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From SSRN:
The Churches’ Bans on Consanguineous Marriages, Kin-Networks and Democracy
58 Pages Posted: 16 Dec 2016 Last revised: 20 Jan 2017
Jonathan F. Schulz
Yale University, Department of PsychologyAbstract
This paper tests the hypothesis that extended kin-groups, as characterized by a high level of cousin marriages, impact the proper functioning of formal institutions. Consistent with this hypothesis I find that countries with high cousin marriage rates exhibit a weak rule of law and are more likely autocratic. Further evidence comes from a quasi-natural experiment. In the early medieval ages the Church started to prohibit kin-marriages. Using the variation in the duration and extent of the Eastern and Western Churches’ bans on consanguineous marriages as instrumental variables, reveals highly significant point estimates of the percentage of cousin marriage on an index of democracy. An additional novel instrument, cousin-terms, strengthens this point: the estimates are very similar and do not rest on the European experience alone. Exploiting within country variation support these results. These findings point to the importance of marriage patterns for the proper functioning of formal institutions and democracy.
Schultz gives the example of variation within Italy:
A prominent example of within country variation in institutional quality is Italy where institutions function less well in the south. Cousin marriage rates (around 1960) are considerably higher in the south, where also the duration of the Western Church’s cousin marriage ban was shorter. Regression results reveal that cousin marriage rates at the provincial level are highly significantly correlated with mafia activity (as a proxy for institutional failure). This does not simply reflect a North South divide. The relation also holds within the North and the South.
Southern Italy is more mountainous than the Po Valley of the north, so it was harder for people to get around when courting. Cavalli-Sforza did a study decades ago that showed that people in Italian villages started marrying people from further away after bus service was introduced.
I hadn’t been aware that St. Augustine had made my basic point around 400 AD:
The early Christian theologian St. Augustine (354 – 430) propagated a ban on consanguineous marriages by pointing out that marrying outside the kin-group enlarges the range of social relations and “should thereby bind social life more effectively by involving a greater number of people in them”
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This study sounds like something I read on hbd chick blog 6 years ago
Pope Gregory instructed Augustine on his mission to England to outlaw cousin marriage because he believed it tended to be childless. This belief was from Roman folklore and was a common one.Replies: @Difference Maker, @27 year old, @Veritatis, @Jus' Sayin'...
OT
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/ive-worked-refugees-decades-europes-afghan-crime-wave-mind-21506?page=show
More interesting than the quote is the source
She has accurately diagnosed the problem, is horrified and disgusted, but cannot even begin to fathom that refugee resettlement in general is a policy with essentially no benefits and massive costs to the west, that is not sustainable if we truly want to preserve our open society, women's rights, and freedom to enjoy common spaces.
And these kind of liberals, 99% of whom are not nearly as in touch with reality as this author, make up a numerical majority of the U.S., a large majority in Europe, and the vast majority in all western urban areas where these changes are happening the fastest. By the time the consequences of these policies are bad enough to wake up large numbers of voters it will be too late. Even in the US, the Trump administration will only represent a temporary slowing in the rate of acceleration of these insane policies, not even a pause.
Some time ago I read (10,000 Year Explosion? Freakonomics?) that the invention of bicycles greatly increased the “courting distance” in Britain. Horses were expensive enough that most young men were able to court only those women within a couple hours’ walking distance. Bicycles changed things completely, as two hours on a bicycle covers a much greater distance than two hours walking.
It’s an old idea. C.D. Darlington wrote about it in the 60s.
Pope Gregory instructed Augustine on his mission to England to outlaw cousin marriage because he believed it tended to be childless. This belief was from Roman folklore and was a common one.
If only...
How can this be reconciled with the idea that diversity undermines institutions and rule of law? Also, Robert Putnam etc.
By the time practical bicycles were on the market, Britain had an effective system of passenger trains.
Generally for Whitsun, to the seaside (which is where you initially made the first acquaintance of young giant-hatted and deceptively-corseted hotties and, crucially, found out their addresses back in t'milltowns, for bike-driven courting), and for funerals.
My grandpa lost his top front teeth to a bicycle in Edwardian times. Racketing downhill to meet a lass after a long day shoving tubs of clay round the brickfield, a chicken ran out from a farmyard, attacked his front wheel, and sent him arse over tip. Wore a false set right though the War, and Hitler's War, till he died, a few weeks after Sputnik was launched. Him and all his pals were bike-mad, and after the War some managed to get ex-WD motorcycles. Off to the Isle of Man! Become a total racing fanny-magnet, the girls come to you!!
Not grandpa, being married by then he stuck with tennis. Which, unlike cricket and football, was another inexpensive way to meet fit birds from all over the country, if your team could stick in the leagues long enough.
I think by the time of Charlemagne, the Church had outlawed marriage between sixth cousins. The Church was way ahead of the curve on cousin marriage.
Where are these guys, who can actually correctly identify all of their sixth cousins? Or even half of them.How many people under the age of 30, can correctly define the difference between a second cousin, and a first-cousin-once-removed?
Phil > What is a cousin marriage history of Askinazi Jews?if you pay for a matchmaker, you don't get a cousin-marriageReplies: @415 reasons, @The Z Blog, @Yojimbo/Zatoichi
This is not to say that the Church policy had no salutary effect: certainly it incentivized awareness of lineage and accordingly distanced the degrees of affinity. However, the prohibited degrees were reduced from seven to four, in the thirteenth century (the Fourth Lateran Council). I suspect one reason may have been that the practical unworkability in isolated, endogenous regions or social milieus gave a convenient pretext for (usually well-to-do) feignants to request marital annulments on the grounds of subsequently discovered, un-dispensed consanguinity.
* Aristocrats of European Christendom were an exclusive elite but were not exactly *closed off* as were and are the Hindu Brahmins; social mobility was probably about the same as it is today.
India offers the inverse example. South India historically had high rates of maternal cousin marriage. It is changing now. But rule of law is better in south India.
What is a cousin marriage history of Askinazi Jews?
Perhaps, but how could young men in late Victorian and Edwardian times find introductions to women in villages two hours away by bicycle where they didn’t know anyone to vouch for them?
There is a REASON why churches cluster in denominations, with the resultant all kind of regional & national "retreats" and etc.
Pope Gregory instructed Augustine on his mission to England to outlaw cousin marriage because he believed it tended to be childless. This belief was from Roman folklore and was a common one.Replies: @Difference Maker, @27 year old, @Veritatis, @Jus' Sayin'...
