https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230503-coronation-of-king-charles-iii-do-you-carry-royal-dna

Of course, there is no mention of the highly inbred nature of royal families, which can have hundreds of lines to the present from, say, a 13th- or 14th- century ruler.

Nor any mention that even commoners _can_ be, and often are, highly inbred, or at least have multiple, remote or remote-ish, segments or sections in their ancestry in which all parties were inbred (multiple ways).

On 06-May-23 7:56 AM, JBrand wrote:
> https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230503-coronation-of-king-charles-iii-do-you-carry-royal-dna
>
> Of course, there is no mention of the highly inbred nature of royal families, which can have hundreds of lines to the present from, say, a 13th- or 14th- century ruler.
>
> Nor any mention that even commoners _can_ be, and often are, highly inbred, or at least have multiple, remote or remote-ish, segments or sections in their ancestry in which all parties were inbred (multiple ways).

It seems more prudent to say that the British royal family of today is
somewhat linebred rather than "highly inbred" - the parents of King
Charles III were third cousins, probably a similar degree of
consanguinity to many commoners in the past although not so much nowadays.

In my own case one of my maternal great-grandmothers as a widow married
one of my paternal great-granduncles, but I am not descended from this
marriage. The first known common ancestor of my parents was living in
the mid-18th century. This is probably more typical of the world-wide
Anglo-Celtic population than any lineage that could be meaningfully
called inbred.

Many people with English ancestry might find Edward III as their closest
crowned-head connection if they could get back far enough. Multiple
lines to him in most cases would reflect endogamy based on geographic
proximity and/or religious confession: broadly, villagers marrying
meetable eligible partners within walking/riding distance, or in US
gateway terms Quakers marrying other Quakers, Episcopalians other
Episcopalians, etc. Not "high" inbreeding in the vast majotiy of
instances. The Habsburgs and Bourbons have left royalty in general with
a largely inaccurate reputation.

Peter Stewart

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On Friday, May 5, 2023 at 5:59:57 PM UTC-5, Peter Stewart wrote:
> On 06-May-23 7:56 AM, JBrand wrote:
.. . .
> > Nor any mention that even commoners _can_ be, and often are, highly inbred, or at least have multiple, remote or remote-ish, segments or sections in their ancestry in which all parties were inbred (multiple ways).
> It seems more prudent to say that the British royal family of today is
> somewhat linebred rather than "highly inbred" - the parents of King
> Charles III were third cousins, probably a similar degree of
> consanguinity to many commoners in the past although not so much nowadays..
>
> In my own case one of my maternal great-grandmothers as a widow married
> one of my paternal great-granduncles, but I am not descended from this
> marriage. The first known common ancestor of my parents was living in
> the mid-18th century. This is probably more typical of the world-wide
> Anglo-Celtic population than any lineage that could be meaningfully
> called inbred.

Despite having considerable success tracing the ancestry of all four of my grandparents, I have yet to find any documented evidence that any two of them were related to each other. In addition, neither of my grandfathers has any traced duplications in their ancestry. I have traced three duplications among my maternal grandmother's ancestors, all concerning marriages of either first cousins or first cousins once removed. One concerns a fairly well-known Doggett-Lappage marriage in Suffolk having lots of descendants (or at least claimed descendants) who include them in their trees, while the other two involve obscure Yorkshire families which might not be of interest to more than a handful of people other than me. In contrast to this, it would take me quite a while to count how many duplicated ancestors I have traced for my paternal grandmother, a descendant of German immigrants whose ancestors mostly lived in one small area of Hessen. The closet of these is a second cousin match, with numerous third and fourth and more distant cousin matches.

Stewart Baldwin

Peter Stewart wrote:
> The first known common ancestor of my parents was living in the mid-18th
> century. This is probably more typical of the world-wide Anglo-Celtic
> population than any lineage that could be meaningfully called inbred.

So far I haven't found a common ancestor of my parents although that may
be because they came from villages about 5 or 6 miles apart which,
possibly more significantly, were in different manors. I've found one
shared surname but any common ancestor would need to be in the C17th or
earlier.

However my mother's ancestry has quite a number of second cousin marriages.

On my father's side my grandmother has 4 lines of descent to a C17th
couple and my grandfather has a further line to them. She also had 2
lines of descent to another C17th couple. All in all, due to
duplications, she has about 5/6th of the number of ancestors one would
expect although there are a few dead ends so there might be further
undiscovered duplication.

I have one common name, Newton, on both sides of that family but haven't
connected them. What I do have is a lot of Kaye lines most if not all
of whom will descend from the 6 legitimate sons and one illegitimate of
John Kaye of Woodsome living in the C14th. I'm making progress with
some of them.

