thank you, war nerd!

here’s the war nerd on syria:

“War Nerd: Our Ringers vs. Your Ringers”

“When you look at this war strictly as a military struggle, you notice something weird: over two years of fighting, the lines are almost totally static….

“If you look at a map of sectarian demographics in Syria, and superimpose it on a map showing areas of Assad control and rebel-held regions, you’ll see that the two maps are almost identical. And the front lines haven’t changed much since the Sunni grabbed control of their neighborhoods two years ago…. The lines held by the Sunni, Shi’ia and Kurds barely move.

“And by the way, I’m going to talk about Sunni, Alawite, Shi’ia, and Kurds, because that’s what matters in Syria. This is a sectarian war, and pretending it isn’t is just pious nonsense. As long as you keep in mind that in the Levant, ‘sect’ means an ethnic group as much as a religion. And if that seems weird, try thinking of a classic Levantine sectarian outpost you may have heard of, the one called ‘Israel.’ Are Israeli Jews a religion or an ethnic group, a people? Both, more or less — a very sloppy, leaky Venn diagram. Religion works as an ethnic marker for most groups in the Levant, not just the Israelis. And the fact that there are always outliers, people too noble or crazy or sophisticated to be defined by their sect, doesn’t change the fact that for most people, the sect is what defines you.

“Once you see how deeply this sectarian identity works, you can start to understand why this war is so static. In urban sectarian warfare, most fights are about the neighborhood, keeping the neighborhood in your sect’s hands, away from the heretics two streets over. You grow up fighting the kids from over there, first with words, then with rocks, then with whatever firearms you can borrow from your cousins. For Anglos, the paradigm for this kind of war is Belfast and Derry. The war there started with neighborhood defenders in places like the Short Strand trying to hold their little block of row houses against the other sect.

“Americans have a hard time imagining how tiny this kind of war can be. In this country you can drive for 14 hours and pull over to the same intersection, with exactly the same McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Denny’s, Day’s Inn, Starbucks, Super 8 and Motel 6. The accents’d be the same, the burgers’d be the same, the price of gas’d might change by a penny or two.

“In a place like Aleppo (or Belfast), every street takes a side….

“This encourages people to ‘think local.’ Which means they’re very good when they fight to hold their neighborhoods, but useless in big offensives. Even raw irregulars can do very well fighting on their own turf. But they’re useless when you try to get them to organize into an offensive army. Why risk the neighborhood’s crop of young men on somebody else’s neighborhood? Not only could you lose half your cousins, but while you and the cuzzies are out there grandstanding, somebody could be invading your neighborhood. You just don’t leave your neighborhood unmanned in a sectarian war, ever. Not if you have living female relatives. In ugly wars like this, you’re not afraid of what the enemy will do to you but to your kin — the really sick people are encouraged to get creative in horrible ways; merely murdering your neighbor gets old fast.

“So most of the locals in this war only want to hold their block of houses, basically as far as kin and sectarian ties hold. Ask them to form up and move out for bigger operations, and they’ll fade away. Lots of promises — and then the quiet skedaddle….“

great stuff! read the whole thing here.

previously: syria and syrian tribes and more on syrian marriage and family types and clans in the news: aleppo and clans in the news: syria

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who wants sharia?

pew has just released the results of their latest survey of muslims around the world (in 39 different countries).

here’s a map showing the percentage of muslims in each country that would like sharia to be the law of their land (click on map for LARGER image – should take you to the pew site):

the iraqs, afghanis, and pakistanis all seem pretty eager for sharia — they’re all in the 75-100% range. the moroccans, too. and the palestinian territories.

this is a large report from pew, so have a look at the whole thing yourself.

here’s something else that i found particularly interesting:

of the countries that think that honor killing is more justified when women commit an offense than when men do — russia, albania, azerbaijan, bangladesh, pakistan, jordan, iraq, egypt, lebanon, tunisia, and the palestinian territories — a majority of them (7 out of 11) have a preference for father’s brother’s daughter’s (fbd) marriage — pakistan, jordan, iraq, egypt, lebanon, tunisia, and the palestinian territories.

i don’t know what, if any, form of cousin marriage is preferred in azerbaijan or bangladesh. paternal cousin marriage, which would include fbd marriage, is avoided in places like chechnya and (at least among some peoples in) dagestan (russia in this survey?) and albania. the difference in the responses in albania was not very great (+1 point), but the difference in russia(?) was statistically significant at +7 points. it’s difficult to know who these “russian” muslims are (maybe the info is in an appendix somewhere — i’ll have to look), so i don’t know if they’re the chechens and/or some dagestanis and/or some other group(s) — and, so, i don’t know what their mating patterns are.