Not childless. Inbred. The “offspring cannot thrive”
Ah advancedatheist, there were all sorts of courting and mating institutions. Among them, the Church of England, various lay Christian Groups, voluntary associations, social organizations, and the like. Along with various festivals, and so forth with introductions and vouching. All that gone in extreme mobility and atomized individuals without any social organizations to mediate interactions between radical individuals.
All that, gone. Gone largely because of radio and then television; plus diversity pushing White flight over fight.
IMHO, the key challenge for the Alt Right is building mediating organizations, not Nazi LARPers, but real ones that connect men and women; provide fellowship; and crucially backing legal, moral, and physical in the fight against the authorities and immavaders who are intent on wiping out all Bad Whites by mass immavasion.
Atomized individuals don’t accomplish much. But not even Sherman thought to take on the Committee of Vigilance, which far from a rabble was composed of the most prominent and educated men in San Francisco.
These orgs are proto-reactionary, as you suggest.
Ask Roosh V. how the Jews reacted when he tried to get men to meet up.
Thanks for the "advice", Whiskey. You're a mensch.
You're 100% on the money, Whiskey. The difficulty in doing that is enormous. We have clots of already existing "mediating organizations", for example, that would take a budding Alt-Right popular movement and tactically "mirror" or "echo" its positions for the sole purpose of neutralizing or co-opting its members. Think of the Bolshevik criticism of the Socialists and trade unionists.
I've known any number of well-intended people who've talked themselves into believing a boilerplate city council resolution, the nodding assent of a legislator, and the whole mess of ground clutter that makes up democratic process signifies meaningful agreement and forward movement.
Because promoting distant marriage within a group promotes homogeneity within that group, as opposed to closer marriages creating localized genetic clumps and subsequent clannishness within it. Distant marriage within a group prevents the emergence of diversity within that group.
More interesting than the quote is the sourceReplies: @Selvar, @Alfa158, @415 reasons
I just love how the article feels obligated to intellectualize and rule out every other theory under the sun for why the mass rapes are occurring. So the barbarian horde you let into your society rapes your women and has a “deep and abiding” contempt for your civilization huh? Well No Sh!t Sherlock. Next you’ll post a 5,000 word essay in which you come to the surprising conclusion that water is wet and the sky is blue.
I think Fukuyama wrote about this in the Origins of Political Order? That was a pretty good book (or actually two books), it’s too bad he doesn’t have any interest in/can’t talk about HBD.
Also:
White nationalists: Can you get a load of these Pakistanis/Iraqis? They marry people within their own family, with whom they share common ancestry! What barbarians!
Same white nationalists: If you don’t marry someone within your race, with whom you share common ancestry, to preserve your ancestral line, you are a race traitor, cuckold, degenerate, brainwashed puppet of the Jews, etc. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to preserve your genus by marrying and having children with someone like you to perpetuate your unique genetic heritage.
(I know, I know, glasses can be part empty and part full. But still.)
As Sailer correctly posited, we are all inbred. But it's HOW MUCH inbred that makes the difference.
If a random Swede marries a random Dane, they probably have common ancestors-if you go really far back.
If he marries an Australian aborigine, all bets are off.
"Race mixing" between Danes and Swedes is a nonissue. Between whites and Australian aborigines it most certainly is.
Basically you can say flatly: A good mate is someone who has neither too many nor too few common ancestors. It is not a sufficient condition in and of itself but it is a necessary one, although 'too many' and 'too few' may be somewhat open to interpretation. They may vary somewhat with circumstance. But in their extremes they are always destructive and shameful.Replies: @Mustela Mendax, @TelfoedJohn, @U. Ranus, @anonguy
Woe to the guy with a hot cousin.
OT
His Alphaness Ramzan Kadyrov holds forth on essential principles of good strongmanship:
Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov tells HBO Real Sports that gay people are “devils” that should be taken to Canada
Kadyrov says if there are any gay people in Chechnya they should be removed in order to purify the blood of the Chechen people — with video.
I bet he has his pick of cousins.
That actually seems sensible enough, keep Trudeau busy.
I'm sure Sweden also is quite willing to let in some more strapping young gays.Replies: @Ivy
Population density within larger population areas like towns and cities could have also had an anti-inbreeding benefit back before the mere plebes also had access to faster travel over a long distance. It’s really only isolated villages that likely would have had this problem.
More interesting than the quote is the sourceReplies: @Selvar, @Alfa158, @415 reasons
Breaking News: “Sheep invite coyotes to picnic, dismayed at what ends up on the menu.”
No, they actually thought it led to childlessness. I’m not exactly sure why, since there probably would have been lots of examples of cousin marriage that did lead to kids.
I think by the time of Charlemagne, the Church had outlawed marriage between sixth cousins. The Church was way ahead of the curve on cousin marriage.
Probably the vast majority of marriages in all of history, prior to the last 150 years or so, were between 6th cousins or closer. Most people don’t even know all, most, or even any of their 128 5th great-grandparents, so that’s a rule that is both impractical and highly unlikely.
Even so, there's no doubt the Church was leading the charge against cousin marriage. They had the birth records so they were more than able to police it.Replies: @Wilkey
I remember when David Cameron was the prime minister of Britain, the media mentioning that he was a 5th cousin of the queen. People can keep track of this stuff with the right motivation.
FWIW, my sister researched our family history to the point of concluding that we are related to some obscure dude who came over on the Mayflower. I'll take it. Whether or not it's true.Replies: @Nico
7 The Z Blog > the Church had outlawed marriage between sixth cousins
Where are these guys, who can actually correctly identify all of their sixth cousins? Or even half of them.
How many people under the age of 30, can correctly define the difference between a second cousin, and a first-cousin-once-removed?
Phil > What is a cousin marriage history of Askinazi Jews?
if you pay for a matchmaker, you don’t get a cousin-marriage
10 advancedatheist > in villages two hours away by bicycle where they didn’t know anyone to vouch for them?
There is a REASON why churches cluster in denominations, with the resultant all kind of regional & national “retreats” and etc.
All that, gone. Gone largely because of radio and then television; plus diversity pushing White flight over fight.
IMHO, the key challenge for the Alt Right is building mediating organizations, not Nazi LARPers, but real ones that connect men and women; provide fellowship; and crucially backing legal, moral, and physical in the fight against the authorities and immavaders who are intent on wiping out all Bad Whites by mass immavasion.
Atomized individuals don't accomplish much. But not even Sherman thought to take on the Committee of Vigilance, which far from a rabble was composed of the most prominent and educated men in San Francisco.Replies: @bartok, @Paul Walker - Most beautiful man ever..., @JackOH, @anonguy
Jews have been focused for decades on destroying these organizations among whites. They have an ethnic hatred of White patriarchy, i.e. civilization. Country clubs (racist), men’s clubs (sexist), fraternities (both).