On Saturday, May 6, 2023 at 1:26:54 AM UTC-7, Ian Goddard wrote:
> Peter Stewart wrote:
> > The first known common ancestor of my parents was living in the mid-18th
> > century. This is probably more typical of the world-wide Anglo-Celtic
> > population than any lineage that could be meaningfully called inbred.
> So far I haven't found a common ancestor of my parents although that may
> be because they came from villages about 5 or 6 miles apart which,
> possibly more significantly, were in different manors. I've found one
> shared surname but any common ancestor would need to be in the C17th or
> earlier.
>
> However my mother's ancestry has quite a number of second cousin marriages.
>
> On my father's side my grandmother has 4 lines of descent to a C17th
> couple and my grandfather has a further line to them. She also had 2
> lines of descent to another C17th couple. All in all, due to
> duplications, she has about 5/6th of the number of ancestors one would
> expect although there are a few dead ends so there might be further
> undiscovered duplication.
>
> I have one common name, Newton, on both sides of that family but haven't
> connected them. What I do have is a lot of Kaye lines most if not all
> of whom will descend from the 6 legitimate sons and one illegitimate of
> John Kaye of Woodsome living in the C14th. I'm making progress with
> some of them.

My parents are second cousins (father's maternal grandfather and mother's paternal grandmother were siblings, though born more than 15 years apart), and there are known cousin marriages earlier in my father's ancestry. I sometimes refer to my tree as having three sides: his, hers, and theirs.

On Saturday, 6 May 2023 at 16:23:27 UTC+1, pj.ev...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Saturday, May 6, 2023 at 1:26:54 AM UTC-7, Ian Goddard wrote:
> > Peter Stewart wrote:
> > > The first known common ancestor of my parents was living in the mid-18th
> > > century. This is probably more typical of the world-wide Anglo-Celtic
> > > population than any lineage that could be meaningfully called inbred.
> > So far I haven't found a common ancestor of my parents although that may
> > be because they came from villages about 5 or 6 miles apart which,
> > possibly more significantly, were in different manors. I've found one
> > shared surname but any common ancestor would need to be in the C17th or
> > earlier.
> >
> > However my mother's ancestry has quite a number of second cousin marriages.
> >
> > On my father's side my grandmother has 4 lines of descent to a C17th
> > couple and my grandfather has a further line to them. She also had 2
> > lines of descent to another C17th couple. All in all, due to
> > duplications, she has about 5/6th of the number of ancestors one would
> > expect although there are a few dead ends so there might be further
> > undiscovered duplication.
> >
> > I have one common name, Newton, on both sides of that family but haven't
> > connected them. What I do have is a lot of Kaye lines most if not all
> > of whom will descend from the 6 legitimate sons and one illegitimate of
> > John Kaye of Woodsome living in the C14th. I'm making progress with
> > some of them.
> My parents are second cousins (father's maternal grandfather and mother's paternal grandmother were siblings, though born more than 15 years apart), and there are known cousin marriages earlier in my father's ancestry. I sometimes refer to my tree as having three sides: his, hers, and theirs.

My father's family, of Swiss origin, from Vaud and Geneva, tended to marry within their sphere. My paternal grandparents were first cousins for a start, but their expanding trees on both sides were full of 2nd cousins marrying cousins. My maternal family, ostensibly British, but the Jacksons, Cripps, Hobhouses, Meinertzhagens, Jolliffes, Holts, Booths and Huths, were all cousins, 2nd mostly, intermarried profusely. My oldest aunt married her 2nd, 2nd cousin once removed and 3rd cousin, all in one person. Her brother married a Russian, but it turns out her norwegian mother was descended from a Scots who happened to be my uncle's great great great grandfather. My second aunt married her second cousin, although they were unaware of this at the time, and my mother married out, only to discover, on her wedding day, that her anglo swiss husband was her third cousin. Most of my first cousins married a relation, despite not being aware of it, and I am the first of the cousins to have married someone who is not remotely related to me, at least, for the last 10 generations!
Highland Scots families, particularly landowners, tended to intermarry profusely, my maternal Grandmother partScots (GrantDuff), part English (Webster) was a product of intermarriages for at least 6 generations, of Grants, Duffs, Gordons. Even my 4th cousin, the late Philip of Edinburgh, was descended from my paternal family,as well as my maternal one.
The Websters, originally from Derbyshire, were also products of many intermarriages from 1600-1890s.
In the last few years, I have been fleshing out the trees of both of my maternal grandparents, Jackson and GrantDuff, only to find that they are blood related through their English ancestors in the late18c early 19c, despite my grandmother telling her daughters that her husband's family were new money, barely 100 years of that!
So, as one says, it is also amongst commoners

On Thursday, June 1, 2023 at 6:56:19 AM UTC-6, Peter de Loriol Chandieu wrote:
> On Saturday, 6 May 2023 at 16:23:27 UTC+1, pj.ev...@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Saturday, May 6, 2023 at 1:26:54 AM UTC-7, Ian Goddard wrote:
> > > Peter Stewart wrote:
> > > > The first known common ancestor of my parents was living in the mid-18th
> > > > century. This is probably more typical of the world-wide Anglo-Celtic
> > > > population than any lineage that could be meaningfully called inbred.

