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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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).
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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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medieval germanic kindreds … and the ditmarsians

i’m going to figure out the english(/dutch) if it’s the last thing i do…. (~_^)

it’s been asked a few times around here: was there something special about the pre-christian germanics? something special that perhaps made them more open to the roman catholic church’s/kings’ & princes’ demands to outbreed (i.e. quit marrying their cousins — and there is plenty of evidence to suggest that they were marrying their cousins before the arrival of christianity — see here and here and here)?

one possible thing i have come across (and there could of course be others) is that kinship was reckoned bilaterally in pre-christian germanic populations — in other words, down through both the father’s and mother’s side of the family. related to this (i think — ah! and wikipedia backs me up on this) is that the form that “clannishness” took in germanic society was that of kindreds rather than actual clans (like you found in places like scotland or even today in parts of the balkans). as we saw in this previous post, a kindred is a set of relatives based around a core individual — so your kindred might include your parents, your siblings and their kids, your uncles and aunts on both sides and their kids (i.e. your cousins), your second cousins, all of your cousins’ kids, and so on (however far out your particular society happens to reckon kindreds). this is different from a clan which is based upon a specific ancestor in the past. a clan can continue to live on when any individual member dies, while a kindred is more ephemeral — when an individual dies, his kindred sorta … dissipates. as we’ve seen, anglo-saxon society was based around kindreds; so, too, were all of the germanic groups in pre-christian (and post-christian for differing lengths of time as we’ll see below) europe. these kindreds were called sippe.

now, i have been searching and searching … and searching! (even in german) … for more info on germanic kindreds. all i ever find are general statements by historians that the medieval germanic groups were based upon the sippe/kindred, blah, blah, blah, but no specifics on when or how this changed — germanic populations are not centered around the sippe today — or if there were any differences between the different germanic groups when it came to kindreds. pretty much of all the historians i have read generally refer back to just a handful of sources which usually include lorraine lancaster’s work on anglo-saxon kinship from 1958 (which i covered in these two posts here and here) and dame bertha phillpotts’ work on kindreds and clans which was published in 1913. in 2010, cambridge university press republished phillpotts’ classic, Kindred and Clan in the Middle Ages and After: A Study in the Sociology of the Teutonic Races, so — taken along with the fact that this is one of the sources everyone refers back to — i’m going to assume that phillpotts is the definitive work on germanic kindreds (unless someone out there can direct me to another source!).

so, i’ve been reading phillpotts.

dame phillpotts looked at the laws and wills and literature from seven medieval germanic societies — iceland, norway, sweden, denmark, north germany & holland, belgium & northern france, and england — to find out what role the kindreds played in these societies (especially wrt wergild payments/feuds) and when the kindreds faded out. i’ll probably talk about the former in some later post(s), but let’s see now what she had to say about the latter: what was the timing of when the importance of kindreds disappeared in each of these populations [pgs. 245-46]?:

“In Denmark, signs of the partial survival of the kindred are not wanting even at the dawn of the 17th century, in spite of the hostility of powerful kings (from 1200 onwards), and of the Protestant Church. In Schleswig the old customs defy legislation levelled at them by king, duke or *Landtag* for another century still. In Holstein, though it is probably that the participation of the kindreds in wergild disappeared sooner than in Schleswig, they yet left their mark on other institutions, and certain of their functions continue to be exercised until near the end of the 18th, and indeed even into the 19th century. This is especially, but not solely, true of Ditmarschen, within whose territory alone we find the fixed agnatic kindred which can be loosely termed clan. In Friesland the kindreds survive throughout the 15th century. In Hadeln and Bremen, and in the neighbourhood of Hamburg, they seem to have held out against adverse legislation until about the same date.