i’m surprised that afghanistan breaks even. i would’ve predicted that they would be like the other fbd marriage groups.

it’s interesting that some of the central asian “stans” — kyrgyzstan and uzbekistan — swing in the opposite direction. a greater number of people feel that honor killings are more justified against men who break the rules than women. i don’t know much of anything about these populations, but i did read a bit just the other day, and it seems that they have a preference for maternal cousin marriage. (note that i don’t have a good idea what the rates might be.)

previously: inclusive inclusive fitness

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recognizing your un-kin

if you want to be un-altruistic toward some un-kin of yours, it might be useful if you could spot who they are.

here’s some neat research [pdf] suggesting that perhaps we can do just that (further research is required, of course). this is one of those manipulated photographs studies — you know — where they take photos and alter them to look more or less like the subjects. note that the study was done on w.e.i.r.d. students — and way more females (n=112) than males (n=32):

“Kin recognition: evidence that humans can perceive both positive and negative relatedness” (2012)

“… The evolution of spite would have been greatly facilitated by the ability to recognize negative relatives (West & Gardner, 2010). The current study is the first to find such an ability among humans, one of only a handful of species (Keller & Ross, 1998; Giron & Strand, 2004) for which there is evidence of negative relatedness recognition, by introducing a novel cue to negative relatedness (negative self-resemblance). Specifically, we found opposing effects of positive and negative self-resemblance – cues to positive and negative relatedness, respectively – on trusting and attractiveness attributions, as predicted. This result provides a foothold for the possibility of the evolution of spiteful behaviour among humans. Future research should examine this possibility.

“Although the effects of positive and negative self resemblance in our study were generally small, our study was an experimental one. Thus, we controlled the strength of the manipulation. It was our intention to make the stimuli subtle, to ensure that the participants would not discover the nature of the manipulation. A subtle manipulation, however, will tend to lead to subtle effects. What we hoped to show was not that the positive and negative self-resemblance manipulations had large effects on preferences or behaviour in the context of a laboratory experiment, but that they had predictable effects at all, especially as these effects speak to theory (Prentice & Miller, 1992).

“Relative to matched participants, focal participants generally had positive preferences for their own positive self-resembling faces but negative preferences for their own negative self-resembling faces across contexts….“

here’s the relevant graphic:

“Spite is hypothesized to evolve under relatively restrictive conditions (West & Gardner, 2010), and so it is expected to be rare. However, two conditions may, together, favour its evolution: (1) ‘viscous’ breeding systems and (2) the ability to recognize negative relatives. Population viscosity can make competition increasingly local among individuals (Taylor, 1992a,b), and local competition encourages the evolution of spite (Gardner & West, 2004). Furthermore, individuals immigrating into a viscous population may be strongly negatively related to members of the indigenous population, because immigrants are highly unlikely to bear the same (relevant) alleles as indigenous individuals (Krupp et al., 2011).”

for “viscous breeding systems” i think we can safely insert “inbreeding” or “cousin marriage” or “consanguineous matings.” they are all certainly viscous.

“Negative relatedness recognition can improve the targeting of a spiteful action to increase indirect fitness benefits (by delivering harm specifically to negative relatives whilst sparing positive ones), and our results provide evidence that humans have the mechanisms in place to do precisely this. Moreover, countless animal species use phenotype matching to determine relatedness, and other kin recognition systems exist that might also be employed to discriminate against negative relatives (reviewed in Krupp et al., 2011). Further discoveries that organisms have the capacity to recognize negative relatives will lay a foundation for the study of spiteful behaviour, arguably the last great unexplored problem of social evolution….”
_____

what i’d like to see is some research done on actual inbred populations. maybe a comparison between a non-inbreeding population and an inbreeding one to see if either of the two groups is better at spotting their kin or un-kin.

for that matter, i wonder if kin in inbred populations actually look more like one another than kin in outbred populations (and, therefore, look more unlike non-kin). you would think they ought to since they share more of the same genes with one another. you’d think that’d affect appearance, too. remember the ghoul brothers from syria (click on picture for LARGER view)?:

redzengenoist said about them: “It really is striking how much they look like one another. Far more than I would expect the average family group to have similar appearance…. I’m thinking of selection for markedness of ingroup-ness. I can’t help but wonder if having a distinct ‘look’ helps to facilitate the evolutionary advantages of inbreeding….”

i noted: “and, like the big families i’ve known (from my slightly inbred area of the world), some of them look more like each other than they do to the others. the two (chubby guys, roundish faces) on the right and the guy all the way on the left look similar — those three look like mom? or dad? and the other five look more like each other — like the other parent (whichever one).”

maybe it’s easier to spot kin and non-kin in a “viscous” population. the more viscous the better, perhaps.