Two new "freedoms" my Anglo-American ancestors found in the Southern United States were: (1) removal of barriers to marry one's first cousin, and (2) permission to be buried in one's backyard. American exceptionalism at its finest?

Nathan

On Friday, June 2, 2023 at 7:40:54 AM UTC-4, Nathan Murphy wrote:
> On Thursday, June 1, 2023 at 6:56:19 AM UTC-6, Peter de Loriol Chandieu wrote:
> > On Saturday, 6 May 2023 at 16:23:27 UTC+1, pj.ev...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > On Saturday, May 6, 2023 at 1:26:54 AM UTC-7, Ian Goddard wrote:
> > > > Peter Stewart wrote:
> > > > > The first known common ancestor of my parents was living in the mid-18th
> > > > > century. This is probably more typical of the world-wide Anglo-Celtic
> > > > > population than any lineage that could be meaningfully called inbred.
> Two new "freedoms" my Anglo-American ancestors found in the Southern United States were: (1) removal of barriers to marry one's first cousin, and (2) permission to be buried in one's backyard. American exceptionalism at its finest?
>
> Nathan

To be fair, when you are in the wilderness, there aren't any cemeteries... I have found this to be a problem because one of my ancestors died during the Year Without A Summer (1816) in the Adirondacks and no one knows where he is buried. Marrying first cousins occurred throughout the American colonies, actually.

Darrell

On Friday, June 2, 2023 at 1:31:19 PM UTC-4, Darrell E. Larocque wrote:
> On Friday, June 2, 2023 at 7:40:54 AM UTC-4, Nathan Murphy wrote:

> > Two new "freedoms" my Anglo-American ancestors found in the Southern United States were: (1) removal of barriers to marry one's first cousin, and (2) permission to be buried in one's backyard. American exceptionalism at its finest?
> > Nathan

> To be fair, when you are in the wilderness, there aren't any cemeteries.... I have found this to be a problem because one of my ancestors died during the Year Without A Summer (1816) in the Adirondacks and no one knows where he is buried. Marrying first cousins occurred throughout the American colonies, actually.
>
> Darrell

I apologize since I know this is off-topic, but I do think the "freedom" to marry first cousins was already in place in England (and probably Scotland as well) before any of the original 13 colonies had been established. I know of at least a few that occur in my own family in late 16th century England. I haven't researched the matter but I would guess that the Anglican church did not place such strict prohibitions upon marriages between cousins (which was perhaps also the case with the Presbyterian Church in Scotland) as the Catholic church had done, setting aside the entire issue of dispensations, etc., as a workaround to allow for such marriages that we're all so familiar with. Likewise, I also want to reiterate the fact that such marriages between cousins was not solely confined to the southern colonies or states, despite all the ridiculous jokes about southerners being their cousin, etc. (not sure how familiar that will be to anyone outside the USA). I know of a number of such marriages in my own family tree which took place in colonial New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, for example. Finally, cousin marriages including between first and second cousins were neither illegal nor uncommon well into the 19th century in the United States, as again I have a number of examples of such marriages in my own family, and no, not all of those marriages took place in the south -- although to be fair, the majority did take place in Virginia and Kentucky...

Jeff

and no, not all of those marriages took place in the south -- although to be fair, the majority did take place in Virginia and Kentucky...
>
> Jeff

Virginia and Kentucky for me too.

Nathan

On Friday, May 5, 2023 at 5:56:11 PM UTC-4, JBrand wrote:
> https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230503-coronation-of-king-charles-iii-do-you-carry-royal-dna
>
> Of course, there is no mention of the highly inbred nature of royal families, which can have hundreds of lines to the present from, say, a 13th- or 14th- century ruler.
>
> Nor any mention that even commoners _can_ be, and often are, highly inbred, or at least have multiple, remote or remote-ish, segments or sections in their ancestry in which all parties were inbred (multiple ways).

I'm not at all sure it's inbreeding, it's just that we can trace Charles a very long way back, so his ancestors are going to be common to a huge portion of the population. My family is not notable in the least, yet I am distant cousin to Charles, his late wife, his current wife, both his parents, all the spouses of his siblings, and the spouses of both his children. And this is probably not particularly unusual.

mk wrote:
> On Friday, May 5, 2023 at 5:56:11 PM UTC-4, JBrand wrote:
>> https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230503-coronation-of-king-charles-iii-do-you-carry-royal-dna
>>
>> Of course, there is no mention of the highly inbred nature of royal families, which can have hundreds of lines to the present from, say, a 13th- or 14th- century ruler.
>>
>> Nor any mention that even commoners _can_ be, and often are, highly inbred, or at least have multiple, remote or remote-ish, segments or sections in their ancestry in which all parties were inbred (multiple ways).
>
> I'm not at all sure it's inbreeding, it's just that we can trace Charles a very long way back, so his ancestors are going to be common to a huge portion of the population. My family is not notable in the least, yet I am distant cousin to Charles, his late wife, his current wife, both his parents, all the spouses of his siblings, and the spouses of both his children. And this is probably not particularly unusual.
>

It's probably not unusual amongst a subset of the English population.

