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From: sbishop@desire.wright.edu
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf-lovers,sci.bio
Subject: Re: Incest avoidance
Message-ID: <1991Apr5.102746.3111@desire.wright.edu>
Date: 5 Apr 91 15:27:46 GMT
References: <9276@plains.NoDak.edu> <1991Mar31.223444.11077@leland.Stanford.EDU>  <21487@crg5.UUCP>
Organization: University Computing Services, Wright State University
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In article <21487@crg5.UUCP>, szabo@crg5.UUCP (Nick Szabo) writes:
> In article <1991Apr2.035304.11461@leland.Stanford.EDU> repnomar@leland.Stanford.EDU (Janet M. Lafler) writes:
> 
>>[Structuralist et. al. schools of anthropology theory]
>>some still hold to socio-biological explanations, which I find, um, uncon-
>>vincing.  
> 
> Whoa, that went by a bit fast.  Slow down here.
> 
> "Still"?  Sociobiology, at 16 years old, as far newer than Structuralism 
> and most of the other schools you describe.  I would bet most anthropologists 
> have not read the works by any of Wilson, Dawkins, Symons, et. al. 
> even by 1991.
> 
> Also, you failed to describe the sociobiological explanation, which
> is as follows:
> 
> The proximate cause of the incest "taboo" (more properly called
> incest avoidance) is the behavioral development, upon sexual 
> maturity, of sexual avoidance between children who shared proximity 
> and a common caretaker between the ages of 2 and 5. This has been 
> confirmed by observations of various human societies, both where the 
> caretaker and/or children are related by genetics and/or adoption.
> 
> The ultimate cause is the harm caused by inbreeding, as has been
> discussed.  Genes which produce the above behavioral development
> tended to perpetuate themselves more often than their alleles 
> through human evolutionary history.  Note that evolution does not 
> require the behavior to be perfect, any more than evolution designed 
> bipedal creatures with a perfect back (ouch!).  It just has to benefit 
> the encoding genes more than its bad side-effects hurt them.
> 
> The theory is further confirmed from behavior of other primates,
> which develop a similar incest "taboo" without the accompanying cultural 
> structures required by the Structuralist, Symbolic, Interpretive, and 
> other pure-culture schools.
> 
> If sociobiology theory is right, Heinlein is fighting not only
> human cultural prejudice, but prejudice encoded in our genes.
> No wonder so many people hate him.  :-)
> 
> Taboos involving cousins, et. al,, are more sophisticated, and 
> the various cultural schools have more relevence for these,
> though it is not clear that biology is totally out of the picture.
> 
> (If anybody interested is not up on sociobiology theory, I'll be happy to 
> explain further proximate vs. ultimate causation).
> 
> 
> -- 
> Nick Szabo			szabo@sequent.com
> "If you want oil, drill lots of wells" -- J. Paul Getty
> The above opinions are my own and not related to those of any
> organization I may be affiliated with.

Seems to me that Goodall also observed this taboo in our relatives....