random notes: 04/16/14

busy reading all about crime and punishment (i.e. the death penalty) in medieval england, so you don’t have to! (^_^) in the meantime, until i post about that, here are some random notes:

the law codes of ine king of wessex (688-726) are some of the earliest anglo-saxon law codes still surviving. they were issued ca. 694. ine took his christianity seriously and demanded that [pg. 27]:

“[A]ll children were to be baptised within 30 days of their birth, failing which their guardians had to pay a fine of 30 shillings. If a child died before baptism its guardian lost all he possessed….”

so there are some strong incentives for the populace to convert to christianity or remain christian once they’d done so.
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æthelstan, king of the anglo-saxons and then the first king of the north english (924-939), also passed a bunch of laws including [pg. 32]:

“[T]he first social legislation in England, providing for the relief of the poor. If a king’s reeve failed to provide, from the rents of the royal demesne, for the poor in the manner prescribed he had to find 30 shillings to be distributed among the poor under the bishop’s supervision.”

nice of him! (^_^)
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some examples of concerns about consanguinity issues in the late anglo-saxon period [pg. 226]:

“General concern about marriage and sexual relations within the kin is expressed throughout our period, for example, in the late ninth century in letters from Pope John VIII to Burgred, king of the Mercians, and to Æthelred, archbishop of Canterbury, and another from Fulk, archbishop of Reims, to King Alfred. In the 950s, according to the ‘Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’, ‘Archbishop Oda separated King Eadwig and Ælfgifu because they were too closely related’. They may have shared a great-great-grandfather, King Æthelwulf of Wessex….”

so there you go.
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and in anglo-norman england [pgs. 435-437]:

“As in the Anglo-Saxon period, a central issue was consanguinity. In the second half of the eleventh century and particularly under the influence of the reformer Peter Damian, the method of counting the prohibited degrees was established in its most extensive form. Instead of counting to see if there was a common ancestor within four generations, the counting was taken a further three generations back, to the seventh. This had the effect of extending the range of prohibited marriage partners to sixth cousins.[12] In England, the prohibition ‘to the seventh degree’ was decreed at ecclesiastical councils at London in 1074 x 1075, and at Westminster in 1102 and 1125: ‘between those related by blood or relatives by affinity [i.e. by marriage], up to the seventh generation, we prohibit marriages to be contracted. If indeed anyone shall have been thus joined together, let them be separated’. Reformers also emphasised other non-blood relationships, especially spiritual kinship. The potential for conflict with lay practice must have increased significantly, as it has been suggested that whilst the layity did not commonly contract marriages within four degrees, they did within five or six.[15]

“[12] It has been suggested that blood relationships alone might mean that the bride or groom had over 2,500 cousins of their own generation whom they were prohibited to marry; J.-L. Flandrin, Families in Former Times, trans. R. Southern (Cambridge, 1979), 24.

“[15] E.g. Green, Aristocracy, 348-9.”

2,500 cousins that you couldn’t marry. awkward that.
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interestingly (at least to me!), from late anglo-saxon england [pg. 242 – link added by me]:

“A further important tie was that of spiritual kinship, created particularly at baptism, but also at the catechumenate and confirmation. It seems that in England, unlike the Continent, there was only one sponsor, of the same sex as the person undergoing the ceremony. This is one reason for the relatively limited emphasis in England on the need for the group of godparents and their godchild to avoid sexual relations or marriage within the group.[114]

“[114] J.H. Lynch, Christianizing Kinship: Ritual Sponsorship in Anglo-Saxon England. 1998.”

huh! who knew?
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and, finally, just to remind everyone how barbaric the barbarians were [pg. 186]:

“The laws of Æthelstan mention drowning or throwing from a cliff for free women, stoning for male slaves, burning for female slaves:

“‘In the case of a male slave, sixty and twenty slaves shall go and stone him. And if any of them fails three times to hit him, he shall himself be scourged three times. When a slave guilty of theft has been put to death, each of those slaves shall give three pennies to his lord. In the case of a female slave who commits an act of theft anywhere except against her master or mistress, sixty and twenty female slaves shall go and bring three logs each and burn that one slave; and they shall pay as many pennies as males slaves would have to pay, or suffer scourging as has been stated above with references to male slaves.’

