Incest WTH?

[Nuril]

i thought it was something to do with unwashed barbarians... i learn new things every day huh

Neither of their posts are true. It was taboo long before Christianity (for obvious biological reasons, things like this aren't wrong because of "sins", they're just stupid) and there are hundreds of reasons for the general mailaise of the Roman Empire leading to the eventual decline and fall of the Western Roman Empire. Anything else is insanely over-simplistic, considering the myriad of factors.

Though it should be noted that the Imperial machine of the late Empire had a chronic issue of not being able to produce leaders worth a damn apart from the occasional non-relative powerful enough to seize the throne himself....which is why they're undesirable from an Emperor's perspective. Aristocracy/Nepotism really, really shows how pathetically weak it is in comparison to Meritocracy. But that's a secondary issue, since they were a crumbling ruin anyway (which isn't helped by arrogant Emperors still thinking they're in the Glory-days of the 5 Good Emperors).

[khedas]

King Tut was messed up. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_tut Add to the article's analysis is another theory I've heard where he suffered from a fused spine. And then comprehend that the Egyptian historians of the age were writing about Their Living GODS. Do you honestly believe they would have written about how screwed up their leiges were?

While the press loves to portray Tutankhamun as an inbred weakling, many analysis of his mummy only reveal a condition known today as a "bad back". Hardly a crippling problem.

What they all note is that he suffered several blows. Today it is assumed he was either murdered or died from a fall of a chariot. Nothing out of the ordinary for a normal person, and something that really does not suggest a sickly individual.

Recently Dr. Hawass also advanced the possibility of death from Malaria. Hardly odd for the period.

http://www.ajnr.org/content/24/6/1142.full
http://www.ancient-egypt.org/index.html
http://www.drhawass.com/blog/press-r...ng-tutankhamun

And it's not a question of what would be written, it is that the mummies of Pharaohs found don't present any abnormal rate of genetic problems.

As for the Muslims, consider that any weakness was pretty quickly killed off by their society, and that only the most successful men were considered 'royal'. Anyone with screwed-up genetics, incest or not, wasn't going to be spreading his genes.

I'm sorry, I don't think I was clear. Muslims do this in their entire society, not just among nobles. And I didn't just mean 'in the Middle Ages'. I mean that they do this today, as they did back then, and probably before Islam too. You can find immense numbers of cousin marriages in Islamic countries, and cousins sons of cousins marrying cousins. And yet the vast majority of the population is not inbred.

The reason inbreeding can cause bad results, is primarily due to recessive traits. These traits will not show in the parents, but can manifest in their offspring. Inbreeding increases the chance that recessive traits, often rather bad ones, will be activated, as both parents are then much more likely to have the recessive gene.

Correct. Recessive genes are key to bad genetics. If one parent has them, then its offspring can have problems. If both parents are from the same family, then the chance of defects is greatly increased. But if the family does not have such genes, this problem does not present itself. It is also worth noting that all it takes is ONE parent with recessive genes, so a normal marriage can pretty much produce someone with genetic problems - which is why we have deficient people today despite the lack of inbreeding; and yet nobody is arguing against the marriage of unrelated people, even if almost all of the deficients today are the product of normal marriages.

Neither of their posts are true. It was taboo long before Christianity (for obvious biological reasons, things like this aren't wrong because of "sins", they're just stupid)

Before we get into "it was common to forbid incest in ancient times" and "it's natural, for biological reasons", please bear in mind HOW mankind evolved over hundreds of millennia - small clans (30 people or less) roaming large swaths of land, rarely meeting outsiders [the world population did not exceed 10 million in the Palaeolithic].

Like some amazonian indians even today - or, for that matter, how animals reproduce: they pretty much don't care about how close of kin they are [with the occasional exception for the mother] when they breed, and you don't see all mammals as defective inbreds.

What does this imply? That for pretty much everyone, there was little to no chance of reproduction outside one's immediate family. Even in the off chance that people could change clans on the rare meeting, it would only take one generation to ensure everybody in the clan would be relatives again.

That means that, for hundreds of thousands of years, about 99% of all Human reproduction was through what we would today consider incest. Think well about that. This pretty much guaranteed that clans with the worst recessive genes got wiped out, and better families thrived.

