| .......... |
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| Why
do Humans Have an Incest Taboo? |
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| Most people in most
societies have a deeply embedded aversion to incestuous sex. |
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| We mean here something other than
child sexual molestation, but we mean heterosexual sex, consensual or otherwise,
between mother-son (as in Œdipus), father-daughter (as in Electra or Myrrha)
or brother-sister (as in Zeus and Hera), regardless of age. |
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| As with many things in our current
society, which overemphasizes so called scientific explanations, especially
biological, many of us tend to think that the incest taboo has a biological
origin, and exists as a protective trait caused by our evolution.
No. |
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| When two close relatives have sex
which produces an offspring, there is no disease or degeneration directly
resulting as many people would imagine. |
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| There is only an intensification
of already existing characteristics. |
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| Recessive genes may
be more likely to manifest. |
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| The effect is little different over
generations from cousin marriage, and that is and has been, practised in
hundreds of cultures world wide. |
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| If the factor that is emphasized
is negative or fatal, as with the royal families of Europe (the disease,
Hǽmophilia), then it will appear in due course. |
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| The strong negative feelings we have
about incest is nowhere near any minor revulsion we feel for cousin mating,
and biology is insufficient to explain the degree of revulsion. |
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| If we look at all our primate cousins,
we find that incest is practised one way or another by all of them, except
us. |
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| We suspect, therefore, that the taboo
goes back to somewhere around the very origins of humankind, the origins
of human culture. |
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| We see the origin of culture as having
something to do with the use of tools (sophisticated and complicated tools,
as other primates use simple tools) and language (sophisticated and complicated
languages, as other primates use simple forms of language). |
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| We now suspect that the three traits,
tools, language, and the incest taboo, are all related to each other and
related to the origin of humanity. |
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| The incest taboo requires that we
must exchange mates between groups, and that exchange was required for
us to communicate and develop our tools (increasing our likelihood to survive,
thrive and reproduce). |
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| Early families, based upon the taboo,
were part of those which developed culture, technology and co-operation,
and survived while our close cousins (the Neanderthals?) did not. Whatever. |
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| Families, in their various forms,
appear to be among our earliest social institutions ––
and communities were among the various institutions which developed as
extensions of those families, necessitated by the incest taboo, strengthened
by technology and made possible by complex language. |
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| While the taboo appears to be the
closest thing we have to a universal social institution, another argument
for its early appearance in human society, there are a few cases where
it is not only allowed, but prescribed. |
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| Brother sister incest was practised
among the royal families of people such as in Tahiti and in early dynasty
Egypt. |
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| The latter were African aristocracies,
and parts of the practice may also have been the origin of West African
matriliny by trans Saharan migrations. |
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| In the known cases of brother sister
marriage among kings and queens, it is explained by the huge degree of
hierarchy, and the considering of the kings and queens as god-like or above
the natural human level. |
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| Among the gods, incest was practised
without moral outcry, and so it was a way to set the royalties of those
societies as well above and apart from commoners. |
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| It is not necessary
for you to believe this argument. |
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| You do need to be aware of it, and
be able to show that you have learned about it (ie. if it is asked on an
exam question). |
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