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those clannish chechens

*update below*

of course the chechens are clannish. the entire caucasus region is clannish (via ed west)! via a tweet from mark weiner (links added by me):

“Russia: War Destroyed Chechnya’s Clan Structure (Part 1)”

“Moscow, 4 January 2002 (RFE/RL) — The Chechens of Russia’s North Caucasus region are a tight-knit society based on extended families, or clans, guided by a council of elders. These clans, which traditionally lived together in a single village, are called ‘taips.’ During Stalin’s infamous deportation of Chechens to Central Asia — and even now, as war and social unrest have forced thousands of Chechens to leave their home villages and scatter throughout the republic or abandon the region altogether — the links remain strong between members of a single taip.

“There are more than 150 taips in Chechnya, each with its own traditions and council of elders….

“Traditionally, taip members can recall the name of their original ancestor from whom the clan originates. They can also recite the names and details about the lives and deaths — often on the battlefield — of at least seven generations of male ancestors.

“Ian Chesnov is an anthropology professor at Russia’s State Humanitarian University in Moscow. He spent several years in Chechnya studying cultural traits. Chesnov says that according to Caucasus tradition, a member of a taip is never abandoned in time of trouble. To the contrary, a taip acts as a kind of family network that makes sure all members have the support they need….

“The taip forms the core of Chechen society — and, many Chechens believe, predetermines the characteristics and personalities of its members. The perceived link between clan and character type is so strong that taips are considered a key aspect of the region’s political life as well….

“Chechnya’s taips fall into nine distinct ‘tukums,’ or tribes. Legend holds that all Chechens descend from an original family of nine brothers, a belief represented by the Chechen symbol, which depicts a wolf encircled by nine stars. Batuev describes the tukums’ function:

“‘The taips are organized in nine tukums. A tukum is a political-military union meant to function in cases of [outside] threats or aggression. [The tukums] used to unify all the [Chechen] nation and the taips.’”

“A tukum has no leader and is composed of a loose group of clans who share a common ancestry….“
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so, do the chechens inbreed/mate closely? according to the working theory around here, they ought to if they’re clannish (and they are). we should also be able to guess that the chechens have a history of inbreeding/close mating since they live in the mountains, and mountainous populations seem to have a tendency to inbreed (see also here) — like the auvergnats, for example.

from Mission in Chechnya (2002) [pg. 80] regarding some rules of the teips:

“4. Absolute marriage prohibition between members of one clan. This was the oldest rule. What caused such a prohibition? If those who are going to marry are in the same clan, they will not have numerous and healthy descendants — this is confirmed by the elders whose observation and life experience testified how negative the influence of close marriage was upon the descendants. The others assured them that the violation of exogamy would bring dangerous illness to those who were going to marry. Marriage prohibition inside a clan is not the consequence of a legislative act. Still, up to now the Chechens try to stick to this principle. Some clans taht took the way of exogamy violation (e.g. tsada khroevstsi) were shunned by the other clans. Why? Because a female relative of the father’s line is considered a sister of any member of the given clan. A blood relationship links with the Chechen people are so strong that they go through seven or eight generations. ‘Close’ or even ‘concerned’ relatives in the father’s line were not given the right either for marriage or for blood feud among themselves. Close relatives of the mother’s line, however, had the right for marriage and blood feud. It should be mentioned that the marriage inside the mother’s line for the first, second and the third generations was not recommended.“

and from The Chechens: A Handbook (2005) [pg. 91]:

“Exogamy and endogamy

“To ensure the good health of their offspring, a prerequisite in the harsh mountainous environment, the Chechens tabooed not only close-relative marriage on both sides, but also interdicted association with any blood relative, which included all members of a clan. This meant that a man was constrained to seek his marriage partner from outside the clan, but from within the tribe: *taips* were strictly exogamous, whereas *tukhums* were endogamous entities. These traditional values are still adhered to even among city dwellers. Sources are not unanimous as to the prescribed degree of consanguineous removedness between potential marriage partners. It could be that there is no uniform rule espoused by all *tukhums*. However, at least three generations is the span of disconnectedness commonly agreed upon. Some *taips* of ‘foreign’ origin do not proscribe close kin marriages, this custom hinting at non-Caucasian or Daghestani origin.”

and from Ethnography and Folklore of the Georgia-Chechnya Border: Images, Customs, Myths & Folk Tales of the Peripheries (2008) [pg. 240]:

“Marriages within it are forbidden. The Kists and Ingush maintain this tradition strictly, though in Chechnya this tradition has changed under the influence of Islam. Previously, marriage to one’s third cousin was forbidden; now it is welcomed.“

some mixed messages there, but the gist of it i think is:

- no marriage within the patrlineal clan — the teip
- you should, however, marry within the bigger tribe — the tukkhum
- you can marry maternal relatives, but probably not closer than third cousins — this cousin marriage ban is probably a holdover from when the chechens were christian [pg. 256]. in fact, third cousin marriages might even be preferred (this reminds me of the greeks).

all of this sounds almost exactly like the marriage systems amongst some of the populations in the balkans, especially amongst the albanians — i.e. avoiding paternal cousin marriage but allowing maternal (distant) cousin marriage. a bit of exogamy, but also a bit of endogamy.

size also matters. the smaller your population size, the smaller the gene pool is going to be and, so, the closer the mating ultimately — which is what matters here (i think).

there are 1,206,551 chechens in chechnya as of 2010 — let’s call it 1.2M. there are somewhere between 130 and 300 teips (patrlineal clans) in chechnya — let’s call it 215 (that’s right in the middle). that gives us ca. 5,580 individuals per teip.

there are nine tukkhums (the larger tribes) in chechnya. if we assume that there is the same number of teips in each tukkhum (which might not be the case), then that’s ca. 23-24 teips per tukkhum. 5,580 x 24 = 133,920 individuals in a tukkhum. how many of reproductive age (i never know this)? one quarter? one third? if it’s one quarter, you wind up with ca. 16,700 women you are allowed to marry if you’re a chechen guy. compare that to the millions you could marry in the u.s. — if you’re american.

so chechens are close breeders. they’re a small population that marries within an even smaller tribe and may even prefer maternal third cousin marriage.

it’s no wonder, then, that they still engage in blood feuds (just like the albanians). you’d half expect them to build tower houses for protection during clan disputes like the albanians or the maniots.

oh, wait.
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see also: Inside the deadly Russian region the Tsnarnaev family used to call home @foreign policy and Chechen asabiya and the Borat Brothers from steve sailer. *update* - and see also One Blessing Of Outbreeding from roissy.

previously: where do clans come from? and balkan endogamy and more on albanians

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arab thoroughbreds

greg cochran says (or writes, i guess — unless he talks to his computer monitor like some of us people do…):

“If a new environment favored lower (or higher) aggressiveness in males, a Y-chromosome that induced lower (or higher) aggressiveness would take off. And since different Y chromosomes do indeed affect the level of aggressiveness in mice [which I just found out], possibly by affecting testosterone production – this mechanism is plausible….

“Fortunately for all concerned, the selective value of aggressiveness, etc. has been the same for all human populations forever and ever, before and after the development of agriculture. Otherwise you might see weirdly rapid expansions of particular Y-chromosome haplogroups – common, yet only a few thousand years old.”

i nominate as one such example of this selection that never happened the “YCAII=22-22 and DYS388≥15″ cluster of haplogroup J-M267 which, depending on who you read, may or may not be related to the arabs’ expansion out of their peninsula in historic times. whatever the full story, haplogroup J-M267 certainly looks arab-expansiony:

hage and marck have shown how mating patterns can affect the distribution of sex chromosome haplogroups (mmmm-hmmm!). the prevalence of father’s brother’s daughter’s (fbd) marriage amongst the arabs could certainly have had an effect on the successful distribution of the J-M267 haplogroup, especially the YCAII-whatchamacallit cluster mentioned above if it was really connected to the arab expansion.

remember that fbd marriage concentrates y-chromosome types into these patrilineages, so fathers, sons, grandfathers, paternal uncles, paternal nephews, paternal male cousins, etc., all share the same y-chromosome (barring variations due to mutations, of course):

of particular interest is how men (“C” in diagram above) ensure that their male grandchildren by their daughters (“E” in diagram above) also have their y-chromosome, ’cause they marry their daughters off to their paternal nephews (i talked about that here). this doesn’t happen in most marriage systems. so, really, ALL the males in (ideal) arab, fbd patrilineages share the same y-chromosome.

this is one way that inbreeding could serve to accelerate the acquisition of “genes for altruism” in a population. if, say, those genes were aggression genes on the y-chromosome — genes that led to altruistic behaviors in the sense that the individuals having them were more likely to “kill thy unrelated neighbor” and make life better for themselves and their own — then inbreeding, especially father’s brother’s daughter’s marriage, could help those genes pile up more quickly.

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inbreeding and outbreeding

i keep saying that i’ll define more clearly what i mean by “inbreeding” and “outbreeding,” but i never do. finally! — here i am, and i’m gonna do it! (^_^)

from the oxford dictionary of biology:

- inbreeding: “Mating between closely related individuals, the extreme condition being self-fertilization, which occurs in many plants and some primitive animals.” (see also wikipedia.)

