The cultural taboo against first-cousin marriage is probably due to the fact that if you have too many people marrying first-cousins in a fixed community over generations it will eventually lead to inbreeding problems, which was a bigger issue when everyone lived in small agricultural communities. People who get weird about second or third cousin partnering are frankly silly, if you live in any sort of rural community finding a partner who isn’t somehow distantly related to you is near impossible and inbreeding really not a problem with anyone beyond first cousins.
But first cousins, honestly it’s one of those things that’s mostly harmless on the micro but harmful on the macro, hence why it’s been discouraged via social pressure for millennia.
It has not been discouraged. It’s very common around the world today. it only started to become taboo in European societies in the mid 19th century. (pardon the anthropology word) exogamous, ie outside your immediate group, marriage has been common throughout history and people in the medieval and ancient world travelled much more commonly than people think. Even a marriage group of a few hundred people has so much genetic diversity that unless a specific genetic illnes becomes fixed in the group, like Tays-Sachs or something, it’s unlikely for cousin marriage to cause problems, doubly so if there’s any outsiders marrying in to the group which has almost always been the case.
This is a taboo that developed recently in European culture and isn’t well founded in science. There is a small increased risk that an genetic illness already present in the partners genes will be expressed in their children. The idea that it’s an ancient taboo is not historical.
I’m sure there are, it’s a pretty recent phenomena so people were almost certainly writing about it, and it happened at more or less the same time we were figuring out genetic hertitability. I’ve never really bothered to look in to it but I’m pretty sure i’ve read a few times that it was tied up in the emergence of Eugenics and “scientific” racism.
The cultural taboo against first-cousin marriage is probably due to the fact that if you have too many people marrying first-cousins in a fixed community over generations it will eventually lead to inbreeding problems, which was a bigger issue when everyone lived in small agricultural communities. People who get weird about second or third cousin partnering are frankly silly, if you live in any sort of rural community finding a partner who isn’t somehow distantly related to you is near impossible and inbreeding really not a problem with anyone beyond first cousins.
But first cousins, honestly it’s one of those things that’s mostly harmless on the micro but harmful on the macro, hence why it’s been discouraged via social pressure for millennia.
It has not been discouraged. It’s very common around the world today. it only started to become taboo in European societies in the mid 19th century. (pardon the anthropology word) exogamous, ie outside your immediate group, marriage has been common throughout history and people in the medieval and ancient world travelled much more commonly than people think. Even a marriage group of a few hundred people has so much genetic diversity that unless a specific genetic illnes becomes fixed in the group, like Tays-Sachs or something, it’s unlikely for cousin marriage to cause problems, doubly so if there’s any outsiders marrying in to the group which has almost always been the case.
This is a taboo that developed recently in European culture and isn’t well founded in science. There is a small increased risk that an genetic illness already present in the partners genes will be expressed in their children. The idea that it’s an ancient taboo is not historical.
Are there any credible explanations as to why this taboo developed?
I’m sure there are, it’s a pretty recent phenomena so people were almost certainly writing about it, and it happened at more or less the same time we were figuring out genetic hertitability. I’ve never really bothered to look in to it but I’m pretty sure i’ve read a few times that it was tied up in the emergence of Eugenics and “scientific” racism.
Interesting. Never would’ve guessed this was a modern thing