Some time ago there was a research project looking at DNA in the British
Isles. The lowland zone fell into one cluster (even the supposedly
highly inbred Norfolk). Within that zone it might be possible to make
such traces given the degree of geographical movement that that
indicates. Even then there may have been social partitioning.

Get into the highland zone and the clusters are more geographically
restricted. Even N & S Wales were distinct. The 4 provinces of Ireland
were distinct. Cornwall was distinct. There were a few clusters in the
N or England, one broadly corresponding to the area occupied by the
post-Roman Elmet. (I can't, off the top of my head, remember how the
Scottish population was clustered).

What that means is that you can't generalise. Charles's ancestors might
be common at some traceable number of ancestors, to a huge part of some
unspecified population. Working out that number and that specification
is a different matter. At one limit, as fellow humans, we're all
related. At the other you can say he has common ancestry in
genealogical terms with that population with whom he has demonstrable
common ancestry and that's not really very large and neither is really
very informative.

It's noticeable that in several series of WDYTYA very few (3 that I can
remember) subjects had royal ancestry. I recall a documentary on. I
think, the making of WDYTYA with one of the consultants being
interviewed with the subject of everyone expecting royal ancestry being
raised and dismissed summarily.

On Saturday, June 3, 2023 at 6:40:56 AM UTC-7, Ian Goddard wrote:

> It's noticeable that in several series of WDYTYA very few (3 that I can
> remember) subjects had royal ancestry. I recall a documentary on. I
> think, the making of WDYTYA with one of the consultants being
> interviewed with the subject of everyone expecting royal ancestry being
> raised and dismissed summarily.

There is a _big_ caveat to this. The small number of people on WDYTYA with royal descent are those with _traceable_ royal ancestry. The majority of people cannot trace any ancestors before the 17th century, a combination of the quality of the historical record, the disconnects caused by migration, and just generally the vicissitudes of families and genealogies, so this is probably a vast underrepresentation of the proportion with actual royal descent, let alone kinship to royals through non-royal ancestry.

taf wrote:
> On Saturday, June 3, 2023 at 6:40:56 AM UTC-7, Ian Goddard wrote:
>
>> It's noticeable that in several series of WDYTYA very few (3 that I can
>> remember) subjects had royal ancestry. I recall a documentary on. I
>> think, the making of WDYTYA with one of the consultants being
>> interviewed with the subject of everyone expecting royal ancestry being
>> raised and dismissed summarily.
>
> There is a _big_ caveat to this. The small number of people on WDYTYA with royal descent are those with _traceable_ royal ancestry. The majority of people cannot trace any ancestors before the 17th century, a combination of the quality of the historical record, the disconnects caused by migration, and just generally the vicissitudes of families and genealogies, so this is probably a vast underrepresentation of the proportion with actual royal descent, let alone kinship to royals through non-royal ancestry.
>

True, but on the other hand those who can trace royal kinship are apt to
experience selection bias and over-estimate the probability.

Ian

On Sunday, June 4, 2023 at 3:42:32 AM UTC-7, Ian Goddard wrote:
> taf wrote:
> > There is a _big_ caveat to this. The small number of people on WDYTYA with royal descent are those with _traceable_ royal ancestry. The majority of people cannot trace any ancestors before the 17th century, a combination of the quality of the historical record, the disconnects caused by migration, and just generally the vicissitudes of families and genealogies, so this is probably a vast underrepresentation of the proportion with actual royal descent, let alone kinship to royals through non-royal ancestry.
> >
> True, but on the other hand those who can trace royal kinship are apt to
> experience selection bias and over-estimate the probability.

Undoubtedly. It is exactly the social status likely to have royal kinship that makes it easier to trace pedigrees. That said, I think there is a lot of variation from place to place. I suspect in Ireland, given the number of kingdoms they had, the subsequent social leveling effect of the Anglo-Norman plantation, and the social disruption of the famine, that current Irish of native origin probably almost all have royal ancestry, even though the majority of them cannot trace their ancestry before the 18th century.

taf

On Friday, May 5, 2023 at 3:59:57 PM UTC-7, Peter Stewart wrote:

> In my own case one of my maternal great-grandmothers as a widow married
> one of my paternal great-granduncles, but I am not descended from this
> marriage. The first known common ancestor of my parents was living in
> the mid-18th century. This is probably more typical of the world-wide
> Anglo-Celtic population than any lineage that could be meaningfully
> called inbred.