These orgs are proto-reactionary, as you suggest.
Ask Roosh V. how the Jews reacted when he tried to get men to meet up.
Chicken or egg? Tribal cultures are insular and promote cousin marriage.
Also:
White nationalists: Can you get a load of these Pakistanis/Iraqis? They marry people within their own family, with whom they share common ancestry! What barbarians!
Same white nationalists: If you don't marry someone within your race, with whom you share common ancestry, to preserve your ancestral line, you are a race traitor, cuckold, degenerate, brainwashed puppet of the Jews, etc. There's nothing wrong with wanting to preserve your genus by marrying and having children with someone like you to perpetuate your unique genetic heritage.
(I know, I know, glasses can be part empty and part full. But still.)Replies: @Anonymous, @Almost Missouri
There is a difference between marrying a first cousin, always stupid, and marrying a seventh cousin four times removed.
As Sailer correctly posited, we are all inbred. But it’s HOW MUCH inbred that makes the difference.
If a random Swede marries a random Dane, they probably have common ancestors-if you go really far back.
If he marries an Australian aborigine, all bets are off.
“Race mixing” between Danes and Swedes is a nonissue. Between whites and Australian aborigines it most certainly is.
Basically you can say flatly: A good mate is someone who has neither too many nor too few common ancestors. It is not a sufficient condition in and of itself but it is a necessary one, although ‘too many’ and ‘too few’ may be somewhat open to interpretation. They may vary somewhat with circumstance. But in their extremes they are always destructive and shameful.
To say that sufficient consanguinity is a "necessary condition," though, is nonsense. The concept of hybrid vigor pertains to humans as well as other species. Many half-breeds have been highly estimable individuals - Will Rogers, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, even Obama if you're politically so inclined.Replies: @Opinionator
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/when-incest-is-best-kissi/There's and Icelandic app which lets find out if your partner is a cousin:
http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/business/kissing-cousins-icelandic-app-warns-if-your-date-is-a-relative-1.1390256... but a better app might be a Tinder for meeting your 3rd and 4th cousins.Replies: @Hapalong Cassidy
Beware of wishful thinking. Steve had a post on a study from Iceland that showed a clear fertility peak for third cousin marriages. The goldilocks point may be a lot closer than most like to think.Replies: @gcochran
All that, gone. Gone largely because of radio and then television; plus diversity pushing White flight over fight.
IMHO, the key challenge for the Alt Right is building mediating organizations, not Nazi LARPers, but real ones that connect men and women; provide fellowship; and crucially backing legal, moral, and physical in the fight against the authorities and immavaders who are intent on wiping out all Bad Whites by mass immavasion.
Atomized individuals don't accomplish much. But not even Sherman thought to take on the Committee of Vigilance, which far from a rabble was composed of the most prominent and educated men in San Francisco.Replies: @bartok, @Paul Walker - Most beautiful man ever..., @JackOH, @anonguy
“IMHO, the key challenge for the Alt Right is building mediating organizations, not Nazi LARPers”
Thanks for the “advice”, Whiskey. You’re a mensch.
Cousin marriage = two against nature:
As Sailer correctly posited, we are all inbred. But it's HOW MUCH inbred that makes the difference.
If a random Swede marries a random Dane, they probably have common ancestors-if you go really far back.
If he marries an Australian aborigine, all bets are off.
"Race mixing" between Danes and Swedes is a nonissue. Between whites and Australian aborigines it most certainly is.
Basically you can say flatly: A good mate is someone who has neither too many nor too few common ancestors. It is not a sufficient condition in and of itself but it is a necessary one, although 'too many' and 'too few' may be somewhat open to interpretation. They may vary somewhat with circumstance. But in their extremes they are always destructive and shameful.Replies: @Mustela Mendax, @TelfoedJohn, @U. Ranus, @anonguy
I believe that endogamy and exogamy both have benefits to survival of a racial line, and the greatest level of sexual attraction corresponds to an unconsciously-perceived balance between the two. I read somewhere that the degree of consanguinity optimal from the standpoint of fertility is fourth-cousin.
To say that sufficient consanguinity is a “necessary condition,” though, is nonsense. The concept of hybrid vigor pertains to humans as well as other species. Many half-breeds have been highly estimable individuals – Will Rogers, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, even Obama if you’re politically so inclined.
As Sailer correctly posited, we are all inbred. But it's HOW MUCH inbred that makes the difference.
If a random Swede marries a random Dane, they probably have common ancestors-if you go really far back.
If he marries an Australian aborigine, all bets are off.
"Race mixing" between Danes and Swedes is a nonissue. Between whites and Australian aborigines it most certainly is.
Basically you can say flatly: A good mate is someone who has neither too many nor too few common ancestors. It is not a sufficient condition in and of itself but it is a necessary one, although 'too many' and 'too few' may be somewhat open to interpretation. They may vary somewhat with circumstance. But in their extremes they are always destructive and shameful.Replies: @Mustela Mendax, @TelfoedJohn, @U. Ranus, @anonguy
An Icelandic study has found the most reproductive fitness among 3rd and 4th cousins:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/when-incest-is-best-kissi/
There’s and Icelandic app which lets find out if your partner is a cousin:
http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/business/kissing-cousins-icelandic-app-warns-if-your-date-is-a-relative-1.1390256
… but a better app might be a Tinder for meeting your 3rd and 4th cousins.
OT
His Alphaness Ramzan Kadyrov holds forth on essential principles of good strongmanship:
Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov tells HBO Real Sports that gay people are "devils" that should be taken to Canada
Kadyrov says if there are any gay people in Chechnya they should be removed in order to purify the blood of the Chechen people -- with video.
I bet he has his pick of cousins.Replies: @Pericles, @Anatoly Karlin, @eah
“Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov tells HBO Real Sports that gay people are “devils” that should be taken to Canada”
That actually seems sensible enough, keep Trudeau busy.
I’m sure Sweden also is quite willing to let in some more strapping young gays.
As Sailer correctly posited, we are all inbred. But it's HOW MUCH inbred that makes the difference.
If a random Swede marries a random Dane, they probably have common ancestors-if you go really far back.
If he marries an Australian aborigine, all bets are off.
"Race mixing" between Danes and Swedes is a nonissue. Between whites and Australian aborigines it most certainly is.
Basically you can say flatly: A good mate is someone who has neither too many nor too few common ancestors. It is not a sufficient condition in and of itself but it is a necessary one, although 'too many' and 'too few' may be somewhat open to interpretation. They may vary somewhat with circumstance. But in their extremes they are always destructive and shameful.Replies: @Mustela Mendax, @TelfoedJohn, @U. Ranus, @anonguy
> “Race mixing” between Danes and Swedes is a nonissue.
