. ralph and coop seem to have isolated some number of scottish and irish individuals (see their map above), but it’s not clear to me if those individuals were from the lolipop study or the colaus one.

the colaus study looked at caucasians living in lausanne, switzerland, who were either swiss or from another european(?) country. both the subjects’ parents and grandparents had to have been born in whatever country they were described as coming from. the researchers tried to further narrow down their ethnicity during a clinical visit. i presume it was from this study that ralph and coop drew the rest of their samples, including the data from: germany, france, belgium, the netherlands, norway, and sweden — possibly england, too. it’s difficult to know because they don’t spell it all out specifically. these data could be skewed, too, for my purposes — for example, hypothetically speaking, due to the presence of a lot of non-french, but still european, individuals in the set of samples of france. again, difficult to know.

finally, here are the numbers of individuals from each country sampled by ralph and coop. some of them are kinda low — like n=2 for norway:

previously: ibd and historic mating patterns in europe and medieval germanic kindreds … and the ditmarsians

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the zadruga

at the beginning of the year, i wrote a post about mating patterns in eastern europe in which i mentioned the zadruga as being a general slavic family form. szopeno took exception to that — and he was right!

i’ve done some more reading about eastern european — in particular balkan — family types, and, as far as i can tell, the only consensus amongst historians and social scientists wrt the extreme extended family form known as the zadruga is that there is noooo consensus about the zadruga. it is (or was) a family form amongst southern slavs — i.e. not all slavs — but also amongst other balkan peoples like the vlachs as well. the zadruga apparently wasn’t found everywhere in the balkans or at all times — but here’s something interesting from Entangled Paths Toward Modernity: Contextualizing Socialism and Nationalism in the Balkans (2009) [pg. 149]:

“Zadruga is the popular term used to describe the complex (exteded and multiple) family. The term itself is quite recent, its institutionalized usage dating from the nineteenth century. There is a long-standing historiographical discussion on almost all aspects of the zadruga, its status, origins and function. For a long time a ‘nativist’ historical approach, cogently supported by ethnographic and folklore studies, treated the zadruga as a perennial phenomenon (dating from the Middle Ages) and pertaining specifically to Slavic and Balkan civilization. Most recent scholarship has heavily contested not only the ‘from time immemorial thesis,’ but also the ‘all Balkan’ and the ‘specifically Slavic’ thesis. Zadruga zones in the nineteenth-century Balkans were unevenly distributed, showing a concentration in the mountainous stockbreeding area between the valleys of the Sava and Morava, the northwestern part of the Balkan range, that is, the mountainous territories between Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and the Rhodope, the tribal regions of Montenegro and Northern Albania, while valley belts were present in the military frontier of Croatia, Slavonia and Vojvodina, some valley of Serbia, Western and Central Albania, Southern Macedonia and Southern Albania. The presence of the zadruga thus can be evidenced only for some Balkan territories, and not all exclusively Slavic (ex. Albania or Southern Hungary). In Bulgaria it was concentrated in the most western part of the country, it was almost completely absent from Romania and Greece.”

ah ha! so we’re back to (possibly/probably inbreeding) uplanders being clannish or tribalistic.

here’s an extended excerpt from Household and Family in the Balkans: Two Decades of Historical Family Research at University of Graz (2012) [pgs. 50-51 -- links inserted by me]:

“Both the Balkan joint family [i.e. the zadruga] and the patrilineage emerged first as results of pastoral economies and the patriarchal influence of Illyrian cultural legacy. (In part, the comparable culture of the Central Balkans is an autonomous development.) After the Roman conquest of the Illyrian lands these features were preserved by Albanian and Vlach nomads. They were later joined by Slavic groups who followed them into the uplands. What we have here is a phenomenon within limits of an adaptive strategy based on both ecological factors and predatroy expansion.

“The idea of a relationship between pastoralism and the existence of both the joint family household and the patrilineage is not new. [no, it is not. - h.chick] Todorova describes the highest concentration of joint family households in Western Bulgaria in regions with a large area of meadows and a developed pastoral economy (Todorova 1990: 18-19). Earlier, Mosely stated that, in general, the joint family had shown a greater viability in the mountainous regions of the Balkans than in the plains (Mosely 1976a: 31). Filipovic notes, the ‘appearance and persistence of the zadruga as an institution originated in connection with livestock herding’ (Filipovic 1976: 273). While Mitterauer states that the distribution of the joint family households is basically confined to mountainous, remote regions where a money economy and forms of wage work played a lesser role, he also suggests that a pastoral economy might have promoted the emergence of complex family structures (Mitterauer 1980: 67-69).