- outbreeding: “Mating between unrelated or distantly related individuals of a species.”

great. but what’s “closely related” or “unrelated” or “distantly related”? self-fertilization doesn’t really apply to humans (at least not very often — i hope), so where to draw the line between “closely related” and “distantly related”?

i’m primarily interested in the evolution of altruism and other “innate social aptitudes” in man [pdf] — and here’s where inclusive fitness comes into the picture, btw — and the role that inbreeding and outbreeding might play in all that.

inbreeding in and of itself does not change the frequencies of genes in a population — it just moves them around, concentrating them in certain lineages. however, wade and breden showed in some mathematical wizardry modelling that, under certain circumstances, long-term, sustained inbreeding can, in fact, lead to increased frequencies of “genes for altruism” in a population.

wade and breden looked at four inbreeding scenarios: 1) self-fertilization (doesn’t happen in humans); 2) if the mating individuals shared half (50%) their genomes in common (like parent-offspring matings or sibling matings); 3) if the mating individuals shared 20% of their genes in common (this is somewhere in between first cousins and double-first cousins or uncle-niece/aunt-nephew); and 4) if the mating individuals shared no genes in common (not the typical pattern in human matings). most human populations do not practice parent-offspring/sibling matings — in fact, it’s usually avoided and considered by most as really icky. but quite a lot of peoples regularly marry first cousins, and some (in the arab world/middle east) even often marry double-first cousins — nor is the world short on uncle-niece pairings (southern india, for example — or hasidic jews).

wade and breden found that, under certain circumstances, long-term, sustained matings between individuals that share 20% of their genomes in common can lead in an increase in altruism genes in that population. first cousin marriage, probably the most common form of inbreeding in humans, is a little short of what wade and breden looked at, but it’s not terribly far away either (12.5% relatedness vs. 20% relatedness). you would think that the slope of the line for inbreeding at 12.5% relatedness would fall somewhere in between that for 0% and 20% (solid black line) on wade and breden’s lower graph here:

in clinical genetics, most researchers look at degrees of inbreeding that are between second cousins or closer, commonly referred to in the literature as consanguineous marriages. since i get a lot of my data on inbreeding from such studies, it’s kinda handy for me to define inbreeding as anything between second cousins or closer, but in reconsidering wade and breden’s results, i’m thinking that maybe i should only concentrate on first cousins or closer. for now i think i’ll stick to second cousins or closer, but i reserve the right to change my mind (it is a woman’s prerogative, isn’t it? still?).

so, on this blog:

- inbreeding = in a population, a general pattern of regular and sustained mating between individuals who are related to one another as second cousins or closer.

- outbreeding = in a population, a general pattern of regular and sustained mating in which individuals avoid second cousins or closer.

notice the “regular and sustained” bit. that’s important. we’re not talking here about occasional marriages between cousins. it has to be a regular practice in a society. i’m not sure what the frequency of the inbreeding needs to be. it will vary according to population size, of course — the smaller the population, the more closely related everyone’s going to be anyway (e.g. the yanomamo). in a larger population? — dunno. definitely when 50% of marriages are consanguineous over the long-term i think the frequencies of “genes for altruism” are going to increase pretty rapidly (i’ll come back to what sorts of altruism in another post). 30%? probably. 3%? not really.

outbreeding, too, needs to be “regular and sustained” to have any effect, i.e. to have a population slide back down wade and breden’s slope in reverse. one generation of outbreeding probably won’t have much of an effect, i think. evolution (natural selection) does take some time, after all. also, if one inbreeding group interbreeds with another inbreeding group, that’s NOT outbreeding according to my definiton. technically it is in biological circles, but if we’re talking about two populations that have been inbreeding for a long time and, therefore, have acquired a lot of genes for my “familial altruism,” then all they’re doing by interbreeding is swapping familial altruism genes. for example, if you’re the early medieval irish and are clannish because you’ve been inbreeding for who-knows-how-long, the “outbreeding” that you do with the vikings when they show up (probably) doesn’t count wrt altruism, because they’re a long-term inbreeding group, too.

to have any effect on the frequency of certain “genes for altruism,” outbreeding — like inbreeding — needs, i think, to be regular and sustained over the long-term, as it was with europeans (mostly northwest europeans) since the early medieval period (see also mating patterns in europe series in left-hand column below ↓ for more details) and, perhaps, some other groups like the semai in malaysia.