[Nuril]

Before we get into "it was common to forbid incest in ancient times" and "it's natural, for biological reasons", please bear in mind HOW mankind evolved over hundreds of millennia - small clans (30 people or less) roaming large swaths of land, rarely meeting outsiders [the world population did not exceed 10 million in the Palaeolithic].

That means that, for hundreds of thousands of years, about 99% of all Human reproduction was through what we would today consider incest. Think well about that. This pretty much guaranteed that clans with the worst recessive genes got wiped out, and better families thrived.

Yes, but notice that I explicitly said "for obvious biological reasons" and not "because of what we today consider incest". Modern society is plain wrong on the biological implications as well and grossly overstate the negative genetic effects in most cases as well as not realizing how little distance is needed for the effect to be practically non-existent*, but it feels "icky" to contemplate it with those we identify as "relatives" because our culture says so, even if the biological implications are negligible. We are definitely spoiled to have such a wide range of genetic stock to keep it a complete non-issue.

It still has nothing to do with Christianity, as he claimed. Said Romans have clear accounts on how horridly uncivilized it is long, long before Christianization and they cite the resulting defects as clear proof of incest's wickedness.


* Though naturally if you go back to such an extremely undeveloped time as you're describing.. it was also the case that they weeded out the inferior offspring via infanticide or plain old Natural Selection back then, so those with more defects didn't really propagate that.

[TheStrangerOrg]

Neither of their posts are true. It was taboo long before Christianity (for obvious biological reasons, things like this aren't wrong because of "sins", they're just stupid) and there are hundreds of reasons for the general mailaise of the Roman Empire leading to the eventual decline and fall of the Western Roman Empire. Anything else is insanely over-simplistic, considering the myriad of factors.

Though it should be noted that the Imperial machine of the late Empire had a chronic issue of not being able to produce leaders worth a damn apart from the occasional non-relative powerful enough to seize the throne himself....which is why they're undesirable from an Emperor's perspective. Aristocracy/Nepotism really, really shows how pathetically weak it is in comparison to Meritocracy. But that's a secondary issue, since they were a crumbling ruin anyway (which isn't helped by arrogant Emperors still thinking they're in the Glory-days of the 5 Good Emperors).

the culprit was obviously Marius.

[khedas]

Yes, but notice that I explicitly said "for obvious biological reasons" and not "because of what we today consider incest". Modern society is plain wrong on the biological implications as well and grossly overstate the negative genetic effects in most cases as well as not realizing how little distance is needed for the effect to be practically non-existent*, but it feels "icky" to contemplate it with those we identify as "relatives" because our culture says so, even if the biological implications are negligible. We are definitely spoiled to have such a wide range of genetic stock to keep it a complete non-issue.

It still has nothing to do with Christianity, as he claimed. Said Romans have clear accounts on how horridly uncivilized it is long, long before Christianization and they cite the resulting defects as clear proof of incest's wickedness.

I fully agree with your points (in fact, I was more worried about some people getting the wrong idea out of a phrase, rather than being in disagreement with what you said). Indeed, Romans were against incest, as well as many other pre-christian societies - inbreeding allows for far too much power and wealth to be concentrated by a few families, which can potentially lead to serious social strife.

[Zorlond]

While the press loves to portray Tutankhamun as an inbred weakling, many analysis of his mummy only reveal a condition known today as a "bad back". Hardly a crippling problem.

Well, then, you'd best go over to Wikipedia and correct their article for them. Because right now they're not agreeing with you. Lemme know how that works out.

I'm sorry, I don't think I was clear.

Apparently I'm not being clear either.

Incest + Every Child Surviving to Reproduce = Genetic Problems.

Note the second part. If the kids with the bad, activated genes are spreading them around, then you've got a problem. If they don't survive long enough to do so, that's not a problem with incest. That's evolution. But society keeps ****ing evolution up by Insisting that their children are Fine and Need to grow and reproduce. Regardless of whether or not they should. This attitude is extremely prevalent in Christian societies. Not so much in Muslim.

I didn't think this was a complicated concept.

[repent]

Just seen this thread. I nearly spat tea all over my laptop. Ha!