“However, the literary and archaeology evidence just cited suggests that hanging and beheading were the most common methods.”

=/

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thomas aquinas on too much outbreeding

in addition to being concerned about too much inbreeding and how that might hinder the building a christian society here on earth, thomas aquinas also worried about the effects of too much outbreeding.

from his Summa Theologica [pg. 2749]:

“The degrees within which consanguinity has been an impediment to marriage have varied according to various times…. [T]he Old Law permitted other degrees of consanguinity, in fact to a certain extent it commanded them, to wit that each man should take a wife from his kindred, in order to avoid confusion of inheritances: because at that time the Divine worship was handed down as the inheritance of the race. But afterwards more degrees were forbidden by the New Law which is the law of the spirit and of love, because the worship of God is no longer handed down and spread abroad by a carnal birth but by a spiritual grace: wherefore it was necessary that men should be yet more withdrawn from carnal things by devoting themselves to things spiritual, and that love should have a yet wider play. Hence in olden time marriage was forbidden even within the more remote degrees of consanguinity, in order that consanguinity and affinity might be the sources of a wider friendship; and this was reasonably extended to the seventh degree, both because beyond this it was difficult to have any recollection of the common stock, and because this was in keeping with the sevenfold grace of the Holy Ghost. Afterwards, however, towards these latter times the prohibition of the Church has been restricted to the fourth degree, because it became useless and dangerous to extend the prohibition to more remote degrees of consanguinity. Useless, because charity waxed cold in many hearts so that they had scarcely a greater bond of friendship with their more remote kindred than with strangers: and it was dangerous because through the prevalence of concupiscence and neglect men took no account of so numerous a kindred, and thus the prohibition of the more remote degrees became for many a snare leading to damnation.”

(^_^)

previously: st. augustine and st. thomas aquinas

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cousin marriage in 13th-15th century england

if anybody out there says to you – “but people everywhere in the past were always marrying their cousins!” – tell them i said no. no, no, no, emphatically no! (in a friendly, non-threatening tone, of course. (^_^) )

here, from sam worby’s Law and Kinship in Thirteenth-Century England [pgs. 92-103 – links added by me]:

“Canon law kinship rules can be seen in court records in three main ways: as a ground for ‘divorce’; a defence against an action to enforce a marriage, usually in litigation between parties; or as a matter of disciplinary action in an office case (where the canon law courts were exercising their quasi-criminal jurisdiction)….

“Overall, cases involving canon law kinship did not form a large part of the business of the canon law courts in England. In York [in yorkshire in the north of england], for example, marriage made up 38 per cent of the business of the court between 1301 and 1499. Most of this was instance cases rather than ‘criminal enforcement’. Most of the marriage actions were to enforce a putative marriage and only 14 per cent were actions to dissolve. Pre-contract was the most common ground for matrimonial litigation in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (overall 46 per cent of matrimonial cases), and denial was a common response. Other grounds used to defend against marriages were force and/or non age at 13 per cent, then consanguinity and affinity [i.e. relatedness to your in-laws] at 12 per cent (a total of 9 cases) in the fourteenth century. While kinship was not a large proportion of the business of these courts it did occur more frequently than grounds such as crime, impotence and vow (i.e. a vow to stay celibate). In the fifteenth century there were slightly fewer actions where the grounds of consanguinity and or affinity were raised than in the fourteenth.“

because the rates of consanguineous marriages declined? no idea.

“Overall kinship was raised in 16 out of 178 cases. In Ely [in cambridgeshire in east anglia], between 1374 and 1381, cases involving kinship were more common, perhaps because of the higher proportion of *ex officio* cases in the business of this court. Kinship was raised as a defence on ground for divorce proportionately more frequently (in 15 claims of incest). In Ely kinship was a more common defence than force and non age, but was still significantly less common overall than allegations of precontract. There is reason to believe that the Ely court was active in relation to kinship as the Ely office cases tended to be brought at the start or in the early public phase of a relationship. While neither set of figures show kinship to have been a major part of business, they both show that it was still a relatively usual part.”

was consanguineous marriage more frequent in ely which is in east anglia (where the puritans were from)? no idea. (also on ely.)