Beware of wishful thinking. Steve had a post on a study from Iceland that showed a clear fertility peak for third cousin marriages. The goldilocks point may be a lot closer than most like to think.
To say that sufficient consanguinity is a "necessary condition," though, is nonsense. The concept of hybrid vigor pertains to humans as well as other species. Many half-breeds have been highly estimable individuals - Will Rogers, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, even Obama if you're politically so inclined.Replies: @Opinionator
I read somewhere that the degree of consanguinity optimal from the standpoint of fertility is fourth-cousin.
Fertlity of whom? What degree of consanguinity is optimal from the standpoint of continuity of the ancestral line?
To say that sufficient consanguinity is a “necessary condition,” though, is nonsense. The concept of hybrid vigor pertains to humans as well as other species.
Have you ever tried to breed a horse with a donkey?
Mules have their merits, I guess, or they wouldn't have seen such service as pack animals. If they have mulish personalities, that's to their credit, to be rebellious against servitude. I flaunt my own mulishness when I can get away with it.Replies: @kaganovitch
Higher likelihood of miscarriages from genetic issues?
There was this one Icelandic study that theorized that the ideal distance between two people to maximize family health and size is to be sixth cousins (about the size of a nation). There are also plenty of studies that manage to cast doubts over the hybrid vigor theory of interracial mating as a rule, rather than the exception, with more miscarriages etc.
EDIT I found an old file with some comments I picked from Gregory Cochran’s blog, with some interesting links.
Reading Heartiste, hbdChick and similiar sites is like looking in the future. And that’s depressing taking into consideration what the former writes about.
More interesting than the quote is the sourceReplies: @Selvar, @Alfa158, @415 reasons
This refugee lady is more woke than most of the immigration reality deniers on the left yet even her proposed solutions which are radical for a leftist (deportation upon a crime, not letting in refugees who blatantly lie to obtain benefits) seem like wholly inadequate half-measures.
She has accurately diagnosed the problem, is horrified and disgusted, but cannot even begin to fathom that refugee resettlement in general is a policy with essentially no benefits and massive costs to the west, that is not sustainable if we truly want to preserve our open society, women’s rights, and freedom to enjoy common spaces.
And these kind of liberals, 99% of whom are not nearly as in touch with reality as this author, make up a numerical majority of the U.S., a large majority in Europe, and the vast majority in all western urban areas where these changes are happening the fastest. By the time the consequences of these policies are bad enough to wake up large numbers of voters it will be too late. Even in the US, the Trump administration will only represent a temporary slowing in the rate of acceleration of these insane policies, not even a pause.
Where are these guys, who can actually correctly identify all of their sixth cousins? Or even half of them.How many people under the age of 30, can correctly define the difference between a second cousin, and a first-cousin-once-removed?
Phil > What is a cousin marriage history of Askinazi Jews?if you pay for a matchmaker, you don't get a cousin-marriageReplies: @415 reasons, @The Z Blog, @Yojimbo/Zatoichi
If I were a-courtin’ I think I could tell not to go for the first cousin once removed because she’d be a generation older than the second cousin.
Pope Gregory instructed Augustine on his mission to England to outlaw cousin marriage because he believed it tended to be childless. This belief was from Roman folklore and was a common one.Replies: @Difference Maker, @27 year old, @Veritatis, @Jus' Sayin'...
>outlaw cousin marriage because he believed it tended to be childless
If only…
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/when-incest-is-best-kissi/There's and Icelandic app which lets find out if your partner is a cousin:
http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/business/kissing-cousins-icelandic-app-warns-if-your-date-is-a-relative-1.1390256... but a better app might be a Tinder for meeting your 3rd and 4th cousins.Replies: @Hapalong Cassidy
“An Icelandic study has found the most reproductive fitness among 3rd and 4th cousins:”
Very interesting. I always wondered about a sci-fi type hypothetical where a group of humans were sent to populate a new earth-like planet. What would be the minimum number of male-female pairs you would need to start out with to create a genetically viable population? Consider that first cousins share 2 of 4 grandparents, second cousins share 2 of 8 great-grandparents, and so on. If fourth cousins are optimal, that would mean you would need 16 male-female pairs (32 people) on your hypothetical new planet. Of course, for several generations, you would need to have laws to make sure a person didn’t marry someone from the same “branch”. And it goes without saying that monogamy would have to be strictly enforced.
All that, gone. Gone largely because of radio and then television; plus diversity pushing White flight over fight.
IMHO, the key challenge for the Alt Right is building mediating organizations, not Nazi LARPers, but real ones that connect men and women; provide fellowship; and crucially backing legal, moral, and physical in the fight against the authorities and immavaders who are intent on wiping out all Bad Whites by mass immavasion.
Atomized individuals don't accomplish much. But not even Sherman thought to take on the Committee of Vigilance, which far from a rabble was composed of the most prominent and educated men in San Francisco.Replies: @bartok, @Paul Walker - Most beautiful man ever..., @JackOH, @anonguy
” . . . [T]he key challenge for the Alt Right is building mediating organizations . . .”.
You’re 100% on the money, Whiskey. The difficulty in doing that is enormous. We have clots of already existing “mediating organizations”, for example, that would take a budding Alt-Right popular movement and tactically “mirror” or “echo” its positions for the sole purpose of neutralizing or co-opting its members. Think of the Bolshevik criticism of the Socialists and trade unionists.
I’ve known any number of well-intended people who’ve talked themselves into believing a boilerplate city council resolution, the nodding assent of a legislator, and the whole mess of ground clutter that makes up democratic process signifies meaningful agreement and forward movement.
“Diversity” includes wildly distant racial groups with huge genetic distance. Declining marrying your cousin for a girl of the same race the next town over doesn’t.
“Regression results reveal that cousin marriage rates at the provincial level are highly significantly correlated with mafia activity …”
Kinda brings new meaning to ‘the family’
Pope Gregory instructed Augustine on his mission to England to outlaw cousin marriage because he believed it tended to be childless. This belief was from Roman folklore and was a common one.Replies: @Difference Maker, @27 year old, @Veritatis, @Jus' Sayin'...
You’re talking about a different Augustine. Sailer’s referencing St. Augustine of Hippo, Church Father (and father of Western political science ). He lived and worked in Africa and Italy. The one you mention is Benedictine monk Augustine of Canterbury, founder of the English Church.
No doubt. I’d have to look it up, the the Church got pretty extreme with marriage laws in the sixth or seventh century. They were no very effective at the extremes. That’s the thing to keep in mind. The Church’s influence dissipated the first away from Rome. The early church in Britain, for example would be unrecognizable.