[CyberSpyder]

Correct. Recessive genes are key to bad genetics. If one parent has them, then its offspring can have problems. If both parents are from the same family, then the chance of defects is greatly increased. But if the family does not have such genes, this problem does not present itself. It is also worth noting that all it takes is ONE parent with recessive genes, so a normal marriage can pretty much produce someone with genetic problems - which is why we have deficient people today despite the lack of inbreeding; and yet nobody is arguing against the marriage of unrelated people, even if almost all of the deficients today are the product of normal marriages.

This...is not accurate. 'Recessive' genes are distinct from 'dominant' genes in that the latter are dominant over the former - if one gene in a locus is recessive and the other is dominant, the dominant gene is the one that is expressed, the one that has its effect on the individual. Most genetic disorders are recessive; both parents have to have the gene in order for the child to express it. Their recessive nature is also the reason 'normal' people can have children who suffer from these genetic conditions - if they were dominant, then any parent with the gene would express the gene, and we would always know that someone's kid might suffer from Tay-Sachs because the 'someone' would himself suffer from Tay-Sachs.

Generally, this happens because you have two people with some gene combination Aa (A for dominant, a for recessive.) Crossing two "Aa"s with each other produces

.25 AA, .5 Aa, and .25 aa

The last of which is the problematic one - having two copies of the recessive 'a' results in the expression of that gene, and any negative consequences thereof.

Harmful recessive traits are rare, due to the evolutionary pressures against them. The odds of two unrelated people having the same harmful recessive trait is, therefore, quite low. When incest is practiced, however, there is a risk that the genes they have are 'identical by descent' - since you share 50% of your genes with your sister, if you're a carrier for cystic fibrosis, then there's a 50% chance that your sister is also a carrier for cystic fibrosis, regardless of that gene's prevalence in the general population.

If you're a math person, you can think of it this way - the chance of an unrelated pairing resulting in genetic disease depends on both people randomly being carriers, and so depends on the prevalence of the bad gene in the population with order O(p^2). With a related pairing, there's a joint probability that both of them will have the bad gene, and the chance of the pairing resulting in a genetic disease is just O(p). Genetic diseases which are otherwise very rare can become dramatically more probable among practitioners of incest.

This is not to say that it is likely in an absolute sense - even if you are carrier (unlikely - about 1 in 300 people, for example, are Tay-Sachs carriers) and you get it on with your sister, there's still 'only' a ~12% chance that your child will express the genetic disease, for a net overall .04% chance of a sibling-pairing producing a child with Tay-Sachs. But that's compared to a .00027% chance of an unrelated pairing doing the same.

Before we get into "it was common to forbid incest in ancient times" and "it's natural, for biological reasons", please bear in mind HOW mankind evolved over hundreds of millennia - small clans (30 people or less) roaming large swaths of land, rarely meeting outsiders [the world population did not exceed 10 million in the Palaeolithic].

Like some amazonian indians even today - or, for that matter, how animals reproduce: they pretty much don't care about how close of kin they are [with the occasional exception for the mother] when they breed, and you don't see all mammals as defective inbreds.

What does this imply? That for pretty much everyone, there was little to no chance of reproduction outside one's immediate family. Even in the off chance that people could change clans on the rare meeting, it would only take one generation to ensure everybody in the clan would be relatives again.

That means that, for hundreds of thousands of years, about 99% of all Human reproduction was through what we would today consider incest. Think well about that. This pretty much guaranteed that clans with the worst recessive genes got wiped out, and better families thrived.

This is also not particularly true. People lived in small clans, but they were roaming clans, and they met each other frequently enough to have marriages between these clans. Australian and other aboriginal groups provide us with a glimpse of what early culture was like. Even lacking any knowledge of genetics, they often developed social systems which seem to function in a way to inhibit inbreeding.

http://www.aboriginalculture.com.au/...nisation.shtml

Throughout Australia the moiety system divides all the members of a tribe into two groups, based on a connection with certain animals, plants, or other aspects of their environment. A person is born into one or other group and this does not change throughout their life. A person belonging to one moiety has to marry a person of the opposite moiety. This is called an "exogamous" system, meaning that marriage has to be external to the group.