Mine have no identifiable common ancestry, having derived from different regions both before and after the respective families immigrated. My maternal grandparents may have one in the mid-18th century, but this is very iffy. Otherwise I have to go a lot farther back to find an intramarriage in my own pedigree. Maternal great-great-grandparents from the Somerset coal area were supposedly first cousins (their mothers had the same surname; my grandfather - their grandson - told me that they wouldn't have been permitted to marry had they been second cousins but since they were first cousins it was allowed, which seems confused, yet a circumstantial case can be made for them having been first cousins). Paternal great-great-grandparents from a small Baden village received a Catholic dispensation for first-cousin marriage, having already had a child; and on a different line, a set of great-great-great-grandparents from another Baden village who were maternal first cousins, while their fathers were also paternal first cousins of the couples' sibling-mothers.
> Many people with English ancestry might find Edward III as their closest
> crowned-head connection if they could get back far enough. Multiple
> lines to him in most cases would reflect endogamy based on geographic
> proximity and/or religious confession: broadly, villagers marrying
> meetable eligible partners within walking/riding distance, or in US
> gateway terms Quakers marrying other Quakers, Episcopalians other
> Episcopalians, etc.

My multiple Edward III lines reflect nothing so limiting, just the most broad-level migration patterns from England to New England and on from there - a late 19th-century marriage in northern Pennsylvania involving people of different religious affiliations whose ancestors were largely distinct back to the time of immigration, though in both cases happening to include an immigrant with EIII descent.

> Not "high" inbreeding in the vast majotiy of
> instances. The Habsburgs and Bourbons have left royalty in general with
> a largely inaccurate reputation.

Among the 'high-inbreeding' group, I would include the pre-Habsburg Iberians and post-Habsburg Portuguese (though admittedly these all probably aren't well-enough known to have had much influence on general perception).

taf

On Sunday, June 4, 2023 at 8:16:06 PM UTC+1, taf wrote:
> On Friday, May 5, 2023 at 3:59:57 PM UTC-7, Peter Stewart wrote:
> > Not "high" inbreeding in the vast majotiy of
> > instances. The Habsburgs and Bourbons have left royalty in general with
> > a largely inaccurate reputation.
> Among the 'high-inbreeding' group, I would include the pre-Habsburg Iberians and post-Habsburg Portuguese (though admittedly these all probably aren't well-enough known to have had much influence on general perception).
>

Although this is strictly outside medieval limits, surely the Ptolemys were the most
inbred family. Several [Ptolemy IV?] married their sisters or their cousins and Cleopatra II had
children with both her brothers. Yet unlike the habsburgs [charles II of Spain] their
classical portraits show no obvious abnormalities. Were they just lucky, or can
incestuous unions produce healthy offspring?

I believe Mary Queen of Scots and Lord darnley were 1st cousin, and although
they were both held to be beautiful, their son James I looks extremly odd in existing
paintings. The Julio claudians were another inbred dynasty. I believe that in ancient
greece siblings could marry, and it was not uncommon for uncles to marry neices in
ancient rome, the emperor Claudius a notable example. If the highest in the land
did it, why shouldnt the nobility and ordinary folk do the same, perhaps driven
by a wish to keep property or wealth in the same family.

Brother sister marriage seems rather odd, but marraige between 1st cousins is still
quite common in the middle east, persia and pakistan and maybe other places in
asia. I was told by a geneticist that infertility was a major problem in the arab countries
of the middle east, he was researching whether there was a link, and how to prevent
genetic diseases.

Mike

On Tuesday, June 20, 2023 at 10:15:39 AM UTC-7, mike davis wrote:
> Although this is strictly outside medieval limits, surely the Ptolemys were the most
> inbred family. Several [Ptolemy IV?] married their sisters or their cousins and Cleopatra II had
> children with both her brothers. Yet unlike the habsburgs [charles II of Spain] their
> classical portraits show no obvious abnormalities. Were they just lucky, or can
> incestuous unions produce healthy offspring?

Incestuous marriages tend to concentrate whatever is there already. If there are recessive genetic abnormalities in the genome of the common ancestor, then they are more likely to reveal themselves as genetic defects in the products of incestuous marrige. If there aren't any (at least not any important ones), then an incestuous marriage prevents such mutant recessive traits from being introdiced into the line. There is a second possibility as well. Some recessive traits, when present in two copies, result in premature spontaneous abortion of the fetus, so you only see the ones that are healthy.

> I believe Mary Queen of Scots and Lord darnley were 1st cousin,

First cousins, once removed.

> and although
> they were both held to be beautiful, their son James I looks extremly odd in existing
> paintings. The Julio claudians were another inbred dynasty. I believe that in ancient
> greece siblings could marry, and it was not uncommon for uncles to marry neices in
> ancient rome, the emperor Claudius a notable example.

Note that the Ptolomeids did not invent this - they inherited it from the Persians and other contemporary dynasties, who believed in keeping the royal blood pure, and other dynasties founded by Alexander's generals adopted the same practice. The Incas were also highly inbred, at least in the later years, for the same reason.