“In the more northerly parts of Central Germany we find occasional traces of their existence throughout the earlier Middle Ages. In southern Teutonic lands the last trace of a real solidarity so far discovered dates from the 13th century. In Holland and Belgium the kindreds remain active throughout the 15th century, and indeed into the 16th, and hardly less long in Picardy. In Neustria, too, there are traces of organized feuds and treaties between kindreds until far into the 14th century, and so also in Champagne. Normandy, on the other hand, yields no evidence. In England the activity of the kindreds seems reduced to a minimum already in the 7th and 8th centuries, when we first catch a glimpse of Anglo-Saxon institutions…. In Iceland we have seen good reason to believe that the solidarity of the kindred was a thing of the past by the time the emigrants landed on the shores of the new country. In Norway we have caught a glimpse of a gradual disintegration of the kindred, beginning perhaps as early as the 9th, and consummated by the end of the 13th century. In Sweden, on the other hand, everything points to the survival of kinship-solidarity throughout the 14th century [footnote: except in Gotland], and possibly for very much longer.”

i’ve mapped phillpotts’ outline indicating which century saw the end of kindreds in any given area. the purple square in northern germany is dithmarschen, which looks to be the medieval epicenter of the germanic kindred — it’s the place where, according to phillpotts, the kindred was the strongest — was really a patrilineal clan, in fact (kinda like in scotland — click on map for LARGER version):

phillpotts’ theory for why the kindred was so weak so early on in england, and not really present at all in iceland or normandy, was that this was due to the fact that these populations had migrated by sea to new lands. this could make sense. in migrating by sea in the early medieval period, you might not load up scores of boats and move with all of your extended kindred. you might just load up a couple of boats with you and your immediate family and maybe your brother and his immediate family. then, when you arrive in your new world, you don’t have a very extended kindred, so the kindred is not very important in your society (england, iceland, normandy).
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so what about those ditmarsians, eh? they’re kinda cool! they are right around the corner from the frisians who were also pretty clan-like, especially with lots of feuding. what they had in common, of course, was that the two groups resided in marshy areas which could not be manorialized (er, well, there was no point to manorialize those regions since you couldn’t really conduct agriculture there — not with medieval technology anyway). about the ditmarsians [pgs. 199-200]:

“The marshes of Friesland (in the Netherlands), as well as the northeastern corner of Germany and southern Denmark, formed another region of peasant liberty against seigneurial power. As already noted, in 1240 Bartholomaeus Anglicus remarked on the exceptional freedom of the inhabitants of Frisia, who appeared to live without lords. Just east of Frisia and slightly north along the North Sea coast, at Stedingen, peasants revolted against the archibishop of Bremen and the count of Oldenburg beginning in 1200. They refused to pay oppressive dues (tributa) and, according to the ‘Rasted Chronicle,’ sought to defend their ‘liberty’ against all claims of lordship. They were eventually subjugated but only with great difficulty. It required the proclamation of a crusade against these ‘heretics’ by Gregory IX to bring an end to their decades of successful resistance. The Stedingen peasants were decisively defeated at the Battle of Altenesch in 1234.

“Among the indirect beneficiaries of this war was a federation of independent peasant communities in another small marshy territory, Dithmarschen in Holstein. Lying slightly north of Stedingen, Dithmarschen was protected by the Danes against the ambitions of the counts of Holstein and others who had expanded in the wake of the Wendish Crusade of 1147. The Dithmarschen peasants abandoned the alliance with the Danes and so profited from the military setback suffered by Denmark’s King Waldemar in 1227 at the hands of the city of Lubeck, the counts of Holstein and Schwerin, and the archbishop of Bremen. Their autonomy under the lordship of the archbishop of Bremen was acknowledged in the aftermath of the Danish War. Dithmarschen supported the crusade against the Stedinger and found its nominal subordination to the archbisops convenient during the thirteenth century. The power of family clans grew at the expense of the lesser nobility, and the Dithmarschen peasants formed capable military forces that could defeat mounted knights on the swampy terrain of their homeland.

“The extended families of Dithmarschen established a confederation that would be defended against the claims of the counts of Schleswig and Holstein beginning in the early fourteenth century and the kings of Denmark in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. In 1559 the Danes at last successfully invaded Dithmarschen, defeating the peasants and massacring the inhabitants of the capital, Meldorp, whereupon Dithmarschen was annexed to Denmark.