Even so, there’s no doubt the Church was leading the charge against cousin marriage. They had the birth records so they were more than able to police it.
Where are these guys, who can actually correctly identify all of their sixth cousins? Or even half of them.How many people under the age of 30, can correctly define the difference between a second cousin, and a first-cousin-once-removed?
Phil > What is a cousin marriage history of Askinazi Jews?if you pay for a matchmaker, you don't get a cousin-marriageReplies: @415 reasons, @The Z Blog, @Yojimbo/Zatoichi
Well, the Church was the keeper of birth and baptism records by the early Middle Ages. Even if you could not name your third cousins, they could.
No, the rules were really meant for the true nobility. The idea was to keep them from marrying their close cousins every time a branch died out in the male line, so as to keep the estates in the family. The lower nobility generally toed the line, but the more powerful a family was the less likely it felt the need to obey, until we reach the almighty Habsburgs, who did what they liked and ended up as a result with hideously deformed and mentally feeble rules like poor, pious, unhappy Charles II of Spain, or, much later, Ferdinand of Austria, who once denied that a bird he had shot was an eagle because, unlike the one he had seen from childhood on his family coat-of-arms, it did not have two heads.Replies: @songbird
OT
His Alphaness Ramzan Kadyrov holds forth on essential principles of good strongmanship:
Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov tells HBO Real Sports that gay people are "devils" that should be taken to Canada
Kadyrov says if there are any gay people in Chechnya they should be removed in order to purify the blood of the Chechen people -- with video.
I bet he has his pick of cousins.Replies: @Pericles, @Anatoly Karlin, @eah
Chechnya doesn’t really do cousin marriage, though they do tend to marry within their clans.
https://hbdchick.wordpress.com/2015/01/12/st-augustine-on-outbreeding/
I haven’t heard of this, but did hear something similar about Ford’s Model T and U.S. marriages.
Anecdotally there’s a correlation between kin marriage and weak institutions in Appalachia. Think Hatfields and McCoys.
I have some ancestors who lived in an isolated area of southwestern Virginia in the 1800s. There were 4-5 surnames that intermarried for about 80 years. My ggggrandfather (think I got the number of g’s right) and his siblings all married first cousins. But I noticed that they were careful not to marry double first cousins, of which there were many because of all the intermarriage. They probably knew that was going to cause problems, based on experience breeding animals.
Trains are much more expensive than bicycles. Even today I know young people who commute around NYC by bicycle because they cannot or don’t want to pay the $2.75 the subway charges.
That actually seems sensible enough, keep Trudeau busy.
I'm sure Sweden also is quite willing to let in some more strapping young gays.Replies: @Ivy
The way Sweden has been going they are more likely to let in strap-on young lesbians.
Don’t you just hate that? You come up with something clever, only to find out that someone famously clever beat you to it by a lot.
I remember being a smart helick teen telling my mom that should and is are not related, only to find that David Hume had already identified the is ought problem hundreds of years before.
*sigh* nothing new under the sun
The hypothesis is probably correct, but we knew that before this pointless excercise in quantitative history. As always, there are far too many experimental degrees of freedom.
Fertility means the number of children that result from the marriage. Maximum number of offspring I’d think would be ideal for the perpetuation of. the line.
Mules have their merits, I guess, or they wouldn’t have seen such service as pack animals. If they have mulish personalities, that’s to their credit, to be rebellious against servitude. I flaunt my own mulishness when I can get away with it.
No doubt true, and no doubt true beyond the provincial level too.
Just look at how our institutions have failed largely due to the inbred mafia that runs the US, and please note that the Sicilian and Italian ones that we always hear about are pretty much pikers.
Also:
White nationalists: Can you get a load of these Pakistanis/Iraqis? They marry people within their own family, with whom they share common ancestry! What barbarians!
Same white nationalists: If you don't marry someone within your race, with whom you share common ancestry, to preserve your ancestral line, you are a race traitor, cuckold, degenerate, brainwashed puppet of the Jews, etc. There's nothing wrong with wanting to preserve your genus by marrying and having children with someone like you to perpetuate your unique genetic heritage.
(I know, I know, glasses can be part empty and part full. But still.)Replies: @Anonymous, @Almost Missouri
Supreme Gent: it’s a fair question. Miscegenation vs. inbreeding, which one is the problem?
As the comment elsewhere on this thread from Romanian outlines, the answer can be both, even both at the same time in some unfortunate cases. There is inbreeding depression, outbreeding depression and even both simultaneously.
But there is also something else that escapes our default equalist assumptions: not all breeds are equal. Yes, obviously certain breeds are more suited for certain contexts, but even so, certain breeds are more suited for more contexts, and certain contexts prevail more and matter more, so all the context-suitability discussion is really just a digression. If you already have a better breed (of plants, crops, pets, livestock or family members) what good comes from mixing that breed with an inferior one?
You may or may not like it, but white nationalists have an objectively good case that their “breed” is the most accomplished. And inasmuch as every other “breed” now wants a piece of the white action, it would seem that the other “breeds” agree. So what is the argument for the apex breed to mix wholesale with other breeds that everyone agrees have less to show for themselves?
This is the final exam question for full credit. The result is civilizational pass or fail.
-The marriage bans weren’t as extensive as was previously assumed. The reason it seems that way is because of two conflicting ways of counting relatives at the time. One was Roman and the other was the “Germanic” one. In different parts of Europe, depending on years of romanisation, they would use either the Roman or Germanic one. For years scholars assumed the prohibitions couldn’t have been maintained because they were too extreme and simply unpractical. In reality the bans only got extreme during the late 11th-12th century. At that point people(mostly noble) used the prohibitions as a way of divorce by appealing to fictitious family trees. Hence the need for a streamlined and enforced prohibition in the early 13th century to get away from the corruption of marriage that the extreme bans had induced.
Moreover the evidence that Europe(even the Germanics) in the early middle ages 500-1000ad was tribal is somewhat flimsy. Tribalistic probably but not to the extent imagined previously.
The latest research goes beyond Jack Goody’s work. See the preeminent expert, David D’Avray’s books on kinship and marriage patterns in medieval times.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-0254.2012.00341.x/abstract
-The great anthropologist Robin Fox has found in a recent article that consanguinity is a very fertile and that explains part of the decline of fertility over centuries. Steve Sailer has argued the historic importance of “right sizing” a country which I have found a very useable and sensible way to make sense of history. The same might well be true of inbreeding vs outbreeding. As Hbd Chick noted it wasn’t just St. Augustine who commented on this. Aquinas noted the dangers of OUTbreeding.
https://hbdchick.wordpress.com/2013/08/27/thomas-aquinas-on-too-much-outbreeding/
globalism localised. hehe.