previously: inbreeding and the evolution of altruistic behavior

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early medieval bavarians and feuds & honor killings

below are a few quotes from Unjust Seizure: Conflict, Interest, and Authority in an Early Medieval Society regarding some historic evidence for blood feuds and honor killings in early medieval bavaria, the historic evidence being in the form of ecclesiastical charters (recording property donations to the church) and tales from a saint’s life. the time period is the mid-700s.

first of all, the “bavarians” of the day were a mix of peoples — mostly germanics (including alamanni, lombards, thuringians, and goths) but also some romans (or romanized locals) and slavs. the local rulers were a bunch of franks (iow, also germanics) who had taken over the place on behalf of the merovingians (no, not this guy — these guys) — and introduced the manor system (uh oh!).

the conversion of the natives of bavaria (i.e. not their frankish rulers) to christianity was completed by st. boniface (boo!) sometime in the early 700s, so these people probably had had no barriers to marrying their cousins right up until the time period under discussion below (unless some of the local romans/romanized locals had been christians?). the agilolfings, too — the frankish rulers of bavaria — probably hadn’t been christians for much longer either, most of the franks converting in the 500-600s. so the population of bavaria in the 700s was probably not very outbred at that point (these things take time).

however, the church already had its cousin marriage bans in place by this time, so there probably would’ve been pressure from the priests and bishops and monks in the 700s to stop any close matings that were going on. there is some documentary evidence that shows that marriages in the 700s on ecclesiastical manors in bavaria occurred between such manors [pgs. 217-48], so that might suggest that the church at this time was, indeed, discouraging close marriages. i couldn’t find an online copy of the lex baiuvariorum (in english), which was written in the mid-700s, so i don’t know if there were any secular laws against cousin marriage in bavaria at this time.

the interesting points in the following are that: 1) feuds between clans, and even between branches of clans, were happening in eighth century bavaria just like you might’ve found in scotland in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (thanks, mel!) or in parts of the philippines … like … just the other day — iow, early medieval bavarians were clannish peoples; and 2) family honor was extremely important to the point where honor killings happened just like — or almost like — in the arab world/middle east today.

ok. here are those excerpts [pgs. 30-39 - links added by me]:

“To begin with, we have the charters from the cathedral church at Freising. Five of the approximately one hundred twenty Freising charters surviving from this period [pre-carolingian] mention conflict…. The five Freising records tell a variety of stories. Nevertheless, they have one important feature in common: all mention conflicts tangentially, that is, as incidents that did not involve the church directly but rather prompted someone to make or confirm a property gift to the church….

“Instead of showing the church as a party to conflict, the Freising charters from this period reveal members of landholding kindreds in conflict with one another. Some of this conflict was violent. We learn of it because two men who were attacked and seriously wounded, as well as a third man whose son was killed, gave property to the church to benefit their souls and to support members of their families. The charters recording these gifts do not say what the violence was all about. The stories they tell, however, suggest that the attacks resulted from feuds between kindreds, and possibly even within an extended kin group. This impression is strengthened by Bishop Arbeo of Freising’s ‘Life of Saint Emmeram’. Arbeo’s biography of Regensburg’s patron saint is built around a story of outraged honor and violent revenge. The story indicates that Bavarian aristocrats in this period regarded violence as a legitimate response to insult or injury….

“The conflicts appear in the charters because the parties ended them by giving the disputed property to the church or by rearranging or restating disputed property rights that involved the church….

“Violence

“At the beginning of the Freising charter collection, between his table of contents and his prologue, the priest Cozroh place a copy of a charter that he titled in red ink, ‘The Gift of Haholt and His Son Arn’. The charter was produced at the monastery of Saint Zeno at Isen, some thirty-two kilometers southeast of Freising, on May 25, 758. It most likely earned its prominent position in the collection, and certainly the attention of modern scholars, because it records among other things the dedication of Arn, the future archbishop of Salzburg and confidant of Charlemagne, to an ecclesiastical career.

“This record tells of a property gift that Arn’s father, Haholt, made to the cathedral church at Freising. At some time in the past, we read, an unnamed person attacked Haholt and seriously wounded him, to the point that he feared for his life. On what he thought was his deathbed, Haholt gathered his relatives together and asked them how best to provide for his soul and for his son’s future. Haholt’s kinsmen advised him to summon Bishop Joseph of Freising. The bishop hurried to Haholt’s bedside. On Joseph’s advice, Haholt ordered a church built on property he owned near Isen, which the bishop consecrated. Then, with the consent and participation of his wife, son, and relatives, Haholt gave the church and the property to Freising. He did so under the condition that his son Arn have the use of the property, that is, hold it from Freising as a benefice, for the rest of his life. After a space of time, however, Haholt recovered from his wound. In gratitude for God’s mercy and for their souls’ salvation, Haholt and his wife personally confirmed the gift. In addition, they formally devoted Arn to a clerical life at the Freising cathedral church.