> If the highest in the land
> did it, why shouldnt the nobility and ordinary folk do the same, perhaps driven
> by a wish to keep property or wealth in the same family.

This was not uncommon in the non-royal upper class in ancient Egypt.

> Brother sister marriage seems rather odd, but marraige between 1st cousins is still
> quite common in the middle east, persia and pakistan and maybe other places in
> asia. I was told by a geneticist that infertility was a major problem in the arab countries
> of the middle east, he was researching whether there was a link, and how to prevent
> genetic diseases.

A lot of genetic studies have been done in modern Muslim populations due to the prevalence of first-cousin marriages for this reason. You also see it in other populations isolated by religion. Druze, Amish, Yazidi, etc.

On Tuesday, June 20, 2023 at 5:23:13 PM UTC-7, taf wrote:
> On Tuesday, June 20, 2023 at 10:15:39 AM UTC-7, mike davis wrote:

> > I believe Mary Queen of Scots and Lord darnley were 1st cousin,
> First cousins, once removed.

Oops, meant to say half-first cousins.

taf

On Wednesday, June 21, 2023 at 1:23:13 AM UTC+1, taf wrote:
> On Tuesday, June 20, 2023 at 10:15:39 AM UTC-7, mike davis wrote:
> > Although this is strictly outside medieval limits, surely the Ptolemys were the most
> > inbred family. Several [Ptolemy IV?] married their sisters or their cousins and Cleopatra II had
> > children with both her brothers. Yet unlike the habsburgs [charles II of Spain] their
> > classical portraits show no obvious abnormalities. Were they just lucky, or can
> > incestuous unions produce healthy offspring?
> Incestuous marriages tend to concentrate whatever is there already. If there are recessive genetic abnormalities in the genome of the common ancestor, then they are more likely to reveal themselves as genetic defects in the products of incestuous marrige. If there aren't any (at least not any important ones), then an incestuous marriage prevents such mutant recessive traits from being introdiced into the line. There is a second possibility as well. Some recessive traits, when present in two copies, result in premature spontaneous abortion of the fetus, so you only see the ones that are healthy.
> > I believe Mary Queen of Scots and Lord darnley were 1st cousin,
> First cousins, once removed.
> > and although
> > they were both held to be beautiful, their son James I looks extremly odd in existing
> > paintings. The Julio claudians were another inbred dynasty. I believe that in ancient
> > greece siblings could marry, and it was not uncommon for uncles to marry neices in
> > ancient rome, the emperor Claudius a notable example.
> Note that the Ptolomeids did not invent this - they inherited it from the Persians and other contemporary dynasties, who believed in keeping the royal blood pure, and other dynasties founded by Alexander's generals adopted the same practice. The Incas were also highly inbred, at least in the later years, for the same reason.
> > If the highest in the land
> > did it, why shouldnt the nobility and ordinary folk do the same, perhaps driven
> > by a wish to keep property or wealth in the same family.
> This was not uncommon in the non-royal upper class in ancient Egypt.

what i meant to say but forgot, isnt it likely that human races were quite inbred untill
quite recently say the european voyages of discovery to the present. i mean the very
fact that we form distinct races with distinct features suggest that there was some
period of geographic isolation in our past which allowed those to develop.

> > Brother sister marriage seems rather odd, but marraige between 1st cousins is still
> > quite common in the middle east, persia and pakistan and maybe other places in
> > asia. I was told by a geneticist that infertility was a major problem in the arab countries
> > of the middle east, he was researching whether there was a link, and how to prevent
> > genetic diseases.
> A lot of genetic studies have been done in modern Muslim populations due to the prevalence of first-cousin marriages for this reason. You also see it in other populations isolated by religion. Druze, Amish, Yazidi, etc.

what about even smaller isolated groups like amazon natives, eskimos, i dont know the generic
term, but first nation types, who often seem at least when contacted number only a few 100
at the most. surely they would be even more inbred due to their self imposed isolation,
wherby they didnt seem to even mix with other natives but live in conflict with them, at least
in the 19 & 20th centuries. And i recall reading that incestuous unions are not uncommon
today among eskimos or greenlanders. Is christianity the only religion which officially at
least frowns on such things?

