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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 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 emphasised 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 us to communicate and develop our tools. |
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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 which 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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