“Dithmarschen was, therefore, a free peasant community from the late thirteenth century until 1559, aware of itself as an anomaly and with a strong political cohesion born of military necessity. Dithmarschen litigated, signed treaties, and concluded agreements with Denmark, Holstein, and other neighboring powers. It also successfully defended itself in battle.”

three cheers for the ditmarsians! (^_^)
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so it seems as though the germanics had a comparatively “weak” kinship system before they ever encountered christianity. one historian, giorgio ausenda, has suggested that the pre-christian germanics practiced father’s brother’s daughter (fbd) marriage like the arabs today. i think this must be completely wrong. with fbd marriage you get strong, patrilineal (unilineal) clans/tribes, not kindreds based on bilateral descent. the germanics probably married maternal cousins of some sort, and maybe even relatively infrequently compared to a population like, say, the chinese. dunno. impossible to say at this point in time (who knows in the future, though … with thousands of samples of skeletal remains from the medieval and earlier periods in europe and elsewhere genetically analyzed for relatedness … an hbd chick can dream, can’t she?).

it may not have taken that much, then, either to persuade the germanics to adopt the cousin marriage bans and/or for the practice to really loosen the genetic ties in those societies. they might have been comparatively loose already. except in places like dithmarschen and that whole area of northern germany/southern denmark. what i, of course, want to know then is did those populations continue to marry cousins for longer than those where kindreds disappeared sooner? i shall endeavor to find out!

(p.s. – i totally have to get this book!)

previously: kinship in anglo-saxon society and kinship in anglo-saxon society ii

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but what about the english?

i said over here that the fact that the greeks are as corrupt and nepotistic as they are prolly has something to do with their endogamous mating practices — i.e. it seems that for quite some time, rural greeks have been marrying individuals locally — from their own villages, often preferentially their third-cousins.

now, i know what you’re gonna say: “but hbd chick — traditionally, MOST people everywhere prolly married people locally!”

eh — not really. not northwestern europeans — and especially not the english. first of all, north europeans quit marrying their cousins quite early on in the medieval period. and on top of that, because of the structure of feudal society (so this doesn’t apply to areas of europe that weren’t feudal), many north europeans didn’t stay down on the farm. instead, they went off and became servants elsewhere. and they often married other servants that they met … who were from elsewhere.

here from mitterauer’s “Why Europe?: The Medieval Origins of Its Special Path” on the situation in northern europe during the middle ages (when he says europe, he means northern europe, esp. the lands of the carolingian empire) [pgs. 93-95]:

“The loosening of lineage ties created some leeway for striking up new social relationships beyond the family circle. Ties to people other than one’s kin played an important part in European social history and made a major contribution to Europe’s social dynamics. The weakening of lineage ties also meant a diminution in the way kin and family related socially. We can characterize the two aspects of this process as a trend toward individualization and toward singularization.

“This trend had a particularly strong effect upon a certain phase of the life cycle: young adulthood. The European marriage pattern [i.e. late marriage a la the hajnal line] extended the phase of one’s youth for a relatively long time, if we view it from a cross-cultural perspective. The pattern itself was determined by looser lineage ties: marrying late could only exist where there was no pressure to continue the patriline. Many people left home when they were young, primarily to work as a servant in another household. That, too, presupposed a relaxing of lineage ties. Working as a life-cycle servant in one of the many paths possible — as a hand or a maid on a farm, as an apprentice or journeyman in a trade, as a nobleman’s page — seems to have been a defining experience for European youth. To work as a servant implied mobility, especially true in regional terms, but also in part in the sense of a change of social milieu. All this transformed the world young people lived in. Not only males were affected; girls too changed their surroundings by serving in another household. As a rule, the movement of servants from place to place wouldn’t end with a return to the parents’ home. The great mobility of young people — qualified by the institution of the life-cycle servant — was therefore an important precondition for European migration and colonization…. Finally, working as a servant implied a particularly radical form of separation from the home. The biological parents were often not the definitive socializing authority for the child from a very early age. The model of separating from one’s parents acquired more significance in the history of European youth for young people leaving their family home to become life-cycle servants; it also became a common goal, especially for young males. The extended young adult phase of life in the time covered by the European marriage pattern, along with the increase in extrafamilial contacts during this time, seem to have been preconditions for making this phase of life in Europe a crucial phase of individualization.