Mike

On Wednesday, June 21, 2023 at 5:57:23 PM UTC-4, mike davis wrote:
> On Wednesday, June 21, 2023 at 1:23:13 AM UTC+1, taf wrote:
> > On Tuesday, June 20, 2023 at 10:15:39 AM UTC-7, mike davis wrote:
> > > Although this is strictly outside medieval limits, surely the Ptolemys were the most
> > > inbred family. Several [Ptolemy IV?] married their sisters or their cousins and Cleopatra II had
> > > children with both her brothers. Yet unlike the habsburgs [charles II of Spain] their
> > > classical portraits show no obvious abnormalities. Were they just lucky, or can
> > > incestuous unions produce healthy offspring?
> > Incestuous marriages tend to concentrate whatever is there already. If there are recessive genetic abnormalities in the genome of the common ancestor, then they are more likely to reveal themselves as genetic defects in the products of incestuous marrige. If there aren't any (at least not any important ones), then an incestuous marriage prevents such mutant recessive traits from being introdiced into the line. There is a second possibility as well. Some recessive traits, when present in two copies, result in premature spontaneous abortion of the fetus, so you only see the ones that are healthy.
> > > I believe Mary Queen of Scots and Lord darnley were 1st cousin,
> > First cousins, once removed.
> > > and although
> > > they were both held to be beautiful, their son James I looks extremly odd in existing
> > > paintings. The Julio claudians were another inbred dynasty. I believe that in ancient
> > > greece siblings could marry, and it was not uncommon for uncles to marry neices in
> > > ancient rome, the emperor Claudius a notable example.
> > Note that the Ptolomeids did not invent this - they inherited it from the Persians and other contemporary dynasties, who believed in keeping the royal blood pure, and other dynasties founded by Alexander's generals adopted the same practice. The Incas were also highly inbred, at least in the later years, for the same reason.
> > > If the highest in the land
> > > did it, why shouldnt the nobility and ordinary folk do the same, perhaps driven
> > > by a wish to keep property or wealth in the same family.
> > This was not uncommon in the non-royal upper class in ancient Egypt.
> what i meant to say but forgot, isnt it likely that human races were quite inbred untill
> quite recently say the european voyages of discovery to the present. i mean the very
> fact that we form distinct races with distinct features suggest that there was some
> period of geographic isolation in our past which allowed those to develop..
> > > Brother sister marriage seems rather odd, but marraige between 1st cousins is still
> > > quite common in the middle east, persia and pakistan and maybe other places in
> > > asia. I was told by a geneticist that infertility was a major problem in the arab countries
> > > of the middle east, he was researching whether there was a link, and how to prevent
> > > genetic diseases.
> > A lot of genetic studies have been done in modern Muslim populations due to the prevalence of first-cousin marriages for this reason. You also see it in other populations isolated by religion. Druze, Amish, Yazidi, etc.
> what about even smaller isolated groups like amazon natives, eskimos, i dont know the generic
> term, but first nation types, who often seem at least when contacted number only a few 100
> at the most. surely they would be even more inbred due to their self imposed isolation,
> wherby they didnt seem to even mix with other natives but live in conflict with them, at least
> in the 19 & 20th centuries.

Human populations less than 100 are *definitely* incompatible with long term survival and lack suficient genetic diversity to maintain. A hunter-gather group may operate in groups of under or near 100, but they aboslutely mix with other groups if they have any chance of generational survival.
--Joe C

On Wednesday, June 21, 2023 at 2:57:23 PM UTC-7, mike davis wrote:

> what i meant to say but forgot, isnt it likely that human races were quite inbred untill
> quite recently say the european voyages of discovery to the present. i mean the very
> fact that we form distinct races with distinct features suggest that there was some
> period of geographic isolation in our past which allowed those to develop..

The thing is, distinct races never really existed. They are cultural definitions drawing divisions at arbitrary points along a continuum. No matter how far back you go, there was not a point where you had a Caucasian group that was isolated from a Negroid group. It's just that the early stages of globalization suddenly brought together people from the extremes of this continuum, and this made it look like there was a clearer distinction than there really was. Pick people along the intermediate belt, and some characteristics would group them with one race, other characteristics with the other, and the racial grouping of these people is entirely based ont he whim of the person doing the grouping as to which characteristic should be treated as diagnostic.

That is not to say that individual tribal/cultural groupings were not inbred to a degree - that is how a population could develop characteristic genetic markers that can then be used to track their migrations, but it was never a situation of complete isolation except in very rare circumstances, and the inbreeding that did occur was not of the type we have been talking about. It was more akin to what was seen in a European village before the Industrial Revolution. Without ever marrying siblings or even first cousins, most couples would nonetheless have shared many of their ancestors 300 years before.

> > A lot of genetic studies have been done in modern Muslim populations due to the prevalence of first-cousin marriages for this reason. You also see it in other populations isolated by religion. Druze, Amish, Yazidi, etc.
> what about even smaller isolated groups like amazon natives, eskimos, i dont know the generic
> term, but first nation types, who often seem at least when contacted number only a few 100
> at the most.

The truly isolated groups of this type are not amenable to genetic study because of the challenges of access, the need for long-term contact and large-scale pedigrees to do the studies, etc. The groups I mentioned, while genetically isolated, are not so socially isolated that they can't be readily interacted with.

Inuit, by the way, are not very genetically isolated, for the most part. While they live in small communities, people would regularly leave one community for another and individuals might travel long distances. Anthopologists found them having immediate familial connections within a short number of generations linking communities spanning 100s of kilometers.

> surely they would be even more inbred due to their self imposed isolation,
> wherby they didnt seem to even mix with other natives but live in conflict with them, at least
> in the 19 & 20th centuries.