“The Ottoman conquest of the Balkans from the 14th to the 16th centuries was generally accompanied by massive migrations of the Balkan people in a variety of directions. Reconstruction of the migration movements is difficult, but the main direction was from south to north following the pattern of conquest. Pastoralists or semi-pastoralists, recently settled, rediscovered their former survival strategies. The mountain regions became repopulated (Cvijic 1922: 127-181). Generally, the Ottoman administration did not absorb the mountain dwellers…”

so, no state to put a damper on violent behaviors.

“…and so they independently developed appropriate social structures and concomitant survival strategies based on the patrilineage and patriarchal joint family.

“The joint family, like the lineage of which it was a part, was never static but underwent fissioning following the dynamics of the life course and family cycles. The tribal lineages constructed of these joint families were reinforced by their focus on shared sentiment and ritual. Thus the Balkan joint family became the basic unit for patrilineal tribal lineages that developed from the 14th centrury onward….”

the opposite process, really, of what happened in medieval nw europe.

“…This system was flexible enough to adapt to the bilaterally based kindred of Vlachs and Sarakatsans. [remember that the pre-christian germans -- including the anglo-saxons -- reckoned their kinship bilaterally as well. -- h.chick] At the same time, this plasticity enabled the individual household to create cyclical alternations of nuclear and joint family households depending on fertility, fission and fusion (Halpern & Anderson 1970: 83-97). In this way these units also functioned for settled agriculturalists….”

this reminds me of the settled farmers of pakistan and afghanistan who adopted the arab mating pattern of father’s brother’s daughter (fbd) marriage — a practice which grew out of the arab (or levantine) pastoralist traditions, but which was exported — along with (i think) all the related tribalistic sentiments which (i also think) develop, in part, because of the inbreeding — by the arabs to south asia when they invaded the region. i’m also reminded of the upland “auvergnat pashtuns” of france.

“…What characterized patriarchal Balkan social structure, as the pioneering works of Cvijic illustrated, was the constant interrelationship between becoming settled farmers and/or pastoralists. Until the 19th century this was a reversible process. This ended with the spread of industrialization, urbanization, and the modern states. It is thus much more logical to assign the origin of the Balkan joint family to the goat- and sheep-keeping families of the mountains that to see it as a result of conditions in the plains. But the fact is that many joint families resided in the valleys and plains.

“How then did patriarchal joint family and patrilineage emerge in the plains? For centuries pastoral families of the mountainous regions migrated into the plains where they settled. In the generally chaotic situation caused by the Ottoman conquest not only did Slavic families flee to the mountains, but others, especially those of the Vlachs, left their mountainous homelands and settled in Ottoman-occupied territories. The valleys of Serbia, Bosnia, and, especially along the borders between the Ottoman and the Habsburg empires, were favoured sites.“

hmmmm. time to google for a good map….

previously: mating patterns in medieval eastern europe and balkan endogamy and more on albanians and the flatlanders vs. the mountain people

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good civicness vs. bad civicness

from Civic Engagement and Corruption in 20 European Democracies: Separating the Bright from the Dark Side? [pdf] i learn that there is GOOD (inclusive) civicness and there is BAD (exclusive) civicness [pg. 65]:

“The idea underlying the inclusive/exclusive networks distinction then is that groups focusing on individual-oriented goods such as personal materials, status or group identity goods are more likely to generate exclusiveness.”

the problem is that studies have shown that, while the inclusive networks are associated with lower corruption in any given society, “involvement with the latter [exclusive networks] actually shows the reverse tendency” [pg. 73].

oh dear.

inclusive civicness networks include: sport / outdoor hobby groups; cultural organizations; humanitarian organizations / charities; environmental groups; church / religious organizations; political parties; and science / education / youth groups.

exclusive civicness networks include: trade unions; business / professional / farmer organizations; consumer / auto groups; and social clubs / young / elderly / women.

i like to think of them as group-oriented vs. more personally-oriented groups (see what i mean?).

looking back on a previous post on civicness patterns around the world, we see that this does seem to fit:

- the anglo world, which is known for being not-sooo-corrupt, has relatively low participation rates in labor unions (10.1%) — exclusive civicness networks — compared to very high participation rates in inclusive civicness networks like humanitarian organizations/charities (19.8%) or sports groups (28.5%);

- meanwhile, eastern europe, which is known for being pretty-durned-corrupt, has relatively high participation rates in labor unions (5.1%) compared to low participation rates in humanitarian organizations/charities (2.7%) or sports groups (7.1%) (kinda);

- same holds true for india — relatively high participation rates in labor unions (15.7%) versus comparatively lower participation rates in humanitarian organizations/charities (10.8%) or sports groups (15.9%) — and also pretty corrupt.

and looking at civicness amongst the races in the u.s.:

- whites have a relatively low participation rates in labor unions (7%), with pretty high participation rates in humanitarian organizations/charities (16.5%) and sports groups (17.1%).

- both blacks and hispanics have relatively high participation rates in labor unions (10.3% and 8.6% respectively), with comparatively low participation rates in humanitarian organizations/charities (11.7% and 6.8%) and sports groups (14.9% [kinda] and 8.6%).

this pattern is definitely something i’ll be keeping a look out for in future posts on civicness!

see also: “Applying the concepts of bonding and bridging social capital to empirical research” by sonja zmerli, 2003, european political science 2(3).

previously: civic societies and civic societies ii

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balkan endogamy

nick says: “The Balkans had the 7th cousin law, that forbid them to marry anyone closer than the 7th cousin.”

i did a little googling on that and found what i think will probably prove to be a general pattern for balkan populations: a ban on marrying in the patriline, but marrying on the mother’s side is ok and even preferred. so the seventh-cousin law that nick is referring to relates only to paternal cousins.

this is just a preliminary look at the mating patterns in the balkans, btw. i need to do a lot more research on this.

anyway, this pattern of avoiding marriage in the patrline but preferring marriage to maternal relatives seems to hold for bosnian muslims, albanians, and macedonian slavs.

regarding the macedonian slavs: “The genealogical reckoning is primarily agnatic [i.e. through the male line - h. chick]. Kinship terminology distinguishes father’s brother (stric) from the mother’s brother (ujak), as well as using a special word to indicate sister’s or daughter’s husband (zet) and a woman married to a set of brothers (jetrva). On the agnatic side, marriage is forbidden up to the ninth generation, while the matrilineal first cousins could be regarded as possible mates if it was not for the canonical prohibition.“

that’s the christian church’s ban on cousin marriage. but otherwise, marriage to matrilineal relatives is ok — and macedonian slavs would’ve approved of matrilineal first cousin marriage if it wasn’t for their church.

regarding the bosnian muslims, bringa reports (pg. 146) that “there is a preference for marrying agnatic affines.” agnatic refers to the paternal line — so your father and your paternal grandfather and all your paternal aunts and uncles, etc. affines are in-laws. so there is a preference amongst bosnian muslims to marry their in-laws connected to the father’s side of the family.

the most obvious members of that group would simply be one’s maternal relatives, i.e. your father’s in-laws (see?). but agnatic affines could also include, for instance, your paternal uncle’s wife’s relatives.

i know — it all gets kinda complicated. the important thing, though, is it’s all a sort of endogamous mating.

finally, the albanians. i’m going to reproduce a long-ish passage from State Collapse and Reconstruction in the Periphery: Political Economy, Ethnicity and Development in Yugoslavia, Serbia and Kosovo. just skip it if you’re bored already, but it talks about the clannishness or tribalness (the author’s words, not mine!) of the albanians and how their mating patterns have, at least traditionally, been endogamous, including marriage to maternal relatives (this is not strange, btw, since marriage to maternal relatives seems generally to be the most popular form of close family marriage around the world) [pgs. 64-67]:

“A brief description of Albanian society is required here. Albanians are divided into two language or dialect groups, the Gheg and the Tosk, with the Tosk dominating in southern Albania and the Gheg in northern Albania and the highlands (the division is roughly at the Shkumbi river). The Albanians in Kosovo, Macedonia and Serbia are Ghegs (with some exceptions in southern Macedonia). Traditional structures, tribal or clan-based, as well as village community-based forms of social organisation remained important among the Albanian population in Kosovo throughout the Yugoslav period. There are notable elements of continuity in traditional loyalty structure and customary law (including the practice of blood feud). The terms ‘tribe’ and ‘clan’ are contested, but we may instead use the Albanian terms. The Albanian term ‘fis’ refers to a large groups which claim descent from one common male ancestor. Each fis is divided into sub-branches. Marriage within the same fis (based on the male line) is considered incestuous even if the ‘actual’ relationship is, say, nine or ten generations back (which does not apply on the maternal side).[12] In Kosovo there are about thirteen fises. A smaller group which traditionally has existed within the fis is a brotherhood or ‘vellazeri’, which is similar to the Balkan form of extended family, the ‘Zadruga’, but differs from it, for example, in that there was not a common budget. A ‘mehala’ is another term for a subgroup consisting of a number of closely related houses. A house, or a ‘shpi’ could itself consist of an extended family — something still existing in Kosovo although they have declined considerably during the Yugoslav period…. It should be noted that within the same fis some members can be Muslim and other Catholic. Among the Albanians there are Catholics, Muslims and Orthodox. The Orthodox prevail in south Albania (among the Tosk), whereas Kosovo is predominantly Muslim….

“The traditional Albanian village consisted of the (often fortified) houses (kulle) of the extended families, but had no public spaces. There were no cafes or inns, or public buildings of any kind. All matters relating to society, or social life, were discussed inside the family houses, and the house was thereby of particular importance in Albanian cultural life…. In contrast to the pattern in northwestern Europe, for example, there were no intermediary associations or public spheres between the individual, or family, and the state and hence nothing resembling what has been called ‘civil society’ in the usage of eighteenth- or nineteenth-century thinkers. Indeed there was neither the social structure nor social infrastructure or type of economy for such an analytical term as ‘civil society’ to be applied; social life was shaped by the extended family (with its house), the clan and the village, and there was no social organisation beyond the extended family apart from the clan. All legal matters were strictly regulated in customary law and applied by the clans, or mediated in meetings by the elders (kuvend)….

“The Albanians … had no aspirations to an Albanian state before the twentieth century, but were quite content with remaining inside the Ottoman state. Although there may have been a growing Albanian identity, beyond the fis, especially in the nineteenth century, there was not really any expression of Albanian nationalism. Several factors made expressions of nationhood unlikely. There were disputes between clans, and the Albanians did not share a single religion, but were divided between Islam, Orthodox Christianity and Catholicism. The lifestyles of, for example, the Tosk in the south or in the coastal trading ports and the Gheg of the highlands were quite different.

“[12] As noted by Edith Durham, the Catholic Church prohibited marriage to the sixth degree, but on the maternal side much closer relatives might enter marriage. See Durham (1909: 22); The practice of prohibiting marriage within the fis remains today.”

previously: mating patterns in medieval eastern europe and invention of the modern world

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civicness in poland – redux

in two posts last year (here and here) i looked at the uncivicness of eastern europeans, civicness being determined by looking at data from the world values survey regarding membership in volunteer organizations. in those posts, i looked specifically at active members — people who are not just card-carrying members but who actually regularly participate in voluntary activities.

then i revisted this topic last week for poland and germany showing that there appears to be less civicness in poland than in germany and that civicness decreases as you move from west to east across germany to poland. (i’m planning to look at more countries in europe to see if there are any broader geographic patterns to civicness on that continent, so stay tuned!)

szopeno referred me to a very interesting research article — Civil Society Weakness in Post Communist Europe: A Preliminary Assessment [pdf] — in which the argument is made that some of the post-communist european countries are more civic than others. in other words, a population having experienced living under a totalitarian, stalinist regime is not the only explanation for subsequent uncivic behavior. the authors point out, for instance, that former soviet central asian countries are, for the most part, much less civic than anything you find in eastern europe. needless to say, they didn’t consider that central asian societies are generally first-cousin marrying, tribally-based populations whereas the majority of eastern europeans are not either of those, but that’s a discussion for a later date.

the interesting thing i came across in the article was a reference to the CBOS — Centrum Badania Opinii Społecznej or the Center for Public Opinion Research. the good folks at the centrum do lots of surveys of people in poland — some published in english. here’s one in polish that caught my eye: AKTYWNOŚĆ POLAKÓW W ORGANIZACJACH OBYWATELSKICH W LATACH 1998–2010 [pdf] — ACTIVITY OF THE POLES IN CIVIL ORGANIZATIONS IN 1998-2010. (^_^)

by using the data in table 1 on page 3 — and via the magic that is google translate — i’ve been able to compare this polish survey of volunteerism with the world values survey. i thought it would be a good way to check to see if the world values survey is right at all.