“This record tells us that an unknown person attacked Haholt. The attack, however, is not the charter’s main concern, and we learn nothing about Haholt’s assailant or the reason for his assault. We learn only that the attack prompted Haholt and his wife to give property to Freising for the benefit of their souls and to support their son in his new career.

“We can nevertheless hazard a guess about why Haholt was wounded. Two other charters suggest that he was involved in a feud. In the year 763, a kindred headed by a man named Reginperht and his brother Irminfrid turned a church they had built at Scharnitz, in modern-day Tyrol, into a monastery. Members of the kindred endowed the new foundation with generous gifts of property. One man, named Cros, had a special reason for his gift. ‘Compelled by the admonition of God and struck down by Count Keparoh with an incurable wound,’ Cros gave all his property to the monastery and entered it himself as a monk.

“Here, as in the Haholt charter, an act of violence prompted its victim to make a property gift. This time we have a name for the attacker: Count Keparoh. The name Keparoh also appears in another charter, this time on the receiving end of a violent attack. In this record, from the year 774, a man named Onulf makes the statement that his favorite son, Keparoh, had been insidiously murdered. Onulf responded to his son’s death by giving the property his own father had left him, as well as that left his wife by her father, Keparoh, to the Freising cathedral church. The property was to support his wife and surviving son for their lifetimes.

“Onulf’s gift charter and the Scharnitz foundation charter together provide evidence for a feud stretching over generations. In 763, Count Keparoh struck down Cros. Eleven years later, in 774, a Keparoh fell victim to an assault. This younger Keparoh had a grandfather who was also named Keparoh. It is entirely possible that the person who attacked the younger Keparoh was a partisan of Cros and that the younger Keparoh’s grandfather was related to the count who attacked Cros or was even the count himself. In each case, the attacks prompted property gifts to a kindred monastery or to the cathedral church at Freising.

“It turns out that Cros and the Kepharohs were most likely related to each other.“

so this feud lasting for generations was likely a feud between sub-clans.

“To give a brief example of what the evidence behind such a statement looks like: Cros was the kinsman of the principal Scharnitz founders Reginperht and his brother Irminfrid. Reginperht and Irminfrid had another brother named David, who witnessed the foundation at Scharnitz. David also appears with Irminfrid making another property gift sometime between 758 and 763. In this latter gift, the name Keparoh stands third among the witnesses, immediately following David and Irminfrid. Given his prominent position on the witness list, it is extremely likely that this Keparoh was related to David and Irminfrid and therefore also to Reginperht and Cros. Keparoh’s apparent kindred relationship to the Scharnitz founders, therefore, suggests that the feud was a violent conflict within an extended kin group.

“The Cros-Keparoh feud helps explain the Haholt charter. Since the Cros and Keparoh stories are very similar to Haholt’s, it makes sense to conclude that Haholt too was wounded in the course of a dispute with another aristocrat. Seens as a group, then, the three charters indicate that Bavarian landowners processed disputes at least in part through violent feud. They do not, however, give any details about the feuds or the disputes that prompted them. To add depth to our picture of feud in Agilolfing Bavaria, we must briefly leave the charters and turn to the life of a saint.

“As noted previously, we have at our disposal two saints’ lives written by Bishop Arbeo of Freising, who succeeded Bishop Joseph in 764. One of them, the ‘Life of Saint Emmeram’, has violent conflict as its centerpiece. Arbeo wrote his biography of Emmeram, the patron saint of the cathedral church and monastery at Regensburg, sometime around the year 772. He evidently had little direct information about Emmeram to go on; he paints his subject for the most part in broad strokes that rely heavily on older hagiographic models. According to Arbeo, Emmeram was a wealthy Gallo-Frankish nobleman who was born in the Aquitanian city of Poitiers sometime in the seventh century. By virtue of his sanctity and his generosity to rich and poor alike, he quickly rose to become bishop of that city….

“After missionizing in Bavaria for three years, Emmeram asked permission to go on a pilgrimage to Rome. Before he could leave, however, Ota, daughter of Duke Theodo, enters the story. Driven by lust and the urging of the devil, Ota had allowed herself to be seduced by the son of one of the duke’s judges. When the young woman could no longer hide the resulting pregnancy, the despairing couple threw themselves at Bishop Emmeram’s feet, admitted their sin, and implored him for aid. Moved by pity, the bishop ordered the pair to do penance for the salvation of their souls. He also instructed them under oath of secrecy to place the fault publicly for Ota’s pregnancy on him so that they might more easily escape earthly death. The bishop took the blame because he knew that when the sin became known, ‘he would certainly be unable to obtain forgiveness for the pair from the girl’s father.’ Emmeram then set out for Rome in the company of a group of clerics….