Even when living in conflict, this often involved the taking of prisoners that were incorporated into the communities of their captors, but most of them have established cultural norms of exchange of marriage partners among groups.

> And i recall reading that incestuous unions are not uncommon
> today among eskimos or greenlanders. Is christianity the only religion which officially at
> least frowns on such things?

If by incestuous you mean siblings, most religions frown on that. If you mean more distant, like first cousins, among Christians it is mostly just Catholics where it is official. Most Protestant denominations take no formal position, though there is a growing resistence from the cultural/medical perspective - most people say 'yuck', not because it is sinful, but because it is known to increase the risk of genetic defects and because it is viewed as what backward country-folk do.

While it is not a religion, per se, traditional Navajo cultural practices are even more strict - marrying anyone from their father's or mother's entire clan, or any of the other clans with which those clans have historical associations (for example, they jointly participated in a well-remembered livestock raid or battle, or traveled together on their return from a 19th century internment camp) violates their incest taboo and risks insanity.

On Thursday, June 22, 2023 at 5:59:29 AM UTC+1, taf wrote:
> On Wednesday, June 21, 2023 at 2:57:23 PM UTC-7, mike davis wrote:
>
> > what i meant to say but forgot, isnt it likely that human races were quite inbred untill
> > quite recently say the european voyages of discovery to the present. i mean the very
> > fact that we form distinct races with distinct features suggest that there was some
> > period of geographic isolation in our past which allowed those to develop.
> The thing is, distinct races never really existed. They are cultural definitions drawing divisions at arbitrary points along a continuum. No matter how far back you go, there was not a point where you had a Caucasian group that was isolated from a Negroid group. It's just that the early stages of globalization suddenly brought together people from the extremes of this continuum, and this made it look like there was a clearer distinction than there really was. Pick people along the intermediate belt, and some characteristics would group them with one race, other characteristics with the other, and the racial grouping of these people is entirely based ont he whim of the person doing the grouping as to which characteristic should be treated as diagnostic.
>
> That is not to say that individual tribal/cultural groupings were not inbred to a degree - that is how a population could develop characteristic genetic markers that can then be used to track their migrations, but it was never a situation of complete isolation except in very rare circumstances, and the inbreeding that did occur was not of the type we have been talking about. It was more akin to what was seen in a European village before the Industrial Revolution. Without ever marrying siblings or even first cousins, most couples would nonetheless have shared many of their ancestors 300 years before.

yes in the past where the general horizon was little further than the village, most communities must have had quite a restricted
gene pool. I think most history books talk of the demographic revolution that accompanied the industrial one, which must have
had a huge change in the genes of the population, which is surely charging ahead in todays conurbations.

But getting back to the ancients, in Athens you could marry the sister if you shared the same father, but not of the if you shared
the same mother. But in Sparta it was the otherway round. And there seems a high incidence of incestuous
marriage in Arsinoe according to the census returns which survive from the 2nd century AD [132 families out of 231] But
apparently most wives in ancient/roman egypt were called sisters whether or not they were related to their husbands,
but in egypt even twins could marry.

> > > A lot of genetic studies have been done in modern Muslim populations due to the prevalence of first-cousin marriages for this reason. You also see it in other populations isolated by religion. Druze, Amish, Yazidi, etc.

i just looked up Yazidis, and they seem to be an example of a group where marriage outside the community is banned,
for fear of assimilation and loss of identity. These groups like Amish and Menonites have their isolation
buttressed by religious 'control' of the individual. But this doesnt necessarily means they have to marry their
close kin, but it does seem that there is a often a link where groups enforce certain rules, usually over women
marrying outside a faith.

I read in a recent paper* dealing with kin marriage, that its a generally agreed that human society evolved
from small groups closely related, so it may be some genetic trait in itself.

"Since humans have mainly evolved in small groups, with limited mate choice and
high resultant levels of homozygosity, a decline in consanguinity could lead to the disruption
of advantageous gene complexes"

*Consanguineous Marriage and Human Evolution, A.H. Bittles and M.L. Black
Annual Review of Anthropology , 2010, Vol. 39 (2010), pp. 193-200, C1, 201-207

homozygosity was a new word for me!

Mike

On Thursday, June 22, 2023 at 4:38:12 AM UTC-7, mike davis wrote:
> I read in a recent paper* dealing with kin marriage, that its a generally agreed that human society evolved
> from small groups closely related, so it may be some genetic trait in itself.
>
> "Since humans have mainly evolved in small groups, with limited mate choice and
> high resultant levels of homozygosity, a decline in consanguinity could lead to the disruption
> of advantageous gene complexes"

The sentence before asks, "Could there be any downside to these changes?", after discussing a range of benefits to the reduction in consanguinity brought about through modern panmixia. Sort of an 'on the other hand, it's not all bad.' There is nothing in the paper to suggest consanguineous marriage is itself genetically influenced, highlighting social factors as the primary correlates.

taf