“The comparatively high age at marriage for men but mainly for women finds a counterpart in ways of looking for a spouse. There is little self-determination in this regard in cultures where marriage follows close upon sexual maturation. In Europe, the search for a spouse is a critical component of youth culture, which seems to be especially well developed there — probably because it is a characteristic of horizontal societies [i.e. as opposed to vertical societies where the lineage is important and maybe even, for example, ancestor worship occurs]. Although the choice of a marriage partner was surely substantially codetermined by family interests and concerns in older European societies, we must not overlook the fact that, given the relatively large age gap between generations, the bride’s or bridegroom’s parents would no longer be alive in a high percentage of marriages. In addition, being employed as a servant took many young people far away from home. We can generally assume that a particularly high degree of self-determination in choosing a partner was to be found in the lower levels of society, where the age at marriage was especially high. The principle of marriage by consent, endorsed by the Christian Church, enhanced the trend to increased self-determination that was linked to marriage later in life. The Western Church’s concept in the High Middle Ages of marriage as a sacrament was based on the view that each partner offers the sacrament to the other. The idea of consent is an essential, fundamental principle of the conjugal family, where the relationship between the couple is central, not ties of descent. What rested on the principle of consent — seen in the long term — was the ideal of marrying for love, but the obverse did as well: the particular vulnerability of a type of relationship based on personal inclination and the freedom to decide for onself.”

this is quite different from greece in the 1970s where marriages were still arranged!

meanwhile, in england specifically [from alan macfarlane]:

“There is little evidence that this central feature of Hajnal’s European marriage pattern [i.e. late marriage] was absent in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and some evidence that it was present. It is certainly the case that women did not marry in their early or mid-teens as in many tribal and peasant societies. Likewise, it is clear that from at least the fourteenth century there was a selective marriage pattern, with large numbers of women, particularly servants, never marrying. Nor is there any evidence of a dramatic shift in the rules, positive or negative, about whom one should or should not marry. No substantial evidence has yet been produced to show that there was ever a set of strong positive rules, based on kinship, as to whom one must or should marry. The negative rules were reduced at the Reformation, and have stayed unaltered since then except for the late nineteenth century allowing of marriage to deceased wife’s sister. The only strong rule throughout the period was that the young couple should be independent from both sets of parents after marriage, setting up a separate, neolocal, residence. This led to those simple, nuclear, househoulds which have been a feature of northwestern Europe and particularly England from at least the fifteenth century….

“Throughout the period, for the vast majority of the population (the top few hundred families are often an exception) marriage was ultimately a private contract between individuals. The parents had some say, but ultimately a marriage could occur without their consent or even knowledge. On the other hand, marriage could not occur without the consent of the partners. These were very old rules, from before 1300, and lasting through to the present. They emphasised that the central feature of marriage was the conjugal relationship, the depth of feeling and shared interests of the couple. Marriage was not a bridge artifically constructed as a form of alliance with another group, in which the partners and children became the planks upon which political relations were built. It was a partnership between two independent adults who formed a new and separate unit, cemented by friendship, sex and a carefully defined sharing of resouces.”

this is really, really different from the mating patterns in greece — and italy, too, for that matter. the greeks don’t marry too close — the orthodox church mostly bars them from marrying first- and second-cousins — but, at least up until very recently, they married primarily within their village, often preferentially third-cousins. marrying within the village is still endogamous marriage in greece since most people in rural greece didn’t move around a lot and, so, villages were (are) just really extended families. and in italy — southern italy, especially — there have been very high numbers of close marriages (first-cousin marriages) during the last couple of centuries.

in contrast to this, mating patterns in northern europe have been very exogamous for a loooooong time. no cousin-marriage since the early medieval period (at some points as far out as sixth cousins) AND now we see also since the medieval period — since before 1300 in england — large numbers of people not even marrying locally.

is it any wonder that northern europeans, in particular the english, are strongly individualistic and have wacko ideals like universalism and everyone is created equal? northern europeans have very weak genetic ties to their families compared to many other peoples in the world — we are in actuality individuals (from a genetic p.o.v.) more than other peoples — and it shows in our attitudes and social structures and norms.

edit: boilerplate and boilerplate 2.0

previously: more on inbreeding in germanic tribes and ελλάδα and il risorgimento and italian inbreeding? and “hard-won democracy”

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