“The canon law on kinship was variously ignored, followed and manipulated (these being alternatives in different times and place, for both the courts and the people subject to them). Donahue has shown, for example, how one new judge of Canterbury diocesan court, Richard de Clyve, on visitation in 1292, fresh from the schools, began by prosecuting every case in relation to kinship, but faced some resistance as is shown variously by witnesses growing less certain and by a letter pleading mercy on behalf of a woman sentenced to whipping…”

sentenced to whipping for being in a consanguineous marriage?! talk about enforcement!

“…from a mutually acquainted royal clerk. He finished his circuit on a more flexible note and began to base his decisions on the degree of local scandal that the cases inspired. He also exhibited doubts about the application of the rules which held that affinity arose from mere sexual relationships. Thus the courts could take an accomodating attitude to the rules about kinship, and sometimes finesse (or ignore) stict application of the rules. Richard de Clyve’s experience also confirms that people were aware of the rules, made an effot to follow them (to a degree) and could be scandalised in certain circumstances by their breach. An example of such scandal is the deathbed warning of a father against his son’s marriage. Though the kinship was distant, in the fourth degree, the father allegedly said ‘they will never flourish or live together in good fortune because of the consanguinity between them’. There were also cases where people ‘hotly resisted’ marriages that were within the forbidden degrees: one woman even said she would prefer to die rather than marry her kinsman. Rhetoric or not, such a declaration in a court case would have been dramatic, and would not have been plausible were the rules not accepted….

“The evidence from York and Ely shows how far down the social scale obedience to the kinship rules of the canon law reached. Some of the cases were brought by or against relatively humble people but the ‘middling’ sort were not uncommon in these courts which suggests that some attempt was being made to apply the canon law kinship across the classes….

“There are also several cases that show people seeking dispensations, again suggesting that the system could operate effectively. In *Wistow c Cowper*, a York case of 1491, a papal dispensation (for spiritual affinity) overcame the attempted defence. However, in several cases a papal dispensation was held to be, or appeared to be, insufficient. In the remarkable *Hiliard c Hiliard*, a York case of 1370, the couple had been previously cited for a consanguineous relationship, but the sentence had been deferred to allow them to obtain a papal dispensation. A priest had attempted this and failed. He testified that in the papal court he was told ‘that he could not get such a dispensation for a hundred pounds’. Since the relationship was in the fourth degree of consanguinity this statement is unlikely to be true….

“Divorce cases on grounds of kinship were not the norm. Despite the occasional outlandish case, such as *Ask c Ask and Conyers* where a son alleged that his parents had divorced collusively on grounds of spiritual fraternity to deprive him of his interitance, the case evidence reveals a very different world from that where Maitland had proposed that almost any marriage could be dissolved on grounds of kinship. Clearly, consanguinity and affinity could be used or discovered to escape from marriages, but the records suggest that they were not often used to escape from current marriages; instead they were more common as a defence in marriage enforcement cases. In fact, the court records seem to show that the underlying system that was meant to prevent incestuous or harmful (i.e. non-dispensable) marriages operated with some level of success. It may be that a genuine sense that ‘incestuous’ marriages were wrong prevented kinship from being used as a casual route to escape marriage. There is evidence that shows that incestuous marriages were a matter of bad conscience. For example, both Donahue and Sheehan consider that John de Lile of Chatteris resisted cohabiting with his ‘wife’, Katherine, in the late 1370s, once affinity was discovered between them. Some effort was made to observe the rules: people would not have paid for a dispensation or for a priest to travel and gain a dispensation if there were no need and no social pressure to conform. It may also have been that kinship sufficient to dissolve or defend against a marriage was difficult to prove to a level that satisfied canon law rules of evidence. Whatever the reason for the comparatively small role of kinship in litigation, it seems clear that the canon law kinship system operated in practice and that some people obeyed it and were (publicly at least) scandalised when it was disobeyed….