International socialism vs. national socialism? Globalism with just a part of the globe, like, a continent, or just the left end of a continent? Somehow I feel this kind of argument must be silly (and dangerous?). cannot quite nail it. Maybe, like “invade the world and invite the world,” iSteve is doing sth like “study the world and diss the world?” Everyone’s business is everyone’s business nowadays. Nobody can get a break.
This is an interesting idea. I know the Icelanders know quite a few of their forbears because they wish to avoid close relatives as mates/lovers even though everyone in Iceland is related. Assuming that in the past far more regions were like Iceland, it could be they did know of their forbears better than we do ours. Now, back to the 5th great grandparents, that may be a stretch.
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/4611-consanguinity-among-jews
An attempt has been made to ascertain the proportion of first-cousin marriages among English Jews upon the method invented by G. H. Darwin (“Fortnightly Review,” July, 1875), based on the number of marriages in which both bride and bride-groom have the same surname. This method gives a proportion of about one-fifth. Judging by this criterion, the percentage of cousin-marriages in the English peerage was 4.50 among the landed gentry, 3.75 in rural districts, 2.25 in London. Applying the same method to English Jews, Jacobs calculated that 7.52 per cent of their marriages were first-cousin marriages. By another method W. Stieda found that there were 23.02 per cent per thousand consanguineous marriages among the Jews of Alsace-Lorraine as compared with 8.97 among Catholics and 1.86 among Protestants (“Die Eheschliessungen in Elsass-Lorhringen,” 1872-76, Dorpat, 1878). It would therefore appear that the proportion of first-cousin marriages among Jews is about three times greater than among the non-Jewish population.
http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/468337/jewish/Prohibited-Marriages.htm
A Man May Marry:
4. His niece. In American and English civil law, a man may not marry a niece who is the daughter of his brother or sister, but may marry a niece who is the daughter of his wife’s brother or sister. The halakhic permission—even encouragement—to marry the daughter of a brother or sister is superseded by the civil law’s prohibition in this case.
5. His cousin.
A Woman May Marry:
4. Her cousin.
6. Her uncle. In Jewish incest law, an aunt-nephew marriage is prohibited, but an uncle-niece marriage is permitted even though the state prohibits it. A man may marry his deceased wife’s sister, but a woman may not marry her deceased husband’s brother. Even a childless widow, whom the Bible commanded to marry her husband’s brother, must today receive chalitzah, enforced separatio
If one has read any social histories of Georgian, Regency, and Victorian England, or even is familiar with Dickens’s novels, one will be aware that English people of this time covered in a day and on foot distances that seem astonishing to us today, distances on the order of fifty miles were not uncommon. Even back in the 1920s and 1930s my father’s family would often spend a Sunday afternoon walking the five miles to and the five miles from the Blue Hills reservation, in between probably hiking another five or so miles through the hills, blueberrying, sightseeing, and whatever. Distance was not the impediment to courtship that we pathetic moderns think it was.
A couple days a week his wife fixed him steak for breakfast because he had to walk 25 miles that day. The Austen characters thought nothing of walking 5 miles to and from a short visit.
Pope Gregory instructed Augustine on his mission to England to outlaw cousin marriage because he believed it tended to be childless. This belief was from Roman folklore and was a common one.Replies: @Difference Maker, @27 year old, @Veritatis, @Jus' Sayin'...
IIRC, HBD Chick or someone she referenced suggested that the Church’s ban on near kin relations was not done from any eleemosynary motive, such as eugenics, but rather from a strategy intended to ensure that wealth did not accumulate within family lineages but rather was diverted into the coffers of the Church.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali in her biography tells how in Somalia when people meet each other they start listing their ancestors in the likely hope that they’ll discover they’re 4th cousins or whatever. Everybody knew their family lines, IOW. Probably they like to think they’re all related to Mohammed.
I remember when David Cameron was the prime minister of Britain, the media mentioning that he was a 5th cousin of the queen. People can keep track of this stuff with the right motivation.
FWIW, my sister researched our family history to the point of concluding that we are related to some obscure dude who came over on the Mayflower. I’ll take it. Whether or not it’s true.
My niece just visited the village (population 1,000) located in hilly and mountainous farmland north and west of Rome where her Italian grandparents grew up. The nearest next village is a few miles away but visiting any other nearby village requires an arduous trek over hills or mountains. My niece was taken aback to discover that basically everyone in that village and nearby villages are related within two or three degrees of consanguinity. Everyone she met regarded her as a cousin in some degree. I suspect things have been this way since the Etruscans.
Are they transgressive of social norms? Are they disgusting to ordinary people? Can they weep and rage convincingly as angry victims? Perhaps chainsaw a cross or something in a staged setting? What the hell, we’re not proud, we’ll take them. (Only valid if applicant belongs to extreme left.)
iSteve readers seem to be major experts in Icelandic cousin marriage.
Where are these guys, who can actually correctly identify all of their sixth cousins? Or even half of them.How many people under the age of 30, can correctly define the difference between a second cousin, and a first-cousin-once-removed?
Phil > What is a cousin marriage history of Askinazi Jews?if you pay for a matchmaker, you don't get a cousin-marriageReplies: @415 reasons, @The Z Blog, @Yojimbo/Zatoichi
But you do get Tay-Sachs.
Hideously expensive, for the working man, trains. Unless the King was paying, uh-oh …
Generally for Whitsun, to the seaside (which is where you initially made the first acquaintance of young giant-hatted and deceptively-corseted hotties and, crucially, found out their addresses back in t’milltowns, for bike-driven courting), and for funerals.
My grandpa lost his top front teeth to a bicycle in Edwardian times. Racketing downhill to meet a lass after a long day shoving tubs of clay round the brickfield, a chicken ran out from a farmyard, attacked his front wheel, and sent him arse over tip. Wore a false set right though the War, and Hitler’s War, till he died, a few weeks after Sputnik was launched. Him and all his pals were bike-mad, and after the War some managed to get ex-WD motorcycles. Off to the Isle of Man! Become a total racing fanny-magnet, the girls come to you!!
Not grandpa, being married by then he stuck with tennis. Which, unlike cricket and football, was another inexpensive way to meet fit birds from all over the country, if your team could stick in the leagues long enough.
Didn’t England legalize first cousin marriage in the mid 19th century? Trollope’s novels are full of first cousin romance and marriages. Perhaps it was Parliament throwing off the tyranny of Rome.
I wonder if it had something to do with England’s eventual decline in fertility
What about the Old Testament Jews?