the world values survey i looked at in the previous post was conducted in 2005, so i compared it to the 2006 polish study (it was either that or 2004). both surveys looked at active members. i tried to match the categories as best i could, but there weren’t always perfect matches. here’s what i came up with in my comparison:

- WVS = 2005
* Polish survey = 2006

- Environmental organization = 1.6%
* Organizations for environmental protection = 1.8%

- Political party = 1.10%
* Parties or political associations = 0.7%

- Labor unions = 4.4%
* Trade unions = 3.9%

- Sports or recreation = 4.2%
* Organizations (associations, clubs and associations) sports = 3.5%

- Professional organization = 2.6%
* Associations and professional associations = 0.5%

- Church or religious organization = 12.9%
* Organizations, religious movements, church, parish communities = 3.4%

- Charity, humanitarian organization = 3.1%
* 5.6%
* Charities working for children in need = 3.5%
* Charitable organizations that work for people in need – old, poor, homeless, sick, disabled, victims of natural disasters, victims of wars, etc. = 2.1%

- Art, music, educational = 4.6%
* 7.6%
* Organizations for educational, such as committee parent, parent council, a foundation school, college, Social Educational Society, etc. = 4.8%
* Organizations, artistic associations, such as choir, orchestra, band dance, theater = 1.6%
* Scientific societies = 1.2%

- Other = 3.3%
* 24.7%
* Volunteer Fire Department, Mountain Volunteer Ambulance Jackets, etc. = 3.4%
* Associations, gardeners, farmers, fishermen, hunters = 2.5%
* Youth organizations such as scouts, youth clubs, Student unions and associations = 2.3%
* Organizations pensioners, senior citizens clubs = 1.8%
* Society for animal lovers, animal care = 1.6%
* Organizations supporting health care facilities = 1.5%
* Self-help organizations such as associations of persons with disabilities, single fathers, alcoholics, people with unemployed = 1.3%
* Local and district, residential areas, such as council people, House committees = 1.2%
* Veterans organizations, veterans, war victims = 1.2%
* Labour governments (councils) = 1.1%
* Committees are seeking a settlement of the case (eg parking lot), a group protest = 1.0%
* Local governments = 0.9%
* Organizations, tourism associations = 0.9%
* Other organizations, associations, movements, clubs or foundations = 0.9%
* Women’s organizations such as the wheel of the Rural = 0.8%
* Association of enthusiasts of the city, region, such as dealing with historic preservation, development of regional culture = 0.8%
* Associations, clubs, collectors, collectors, hobbyists = 0.7%
* Society for friendship with other countries, nations = 0.6%
* Provincial and district governments = 0.2%

the majority of the results of the comparable categories in the world value survey and the polish survey are within three percentage points of each other. that’s very close. one is quite off — interestingly, church/religious organizations — with a difference of 9.5%.

and then there is the “other” category.

there were lots of types of organizations that were asked about on the polish survey that weren’t touched upon at all on the world values survey, and i can imagine that many people just didn’t think to mention them as “other” when they were taking the world values survey. so, in the polish survey, there is an additional 21.4% of “yes” responses than on the world values survey.

that sounds like a lot — and it IS a lot — and it certainly raises poland quite a bit above the average scores from the arab world. however, poland still scores really low compared to anglo countries, for instance great britain.

if we add together all the percentages of the “yes” responses for poland from the world values survey, we get 37.8%. adding together all the percentages of “yes” responses for poland from the polish suvey, we get an improved 51.7%. but, if we add together all the percentages of “yes” responses for great britain from the world values survey, we get a whopping 143.5%. the two countries are just not in the same league.

so, i think that even if the world values surveys underestimate the true civic participation rates for some or all of the countries involved, they still offer a pretty accurate picture of how civic different populations are relatively speaking.

don’t get the wrong idea, though. lower civicness doesn’t necessarily mean that a population is overall less caring or less kind or less helpful. it’s just that, i think, their energies are directed differently. in the arab world, for instance, i’m sure that individuals are helping out and working with others plenty — it’s just that they help out and work with family members more so than strangers. and the latter is (mostly) what civic organizations are all about.

previously: civic societies and civic societies ii and “civicness” in germany and poland