“In a sample of sixty-two instance from York, Ely, Lincoln [in the east midlands], Wisbech [also in cambridgeshire, east anglia] and Canterbury [in kent in the southeast] that raised kinship in some manner, by far the

greater majority raised objections on grounds of affinity: thirty-three affinity and sixteen consanguinity (see table 1)…. The disparity is interesting, however, as it suggests that people were either more likely to obey the consanguinity rules than the affinity rules, or that people were more likely to falsely allege an affinial relationship. There is some evidence for the second suggestion arising from the number of cases (at least twenty-three) based on affinity through illicit intercourse, a less public relationship than a marriage or betrothal. Yet the pattern was sustained in office cases where it can be supposed that there were fewer opportunities for collusion (thirteen out of eighteen cases alleging affinity of any type). Therefore it is likely that a combination of both factors was at work. It is enough to not that consanguineous relationships seem to have been more scandalous than relationships with affines.“

it’s interesting that there were no cases related to consanguinity or “other incest” at all in fourteenth century canterbury which is all the way in the south of england in kent, just across the channel from northern france. kent had one of the earliest secular laws against cousin marriage in england that i have come across, the law of wihtred from the 690s, while at the same time it experienced a late adoption of manorialism, if at all (probably not so much in the east where the “men of kent” come from!). so, not the full package of outbreeding tricks for kent, but a very early start to cousin marriage bans.

previously: more on medieval england and france

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intelligence and corruption

staffan already posted about this in his terrific post on corruption a couple of months ago, but i thought i’d just reproduce niklas potrafke‘s chart of the correlation (-0.63) which he found between corruption and iq. taken from this paper [pdf – click on charts for LARGER views]:

clearly there’s a connection between intelligence and corruption — the less smart your population is, the more corrupt it will probably be (on average).

i think i see some sub-patterns, though. take a look at this:

– in my lowest iq range — ca. 75 and below — all the populations are very corrupt — the vast majority fall above 6 on the corruption scale. and they all cluster together — they’re all more-or-less equally corrupt, just some a bit more, some a bit less.

– in my middle iq range — ca. 75 to 95 (i probably could’ve set that at 90) — again the majority of populations are very corrupt, and again the majority fall above 6, but that majority is floating well above that regression line, and the corruption hot spot (where this group clumps together) really seems to be pretty much the same as the lower-iq populations, around 7 on the corruption scale. as a group, they haven’t really dropped down on the corruption scale.

– in my highest iq rage — ca. 95 and above — this is where the corruption range really fans out. we’ve got everything from what looks like below 1 on the corruption scale to an 8 (russia).

and the spread is nice and geographical — west to east/north to south: the anglos and the dutch (and are the scandinavians there? i can’t tell), my long-term outbreeders, are the least corrupt — then, working upwards on the chart (i.e. towards more corrupt) you’ve got the belgians and french and spanish — crossing the line into the more corrupt zone you start to have poland and hungary and the czech republic, places on the border of the hajnal line and the medieval outbreeding project — and then you get up to italy and the ukraine and russia.

east asia is, of course, interesting with singapore, hong kong, and japan being some of the least corrupt, and china being way up by corrupt italy. need to work on figuring out east asia one of these days! (~_^)

so, there’s definitely a connection between intelligence and corruption, but that’s not the whole story, otherwise china and russia and italy and korea wouldn’t be very corrupt at all. one thing that the chinese, russians, and italians have in common (don’t know much about the koreans) is a longer history of inbreeding as compared to the english and the dutch (see mating patterns series below ↓ in left-hand column). the awesome epigone did find a correlation (0.44) between consanguinity and corruption, but like i said then, i’m betting that the correlation would be stronger if we could calculate something like degree+length-of-time inbreeding.

see also: Corruption: The Exception or the Rule? @thosewhocansee.