Beware of wishful thinking. Steve had a post on a study from Iceland that showed a clear fertility peak for third cousin marriages. The goldilocks point may be a lot closer than most like to think.Replies: @gcochran
That result is almost certainly noise.
Aquinas says in this context that we are seeking a mean between excessively closely related societies and excessively remotely related societies to avoid either lost openness or lost solidarity.
All that, gone. Gone largely because of radio and then television; plus diversity pushing White flight over fight.
IMHO, the key challenge for the Alt Right is building mediating organizations, not Nazi LARPers, but real ones that connect men and women; provide fellowship; and crucially backing legal, moral, and physical in the fight against the authorities and immavaders who are intent on wiping out all Bad Whites by mass immavasion.
Atomized individuals don't accomplish much. But not even Sherman thought to take on the Committee of Vigilance, which far from a rabble was composed of the most prominent and educated men in San Francisco.Replies: @bartok, @Paul Walker - Most beautiful man ever..., @JackOH, @anonguy
Game is already lost for the BadWhites, they always lose, Highland Clearances, Enclosures act, this is why they retreat to hollows in WV, etc.
They always lose, the Confederacy lost, etc.
They have already lost yet again in the post-Cold War rejiggering of society, did take a while to lose again but they managed to pull it off and now feel it in their bones, dying in droves of substance abuse, sure sign of a beaten/demoralized people, like Native Americans on reservations or Russians following the defeat of the Soviet Union.
Watching the mob pull down their few remaining monuments, more to come on that, but it is over there too.
It has been game over for these people for centuries, but they just don’t seem to get the message, bitter clinging being their wont.
As Sailer correctly posited, we are all inbred. But it's HOW MUCH inbred that makes the difference.
If a random Swede marries a random Dane, they probably have common ancestors-if you go really far back.
If he marries an Australian aborigine, all bets are off.
"Race mixing" between Danes and Swedes is a nonissue. Between whites and Australian aborigines it most certainly is.
Basically you can say flatly: A good mate is someone who has neither too many nor too few common ancestors. It is not a sufficient condition in and of itself but it is a necessary one, although 'too many' and 'too few' may be somewhat open to interpretation. They may vary somewhat with circumstance. But in their extremes they are always destructive and shameful.Replies: @Mustela Mendax, @TelfoedJohn, @U. Ranus, @anonguy
Not surprisingly, you feel that the right amount is probably about how much you and your people/tribe/race are inbred, no?
Or could your line stand a little more or less inbreeding? How much and why?
What do you know about line breeding? Or breeding? Or genetics?
It is just something the other does that you don’t like, at the end of the day and you are parroting non-quantitative rhetoric somebody else has pumped into your mind.
On the upside, these ‘inbred” societies haven’t developed, say, communism, a worldwide affliction like few others in history, and the product of our exogamous society.
Think, McFly, think….
“Aquinas says in this context that we are seeking a mean between excessively closely related societies and excessively remotely related societies to avoid either lost openness or lost solidarity.”
All that Aristotelian Golden Mean stuff is just far right populist extremism, whereas Camp of the Saints-style Open Borders is Mainstream.
I wonder if it had something to do with England's eventual decline in fertilityReplies: @Steve Sailer
I wonder if it had something to do with England’s eventual decline in fertility
Could be. I suspect that Galton dreaming up eugenics as a goal/program had something to do with the sub-1.0 TFR of Darwin’s ten children, which had something to do with their health problems related to being children of first cousins, and with general trends trickling down from the upper reaches of society that their dad’s big book contributed to.
According to Gregory Clark, upper middle class fertility in England took a beating from 1890 to 1940, but then recovered its relative standing as the rest of society followed its once lonely path.
You sound like TD on ‘ludes, dude.
Wordsworth might tramp 50 miles in 24 hours.
I remember being a smart helick teen telling my mom that should and is are not related, only to find that David Hume had already identified the is ought problem hundreds of years before.
*sigh* nothing new under the sunReplies: @Steve Sailer
Indeed.
I have some ancestors who lived in an isolated area of southwestern Virginia in the 1800s. There were 4-5 surnames that intermarried for about 80 years. My ggggrandfather (think I got the number of g's right) and his siblings all married first cousins. But I noticed that they were careful not to marry double first cousins, of which there were many because of all the intermarriage. They probably knew that was going to cause problems, based on experience breeding animals.Replies: @Steve Sailer
Pitcher Madison Bumgarner grew up in a small town in the Virginia mountains where Bumgarner isn’t a weird name: there are several dozen Bumgarners buried in the cemetery across the street from the home he grew up in. In high school, Madison Bumgarner dated a girl named Madison Bumgarner.
Stephenson’s recent scifi novel Seveneves has much on just that subject. The answer appears to be in the title.
Thanks. Do you have a cite?
True enough, but not for the peasants, and hardly for any but the really well-educated and well-off middle class people who began, in 14th century Northern Italy and the Low Countries, to be known as “patricians”. It is still a point of pride in Belgium to be able to prove descent from the “Lignages de Bruxelles”, that is, from precisely those seven families which emerged in the middle ages as the ruling mercantile and legal elite of that city and continued to be so until that pesky revolution at the end of the eighteenth century.
No, the rules were really meant for the true nobility. The idea was to keep them from marrying their close cousins every time a branch died out in the male line, so as to keep the estates in the family. The lower nobility generally toed the line, but the more powerful a family was the less likely it felt the need to obey, until we reach the almighty Habsburgs, who did what they liked and ended up as a result with hideously deformed and mentally feeble rules like poor, pious, unhappy Charles II of Spain, or, much later, Ferdinand of Austria, who once denied that a bird he had shot was an eagle because, unlike the one he had seen from childhood on his family coat-of-arms, it did not have two heads.
Many old church records aren't really organized so that they could easily be pieced together. Some are missing the maiden name of mothers, or the names of places within a parish. Many marriage records lack the names of parents. Often they are hard reading.
The article material about the Mafia, historically associated with the south of Italy, is reflected in the book The Godfather; it gives real insight into what it’s like to value family (in this case, The Family) above society. Don Corleone was disgusted by young men in his organization who enlisted in the war effort, because they owed their livelihood and loyalty to him, as head of the family. According to Michael, the Don sees himself as the equal to a head of state, who has men killed if they obstruct the interests of the family. The Bocciccio family is the extreme example of an inbred clan group; all justice comes from the family, not from society.
Understanding consanguineous marriage is the key to understanding hajnal line societies.
OT
His Alphaness Ramzan Kadyrov holds forth on essential principles of good strongmanship:
Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov tells HBO Real Sports that gay people are "devils" that should be taken to Canada
Kadyrov says if there are any gay people in Chechnya they should be removed in order to purify the blood of the Chechen people -- with video.