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traditional family systems in medieval russia

ihtg asks: I did not know there was a disappearance and then reemergence of the extended family in medieval Russia. Why did that happen?”

good question! i dunno. (^_^)

szopeno suggested: “maybe they [the zadrugas or extended families] are not reflection of distant past, but rather a common reaction to reappearing problem (external dangers, scarcity of resrouces etc).

that makes a lot of sense to me. perhaps family types — nuclear or extended — are just populations’ responses to their environmental/economic conditions. if there are plenty of resources — plenty of land for all — perhaps families can be small ’cause everyone can spread out. but if population density is high and there’s a shortage of resources/land, perhaps families band together. certainly cousin marriage generally seems to be a way of keeping wealth or resources (land, goats, whatever) in the family, so maybe keeping the extended family physically together is another sort of response to difficult-ish circumstances. keep the labor force together along with the wealth. and keep everyone nearby the family’s resources so that they can benefit from them, provided there’s enough to go around.

i’m going to hypothesize right now, though, that it’s probably easier for families in inbred populations to clump together than in outbred populations — or it would come more naturally to them anyhow.

ihtg was responding to this quote from that racey book, Sex and Society in the World of the Orthodox Slavs, 900-1700 [pg. 138]:

“Changes in Russian versions of canon law on incest coincided with changes in family structure. The proto-Slavic zadruga fell into disuse as a residential system in twelfth-to-fifteenth century Russia, although landholding continued to be communal. There the residential household usually consisted of a nuclear family, occasionally joined by an elderly parent or a young bride.”

twelfth-to-fifteenth century “russia” seems to cover (if i’ve got it right) the latter part of the kievan rus’ principalities [882–13th century], the first part of the muscovy days [1283–1547] and all of the novgorod republic [1136–1478] (and other polities?).

note that although nuclear families seem to have been living on their own in russia during these centuries, “landholding continued to be communal.” (this sounds rather like the medieval men of kent.)

anyway. about the kievan rus’, we’ve got janet martin in Medieval Russia: 980-1584 telling us [pg. 65]:

“The vast majority of the Kievan Rus’ population, who both materially supported the Riurikid princes and depended upon them, were peasant farmers (smerdy). Despite variations derived from tribal background, geographic location, and other factors, the peasants of Kievan Rus’ shared many characteristics and were regarded as a single undifferentiated social stratum. Among the free members of society, peasant men and women had the lowest social status.

“Peasants lived in their own huts with their nuclear families, and farmed their own plots of land using their own tools and livestock. Their households were grouped into rural villages and organized into communes (vervi or miry), which had their roots in the tribal and clannic ties among the population. By the Kievan era, however, the communes had a territorial identity as much as a clannic one. Members of each commune shared common pasture lands, meadows and forests, and fishing and hunting rights. They also, importantly, shared responsibilities for tax payment and other legal obligations.”

so these kievan rus’ communes were clan or tribal based. nuclear families may have been living in their own, independent houses, but extended family bonds were clearly still there.

in Lord and Peasant in Russia: From the Ninth to the Nineteenth Century, jerome blum suggests [chapters two and three] that the change over from slash-and-burn farming techniques — which required a lot of labor — to a two- or three-field agricultural system resulted in the breakdown of extended families in medieval russia. maybe. both he and martin also talk about the kievan rus’ opening up new areas of forest for settlement, so maybe that right there offered an outlet for the apparently expanding population. maybe you didn’t have to stay at home with mom and pop and everyone else anymore if you went off and moved to some unsettled area of the dnieper valley. i dunno.

in Peasant Farming in Muscovy, robert smith (no, not THAT one) talks about that population expanding out into new territories as well, so again maybe that’s the key to the nuclear families in russia during these centuries. maybe. smith also claims that, at least in the 1400s, there is no evidence for extended family living arrangements [pgs. 80-83].

i don’t know anything about the family types in the novgorod republic (yet!), so i’ll have to leave it there for now.
_____

todd categorized the russian family type as an exogamous, patriarchal community family. he was talking about the 1500s-1800s. dunno if he had that right or not, but it certainly seems as though for the four hundred preceding that period, russians were not living in extended family groups — at least not in the same household. it’s likely they lived in the same neighborhood — hamlet, village, commune — though since land was still held communally in the clan-based communes.

previously: medieval russian mating patterns and mating patterns in medieval eastern europe

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