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random notes: 02/14/13

cousin marriage rates for german jews living in the prussian province of hohenzollern between ca. 1875-1920 (117 marriages):

– first cousin marriages = 16.2% ± 3.4%
– consanguineous marriage up to and including second cousins = 19.6% ± 3.7%

source [pdf]. original source: Reutlinger, W. 1922. Über die Häufigkeit der Verwandtenehen bei den Juden in Hohenzollern, und über Untersuchungen bei Deszendenten aus jüdischen Verwandtenehen. Arch. Rassenb. 14: 301-305.

a little more on these rates from In Search of Jewish Community: Jewish Identities in Germany and Austria 1918-1933 [pgs. 234 and 241]:

“On the other hand, there is considerable evidence to back up the impression that village Jews were marrying cousins and other close relatives in increasingly large numbers.[44] …

“[44] In Hohenzollern, there was an 11 percent rate of marriage to relatives (5 percent to first cousins) among Jewish couples who died before 1922; of those still alive in 1922, the rate had increased to 22 percent (16 percent to first cousins. These rates were several times as high as the rates for Christian marriages. See Wilhelm Reutlinger, ‘Uber die Haufligkeit der Verwandtenehen bei Juden in Hohenzollern und uber Untersuchungen bei Deszendenten aus judischen Verwandtenehene,’ Archiv fur Rassen- un Gesellschaftsbiologie 14 (1922): 301-303, quoted by Marion Kaplan The Making of the Jewish Middle Class: Women, Family, and Identity in Imperial Germany (New York, 1991), p. 273 note 206. See also Cahnman, ‘Village and Small-Town Jews,’ pp. 122-23, for an impressionistic discussion of the same phenomenon.”

so, the rates of consanguineous marriages increased for jews in hohenzollern over the period from 1875-1920. that pretty much mirrors the general trend of increasing cousin marriage rates right across europe at the time, only the actual rates for the hohenzollern jews were much higher than for most europeans — well, at least most germans.

this 11% consanguineous rate (5% to first cousins) for jewish couples who died before 1922 is a lot higher than the only other definite rate i have for european jews which is from alsace-lorraine in 1872-76 (so i’m thinking these might be kinda contemporaneous rates) — and that rate was 2.3% (consanguineous marriages).

see also: jewish mating patterns in nineteenth century russia.
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a bizarre story on a case of cousin marriage and inbreeding depression from china that … well, i’ll just let you read it for yourselves. from A Family That Climbed Out of Inbreeding Depression [pg. 1064]:

“In 2008, a family was fortuitously found in Northeast China. Before the 1948 Revolution, this family was wealthy and owned vast amount of land. After nationalization, the family was given a tiny house with a small plot of land. Subsequently, during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), all landowning families in the country were severely prosecuted and socially ostracized. The social stigma on the members of former land owning families was so persuasive that any form of association with them was deemed as dangerous. At that time, there were two children of marriageable age. As their parents were unable to find unrelated mates from the society, they arranged an intra-family marriage between available first cousins. The union produced five offspring: three mentally retarded girls, one deaf-mute girl, and one mentally retarded boy who did not survive (Figure 1). The consanguineous (first cousin) parents supported their four disabled daughters throughout their childhood. By the time these daughters were of marriageable age, the Cultural Revolution in China was over and the social stigma of land-owning families was lifted. Thus, the consanguineous parents were able to arrange marriages of their four unfit daughters with four biologically unrelated men. The deaf and mute girl was married to a deaf and mute man from the same village. The three mentally retarded daughters were married to healthy men, of low socioeconomic status, and they resided in their husbands’ homes in the same village. The most severely retarded daughter was married to a poor man who came to their family looking for food; he was offered this daughter and accommodation within the family household. After marriages of their daughters, the consanguineous parents continued to support all four families, and each of the four daughters produced one healthy child (maximally allowed number of children in China at the time). The most severely retarded daughter accidentally lost one child at birth. Today, the consanguineous couple has four grandchildren who are attending regular school and are expected to marry to biologically unrelated mates….”

could the cultural revolution have encouraged cousin marriages during the time period in china? at least in some sectors? weird.
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weregilds. did you know that weregild payments were made directly from one clan/kindred member to his corresponding clan/kindred member in the other clan/kindred (whichever was the aggrieved clan)? i didn’t.

i always imagined that all the weregild payments were sorta pooled together and passed from one clan to the other, but no … the father in one clan paid directly the father in the other clan, the father’s brother in one clan paid directly the father’s brother in the other clan, and so on and so forth. at least that’s how it was done in iceland … at least according to phillpotts [pg. 13]:

“Each class pays to the corresponding class of the opposite side, thus the father, son and brother of the slayer pay to the corresponding kinsmen of the slain. It is to be observed that the slayer pays nothing, the assumption being that he was exiled and his goods forfeited.”

huh.
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i mentioned over here that edmund i (922–946) seems to have been one of the first anglo-saxon/english kings to have really tried to put an end to the traditional blood feuds in england (which were tied to the weregild payments — see above — if the weregild wasn’t paid when someone was slain, the aggrieved clan/kindred had the right to exact revenge on the slayer’s clan/kindred). re. one of his law codes (from phillpotts – pgs. 218-19):

“Eadmund’s secular laws mark a notable advance in one respect: private warfare between families, as a result of a slaying, is to be stamped out, and the slayer alone is to bear the feud, if feud there is to be.

“II. 1. ‘If henceforth anyone kills any man, let him himself bear the feud, unless with the help of friends he pays full wergild within 12 months, whatever the birth (of the slain man,’ i.e. however high the wergild be).

“It must be remembered that a slayer is not involved in a feud unless he cannot or will not pay wergild; and if he can pay wergild there is no feud. So here we must assume that the slayer has not been able to produce the sum out of his own pocket, and that his kinsmen have been unable or unwilling to help him. That even this secondary liability of the kinsmen is purely voluntary is seen from the next clause:

“1. ‘If the *mægð* [kindred/extended family] forsakes him, and will not pay for him, then I will, that all the *mægð* be without feud, save the actual delinquent, if they give him thereafter neither food nor protection.

“2. ‘If however thereafter any one of his kinsmen shelter him, then let him be liable to the king for all that he possesses, and bear the feud with the *mægð* (of the slain), for they (the kinsmen) had before forsaken the slayer.

“3. ‘If however one of the other *mægð* takes vengeance on any other man than the actual delinquent, let him be outlaw to the king and to all his (the king’s) friends, and lose all that he possesses.'”

so edmund is the earliest example i know of in england of the state trying to position itself in between all of the homicidal lunatics in order to put an end to the violence. he (or the crown, i suppose) would pay the weregild if a clan/kindred wouldn’t in order to stop a blood feud from erupting.

edmund didn’t live very long though — he died (heh) in a fight when he was just 26 — so i don’t know how well-enforced his edict ever was.

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italy – reversal of fortune?

who knows?

but italy could be another place to look for a possible rapid inbreeding drop-off/rapid iq increase connection (see yesterday’s post) just ’cause the consang data are available. and they did, indeed, have a pretty rapid decrease in cousin marriage rates — at least in northern italy — not so much in the south. (i can’t think of any other examples where consang data are readily available — i mean without delving into church records or something like that.)

no idea if there are any early iq data available for italy, though. i won’t be looking for them (iq questions? – meh) — just wanted to let anyone who might be interested know that the numbers for the drop in inbreeding do exist for italy. (^_^)

look for the consang data here: Consanguinity, Inbreeding and Genetic Drift in Italy (tables also available here).

i put together a table of the first and last lustra in cavalli-sforza’s data set for a previous post, but there are data for each lustrum in between, too. you can get an idea of the scale of the drop-off (in the regions where there was a drop-off) from my nifty table:

previously: japan – reversal of fortune?

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more on historic mating patterns in japan

a passing sentence in this article — The frequency of consanguineous marriage among British Pakistanis [pdf] — reminded me that i have a little more info on historic mating patterns in japan that i haven’t yet posted. first, here’s that passing sentence [pgs. 188-89]:

“[I]n Japan it [consanguineous marriage] decreased from 13% in urban and 21% in rural areas to 2.9% in urban and 4.3% in rural areas between 1947 and 1972.”

the reference given is Frequency of consanguineous marriages in Japan: Geographical variations. i charted this decline in this post, albeit with slightly different numbers gleaned from other sources.

but shinozaki found an even higher national average consanguinity rate for japan between 1912-25: 22.4%. that’s the national average, so if the urban versus rural differences seen in the mid-twentieth century were also present in the early part of the century, then the rural rates must’ve been pretty high (i haven’t seen the original source — yet).