I bet he has his pick of cousins.Replies: @Pericles, @Anatoly Karlin, @eah
https://twitter.com/RISNSHTPOASTER/status/886301697601134594
Dead right. Even unaccompanied women weren’t fazed by yomping up to six miles there and back on a dark Sunday morning to get to church, across rough moorland. Try that in the Pennines in January snow, sans Goretex, in hobnailed leather boots, like they did. And back to work at six of a Monday morning, all fuelled by potatoes, biscuits, raw milk, and weak tea. No wonder they drank (discreetly, of course; they were ladies, after all). Difference was, nobody would ever dream of bothering them en route. God was watching them, and everyone knew it, back then. Can’t break that date.
Not necessarily. My uncle (mother’s brother) is three years older than I am, and his son (my first cousin) is younger than my son. So, the first cousin once removed is about the same age. Same in my husband’s family. So, my younger son is about the same age as his second cousins once removed. My husband’s cousins were about 10 years older and married 10 years younger. Therefore, their kids a generation older than our kids.
I’ve heard that if you were a constable or garda in Ireland, you had to be placed in a different county than the one in which you were born. Men had to be single, also, I believe, at least for a number of years.
I believe my grandfathers parents were related. They came from a very mountainous part of Kerry, but were married in the US. Curiously, their marriage record does not disclose the degree of relationship. They were not first cousins, but probably second. The record doesn’t go back far enough to be certain.
Blood marriages were not rare in the mountainous parts of Ireland. But the most common seemed to be third cousin or second cousin once removed. Some second, first being very rare indeed. Although, I speculate that it was more common among the Anglo-Irish, since they did not want to marry down, and their options were fewer.
No, the rules were really meant for the true nobility. The idea was to keep them from marrying their close cousins every time a branch died out in the male line, so as to keep the estates in the family. The lower nobility generally toed the line, but the more powerful a family was the less likely it felt the need to obey, until we reach the almighty Habsburgs, who did what they liked and ended up as a result with hideously deformed and mentally feeble rules like poor, pious, unhappy Charles II of Spain, or, much later, Ferdinand of Austria, who once denied that a bird he had shot was an eagle because, unlike the one he had seen from childhood on his family coat-of-arms, it did not have two heads.Replies: @songbird
I agree. Common people probably mostly knew up to their third cousins. What regulation there was probably was based more on the reading of banns than paper trees.
Many old church records aren’t really organized so that they could easily be pieced together. Some are missing the maiden name of mothers, or the names of places within a parish. Many marriage records lack the names of parents. Often they are hard reading.
I remember in one of the Dickens novels the husband was a music teacher. Every day he taught at 2 schools and then to the homes of other students.
A couple days a week his wife fixed him steak for breakfast because he had to walk 25 miles that day. The Austen characters thought nothing of walking 5 miles to and from a short visit.
This sort of reduces the issue to a matter of social engineering though. In Aquinas’s day, geographical proximity was the primary constraint social engineers faced as there was little mobility and communication. Now technology, mobility, and commerce have altered the environment such that social engineers aren’t as constrained by geographical limits in determining the “mean” they prefer.
Bumgarner was born and raised near Hickory, North Carolina, not in Virginia. Hickory used to be a furniture manufacturing center; now it’s just where you go to buy stuff made in other places, often China.
Mules have their merits, I guess, or they wouldn't have seen such service as pack animals. If they have mulish personalities, that's to their credit, to be rebellious against servitude. I flaunt my own mulishness when I can get away with it.Replies: @kaganovitch
Mules are sterile though.
Even so, there's no doubt the Church was leading the charge against cousin marriage. They had the birth records so they were more than able to police it.Replies: @Wilkey
“No doubt. I’d have to look it up, the the Church got pretty extreme with marriage laws in the sixth or seventh century. They were no very effective at the extremes.”
One of my best friends in high school turned out to be a third cousin, once removed. I discovered this when I learned his mother’s maiden name (the same as my grandmother’s) on Facebook and we compared notes. We went to high school several states away from where our common ancestor lived, so that was sort of surprising.
Last summer I met a (incredibly attractive) young woman who turned out to be a 3rd or 4th cousin. I learned her last name (my great-grandmother’s maiden name) and asked her if her family was from X (a small midwestern town) and they were. Again, this was several states away from the home of our common ancestor. I might have accidentally married her, except she was a bit too young for me and my wife’s not really into polygamy.
My great-aunt’s husband happened to be a 3rd or 4th cousin (don’t remember which). He was from some small town 50 miles or so away from the small town in which she was raised. They didn’t find out until well after they were married. Their kids turned out fine (and quite successful, actually).
I have two Mormon parents who have both done substantial genealogy, some of which goes back before 1600. Few people know much of their genealogy beyond maybe their great-grandparents, and most of your 3rd-4th-5th-6th cousins have surnames from unshared ancestral lines. For both of those reasons we run into such cousins all the time – and even work worth, socialize with, date, and even marry – but in most cases are completely unaware of it.
That’s precisely one of the reasons they retracted the prohibition down to the fourth degree- because people were unwittingly contracting consanguineous unions:
St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Supplementum Tertiæ Partis, Q. 54, Article 4.
Augustine was a smart and perceptive guy. It has taken centuries for liberals to unlearn such basic wisdom…
As others have pointed out, it would be difficult to consistently avoid marrying a sixth cousin or closer if you are from the same ethnic group and grew up in the same general region, in a time when Europe’s population density was a fifth to a tenth of what it is today.
This is not to say that the Church policy had no salutary effect: certainly it incentivized awareness of lineage and accordingly distanced the degrees of affinity. However, the prohibited degrees were reduced from seven to four, in the thirteenth century (the Fourth Lateran Council). I suspect one reason may have been that the practical unworkability in isolated, endogenous regions or social milieus gave a convenient pretext for (usually well-to-do) feignants to request marital annulments on the grounds of subsequently discovered, un-dispensed consanguinity.
* Aristocrats of European Christendom were an exclusive elite but were not exactly *closed off* as were and are the Hindu Brahmins; social mobility was probably about the same as it is today.
I remember when David Cameron was the prime minister of Britain, the media mentioning that he was a 5th cousin of the queen. People can keep track of this stuff with the right motivation.
FWIW, my sister researched our family history to the point of concluding that we are related to some obscure dude who came over on the Mayflower. I'll take it. Whether or not it's true.Replies: @Nico
First-cousin marriage is apparently valued and encouraged in many Islamic societies, especially Arab societies. In Saudi Arabia it is estimated over 60% of marriages are between first cousins, and reportedly the Pakis in Britain are a huge burden on the NHS due to recessive genetic ailments.