[KonradRichtmark]

Note the second part. If the kids with the bad, activated genes are spreading them around, then you've got a problem. If they don't survive long enough to do so, that's not a problem with incest. That's evolution. But society keeps ****ing evolution up by Insisting that their children are Fine and Need to grow and reproduce. Regardless of whether or not they should. This attitude is extremely prevalent in Christian societies. Not so much in Muslim.

Huh? What?

Seriously, the image that you're conjuring in my head is one of a newborn Muslim being inspected by a stern-faced imam in a scene reminiscent of the one at the beginning of 300, with the camera hovering over the big pile of baby skulls at the bottom of the cliff.

[Zorlond]

Don't be absurd. People are quite capable of failing to survive all on their own. But to be a good Christian, you have to do everything you can to prevent that from happening. Regardless of circumstance.

[ryousei]

Before making random judgements on the downsides of inbreeding, the majority of the posters (besides maybe 3 people) need to read up on genetics...

The effects of "diverse breeding" are:
Favors dominant genes which leads to ->
Dominant genes subject to evolution - bad dominant genes get eliminated from the gene pool.
Recessive genes don't get effected much by evolution, meaning very bad recessove genes can stay in the gene pool without effect most of the time.
Mutations happen but has little effect unless it is dominant in which it is quickly eliminated.

The effects of inbreeding are:
Brings out recessive traits - this can be good OR bad traits. But after "diverse breeding" all the really bad genes are recessive.
Reduces genetic diversity.
Both dominant and recessive genes are subject to evolution (dominant still faster than recessive). - bad genes of both types eliminated from gene pool.
Mutations happen and can have great effect on the NEXT generation.


So one generation of inbreeding after normal breeding will often end you up with "weird/uncommon" problems.
But no, 100s generations of inbreeding does not end you up with idiots (providing you don't breed those idiots).
But it will result in a lack of genetic diversity.
Genetic diversity is good because well shit change. Scrawny smart dudes were not favored in the 1066, but they are now.
If anything the 100 generations of inbreeding will result in a small genepool of only good genes. Big downsides to small genepool though, so don't encourage your next 100 generation of descendants to interbreed.



Btw I may be confusing because I tried to simplify things, but I am well versed in science and genetics.

[Moltke]

Btw I may be confusing because I tried to simplify things, but I am well versed in science and genetics.

[ryousei]

Lol, well the I might be confusing part was for anyone who knows enough about genetics to spot bits where I seriously simplified.

[Bhagan]

Don't be absurd. People are quite capable of failing to survive all on their own. But to be a good Christian, you have to do everything you can to prevent that from happening. Regardless of circumstance.

I don't know what you are trying to do with this only the strong should survive notion. Altruism is neither strictly Christian, nor strictly human.

[AllThat4Nothing]

Lol, well the I might be confusing part was for anyone who knows enough about genetics to spot bits where I seriously simplified.

you posted nothing more than what I learned in 10th grade biology. simplified or not.

[Hyo]

... I don't get why a gene is subject to evolution whether it is masked or not. Because it shows and causes behavioural changes? Unless I'm missing something here...

Perhaps mutation is the better word here, since mutation can happen at all levels, randomly. Our bodies' genes mutate repeatedly - and natrually, throughout our entre lives as well, in fact, hehe.

But yes, seems some people need a guide to genetics and Punett squares again - here's a quickie.

This should be like, Biology and Genetics 101. You probably know this stuff, but if you don't, for the sake of us all, read.

_____________________________________

First, let's go over meiosis. It's the reproduction of sex cells. Basically, it divides your 46 chromosomes (23 pairs) that compromise your DNA, into four 23 chromosome cells, with characteristics divided up randomly. Say a part of your DNA DNA is AA,Bb,Cc,dd,Ee,Ff - then it can be AA,bb,CC,dd,EE,Ff or AA,BB,cc,dd,ee,FF etc. etc. And then, two these 23 chromosome cells, one from mother and another from father, come together, and forms a complete 46 (23-pair) cell. Each chromosome aligns with its counterpart from one's other parent and pairs up, thus 23 pairs.

And thus, you have a 50% chance of passing on any particular gene to your offspring. Take the X and Y chromosome for example. The male will make 2 X chromosome and 2 Y chromosome cells. The female can only give X chromosomes. Sooo, who's fault is it that you're not having sons? Ding, ding, ding, It's the Guy's fault. Jerks.