“Meanwhile, Duke Theodo had discovered his daughter’s condition. Enraged, he would have drawn his sword to kill the baby in the womb had not his men restrained him. No such restraint hindered Ota’s brother Lantperht from avenging his sister’s dishonor. Filled with wild fury, he assembled his own following and set off after Emmeram’s party. On reaching Helfendorf, Lantperht had the bishop brought before him and showered him with angry accusations. The bishop calmly denied the charge of seduction and asked that he, along with whatever companion Lantperht might choose, be allowed to proceed to Rome to seek a judgment from the pope according to church law. Lantperht refused; instead, he had the bishop stripped and tied to a ladder. Lantperht’s men then began to cut off Emmeram’s extremities and limbs piece by piece while the bishop praised God and prayed for their salvation. They finished by ripping off Emmeram’s genitals and tearing out his tongue; leaving the mutilated torso to die, Lantperht and his men departed….”

here’s emmeram having a foot, and who knows what else, chopped off:

“As suggested before, Arbeo had to construct a martyrdom story that made sense to his audience out of bits and pieces of tradition, topoi, the cultural language of his society, and his own imagination. He responded by translating the Christ story into one of martyrdom by the ethic of feud. Lantperht viewed the bishop’s alleged seduction of his sister as an assault on his family’s honor. He responded with an act of revenge that he and at least a majority of his followers clearly perceived as justified: he exploded with rage, assembled a war band, and hunted down his sister’s ravisher. Lantperht then had the bishop mutilated and tortured to death. The grisly process ended with a symbolic gesture directly related to the alleged crime, namely, Emmeram’s castration.

“This narrative suggests what may have lain in the silences left by the Freising feud charters: an insult, rage, and a violent, symbolic response….“

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faheem younus and cousin marriage

*two updates – see below*

dr. faheem younus said he thinks we ought to have a conversation about the bans on cousin marriage in various states in the u.s. he also said he’s looking for a “data driven case to justify a BAN on cousin marriages.”

i’m beginning to wonder if he really means either of those things.

here’s our (short) conversation that we had about the topic on twitter (all of the links i included in these tweets can be found in the previous post):

still waiting for a reply….
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update 02/02: i wanted to double-check that figure i gave for 70% cousin marriages in pakistanis in the u.k. just to make sure i remembered right (i have been known to remember incorrectly before! (~_^) ).

the correct figure is (very close to what i recalled): 67% for pakistanis in bradford [page 10 - opens pdf]. that includes first cousins, first cousins-once-removed, and second cousins.

there’s another figure of 46.9% for pakistanis in birmingham, but that’s just first cousins. the figure would likely be quite a bit higher if first cousins-once-removed and second cousins were included.

no mention of double-first-cousin unions. there’s probably some of them, too.
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another update 02/02: i checked the following article (the one about bradford) — The frequency of consanguineous marriage among British Pakistani [pdf] — to see if there was anything about double-first-cousin marriages. there were none, but there had been some in the grandparent’s generation [pgs. 187-89] — 100 women were randomnly sampled:

“Fifty five of the women interviewed were married to first cousins. All four possible types of cousin marriage occurred, with the frequencies given in table 3 [mostly fzd (20) and then fbd (17) - h.chick]. No double first cousin marriages were reported in this generation. Nine women were married to first cousins once removed, three to second cousins, and three to more distant relatives (one first cousin twice removed, on second cousin once removed, one third cousin). Thirteen were married with the ‘Biraderi’, a term describing the wider family group. Some of these husbands would be distant relatives, some relatives only by marriage, and some simply originating from the same locality and social group. Only 17 women definitely had completely unrelated husbands….

“In this group of [the respondent's] grandparents there was a maximum of 33 first cousin marriages, with more marriages (24) among the Biraderi and more (30) to unrelated partners. [there were also 5 double-first-cousin marriages in that generation per table 2. - h.chick]…

“Table 4 shows that the pattern of inbreeding in the population is not uniform: unrelated couples are more likely to have unrelated parents, while married couples of first cousins more often have closely related parents.

“The frequency of consanguineous marriage is thought to be falling in most populations as a result of social change and increased mobility…. By contrast, among British Pakistanis the coefficient of inbreeding seems to have increased in a single generaion, from about 0.024 to 0.0375, a figure approaching the highest reported for human populations.“

previously: so … why ban cousin marriages?

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