consanguineous means marriage to first or second cousins (or uncle-niece). this rate of 22.4% for japan in the early twentieth century is much higher than anything we’ve seen for england in the nineteenth or twentieth centuries: wiltshire 1800-1914 = 3.9%; england 1870-1920 = 0.71%; readers of the british medical journal prior to 1908 = 6.38%. frankly, japan is more similar to parts of scotland in the nineteenth century: ne scottish village 1860s = 22.69%

previously: historic mating patterns in japan

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consanguinity and polygamy

sean suggests that there is a correlation between consanguintiy and polygamy (or, rather, polygamy and consanguinity). i don’t know if anyone’s ever looked for a correlation between the two. if they have, i haven’t seen it. what someone should do is take the populations from consang.net (not the nations but the populations) and see if there is any correlation between consanguinity and polygamy or not. i’ve put that task on my “to do” list, but i can’t promise that i’ll get to it any time soon.

what i have done is check murdock‘s ethnographic atlas to see what sorts of societies (monogamous, occasionally polygamous, or polygamous) are also consanguineous (here consanguineous means first or second cousin marriage — i haven’t included uncle-niece marriages as that info is not available in the murdock atlas).

the cross tabs i used were DOMESTIC ORGANIZATION and NUMBER OF COUSIN MARRIAGES [Allowed]. the results are sorted into the following rows…

– Missing Data
– Indep. Nuclear Family – Monogamous
– Indep. Nuclear Family – Occasional polygyny
– Indep. Polyandrous Families
– Polygynous – Unusual Co-wives Pattern
– Polygynous – Usual Co-wives Pattern
– Minimal (stem) extended families
– Small extended families
– Large extended families

…and columns…

– Missing Data
– All four cousins
– Three of four cousins
– Two of four cousins
– One of four cousins
– No first cousins
– 1st & some 2nd cousins
– No 1st – 2nd unknown
– No 1st or 2nd cousins

i skipped the two “Missing Data” groups (fourteen results). i also skipped the “No 1st – 2nd uknown” group (twenty-seven results) since the presence or absence of second-cousin marriage was unknown. left out the polyandrous groups (all three of them), too. and i also drilled down (manually!) in the extended family categories (minimal/stem, small extended, and large extended) to check for consanguinity and polygamy there ’cause i couldn’t figure out how work that into the table (you’re welcome). i then combined all the monogamous, occasionally polygamous, and polygamous groups together (n=142 in total).

what did i find?:

well, for one thing, there’s a lot more polygamy and occasional polygamy out there in the world than monogamy, but then we all knew that already, didn’t we? there’s also more consanguineous marriage practices out there than not — or, at least, they’re allowed in more societies than not — but we’re all starting to know that now, too, aren’t we? (^_^) even in monogamous societies, there are twice as many that allow some form of cousin marriage (first or second) than those that don’t allow any.

the rate of consanguineous to non-consanguineous marriage allowed in monogamous societies is about 2:1. in polygamous and occasionally polygamous societies it’s about 2.5:1. so, yeah — there are more consanguineous marriages permitted in polygamous societies than monogamous ones, but is the correlation between the two (consanguinity and polygamy) very strong? i dunno. doesn’t really seem like it, but you tell me.

in Ya̧nomamö, chagnon suggests that groups that practice polygamy marry their cousins with greater frequency partly because the individuals in those societies have more cousins. he gives as example two ya̧nomamö extended families, one that had a founder with more wives than the other. because he founded so many lineages, as it were, the descendants of the guy with more wives were able to more easily find a cousin to marry simply because more persons who were their cousins existed. don’t know if this holds true for other polygamous groups, but it’s an interesting idea.

here are the numbers for you:

btw, the monogamous groups which allow(ed) cousin marriage are:

– the inca
– the badjau (pacific region)
– the burmese
– the romans
– the bribri (south america)
– the chinese (in chekiang)
– the tuareg
– the copper eskimo
– the lapps
– the iban (pacific region)
– the japanese (southern okayama)
– in the punjab (west)
– the vedda
– the yapese (pacific region)
– the manchu (aigun district)
– the kaska (north america)
– the toradja (pacific region)

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