In genetics, traits are caused by a specific set of genes - like there's a set of gene for your hair, your eye colour, so on. (Lies, they can be affected by multiple alleles, but let's keep it simple. I'll be simplifying other things along the way as well.) There are also multiple kinds of traits available - for example, not everyone in the world has pink hair or anything. Some have Black, some have Blonde. And for each characteristic, you get a set of genes from your father and from your mother.

So what happens if your father and mother has different hair colour? What determines your hair colour? It obviously doesn't mix them together, but there are traits that are Dominant and Recessive - represented by a CAPITAL and lowercase letter respectively. Dominant traits can "mask" its corresponding recessive traits - meaning only the dominant traits will show up, and despite having that recessive traits within your genes, it won't actually do anything. Say your father is pure blonde and mother is pure black. Since black is dominant and blonde is recessive, you'll get black hair - despite having blonde genes. But, if you were to knock up a spouse who also had the same genes, black dominant and a blonde recessive, you have a chance of giving birth to a blonde child. Best shown by Punnett square.

Generation 1 - Let B = black hair, b = blonde hair
...B B
b|Bb Bb
b|Bb Bb

Your parents are pure black and pure blonde (homozygous can also refer to 'pure'). So, they can only give one specific gene, B or b. However, because B is dominant and b is recessive, all of their offspring - you and your siblings will have black hair. Let's take up you and your spouse then.

Generation 2- Let B = black, b = blonde
...B b
B|BB Bb
b|Bb bb

Despite the fact that both of you are black, you will give one pure black, two 'heterozygous' black (meaning they also have the recessive trait), and one blonde. This is why blondes still exist in the world. Even though Dominant traits mask them, they do not affect recessive traits being passed on at all - meaning it still can equally be passed down. And despite the fact that you don't know about some rare disease of doom, and nobody had it for generations - it can still have been passed on down to you. And if your spouse also has that super rare disease of doom gene... Well, 25% your offspring will be born with the imbecile trait. (And no, genius traits defy the laws of genetics so they will never be passed down. Don't ask me why, they just do.)

So what does this have to do with making sweet, sweet love to your sister/brother/father/mother etc?

Well, basically this has been explained above already. Most genetic diseases are recessive. Therefore, as long as you get someone with a different gene for that set of evil genes, it'll almost never show. So, then what happens if you mate your sister? Well, you're both your parents offspring, so that likelihood of you both having that super evil gene is much higher than it would be going off with a random guy on the street. Meaning, you now have 25% chance of your kid being an Imbecile.

This is why inbreeding is dangerous. It can reveal numerous masked recessive disease traits that's been hidden down your family line, and it increases the chance of breeding Imbeciles, Slows, Hunchbacks and of course, Inbreds, exponentially. This is no problem if your family has none of such traits but... Yeah, good luck with that.

Basically, the Spanish Hapsburgs went and tried that. Looks like they had some bad genes in them after all.

[AllThat4Nothing]

this is meandaering into the the "Show Off" thread. Is this about CKII anymore?

[Hyo]

AllThat4Nothing has a point. I'm out.

[Tempestra]

Don't be absurd. People are quite capable of failing to survive all on their own. But to be a good Christian, you have to do everything you can to prevent that from happening. Regardless of circumstance.

But non-Christians don't feel this way...?

[InnocentIII]

so i am king and i go to a courtiers bedchamber, there is no option to decline... its my own daughter WTH!!!




now she is in love with me :S and she got pregnant... gawd =_=

10 - this is perfectly natural, there's a penguin at the zoo who did the same thing
9 - who are you to judge?!
8 - (note to self, do not make wife spymaster after this)
7 - you were actually playing a new version of the Sims, their lawyers will be in contact with you soon
6 - ah, fresh meat
5 - hope one night of disgusting "happiness" was worth your eternal soul!
4 - so ... how old was she?
3 - someday all families will learn to live with daddy being grandpa, we call this <insert place you want insulted here> ca 2013
2 - this kind of thing is perfectly okay, so long as it's tastefully done and integral to the plot
1 - It wasn't the ugly daughter, was it?