Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!swrinde!ucsd!ucbvax!mtxinu!unisoft!fai!sequent!crg5!szabo From: szabo@crg5.UUCP (Nick Szabo) Newsgroups: sci.bio Subject: Re: Incest avoidance Message-ID: <21529@crg5.UUCP> Date: 11 Apr 91 07:23:50 GMT References: <8987.27f748d9@jetson.uh.edu> <1991Apr2.035304.11461@leland.Stanford.EDU> <21487@crg5.UUCP> <1991Apr5.233453.3577@leland.Stanford.EDU> Reply-To: szabo@crg5.UUCP (Nick Szabo) Organization: Sequent Computer Systems, Inc Lines: 98 In article <1991Apr5.233453.3577@leland.Stanford.EDU> repnomar@leland.Stanford.EDU (Janet M. Lafler) writes: >[I write, proximate cause is avoidance of those associated with at young age] >Do you know about the traditional Chinese practice of young men marrying >an adopted sister (who was adopted specifically to be his wife? I don't know this case, but would also like to find out. If the adoption took place at a young age, the children were raised together (frequent interaction), and the husband and wife had sex, it would pose a problem for this proximate cause. If no other proximate cause could be observed, such as kin recognition, it would pose a problem for the theory in general. I hope to see more experiments and observations done on sociobiological anthropology; it is new enough that not enough rigorous research has been done on the proximate causes for most of its theories. >Do species of different genuses (or whatever the appropriate taxonomical >category is) have similar problems with inbreeding? Has there been any >research on incest avoidance behavior among non-primates? Do you know of >any results from this? (Again, I'm curious.) Well, my sister tells me her rats are incestuous as hell. :-) Different categories (species,...) may have different proximate behaviors, and some may have no incest avoidance behavior. For example, the mere fact of being separated at birth and intermixed with many unrelated conspecifics may reduce the chance of inbreeding sufficiently in many species, such as fish, that avoidance will not evolve. In other species, the required genetic structure that could produce such a behavior may not be available. Where there is both need and availability, it will evolve. I am not familiar with the research beyond primates, unfortuneately. >Where would you place parent/child incest in this picture? I have not read an sociobiology on this subject, but I can extrapolate (make up my own theories :-) based on the basic theory of sociobiology. There are again two major possible proximate causes, kin recognition (the recognition of genetic relatedness regardless of cultural relationship) or proximity when young. Kin recognition is considered to be difficult to evolve, kind of violating Occam's Genetic Razor. :-). So let's consider parent/child proximity. If the capability for such a genetic structure exists, there will be genetic avoidance behavior between parent and child based on proximity of child-raising. For species where the parent does not stay around in a significant way, one would not expect avoidance based on proximity. For humans, parental proximity would predict the following: * Societies where fathers do not actively help raise their daughters from a young age will have a higher frequency of father/daughter incest * There will be a higher rate of parent/child incest for children adopted at an older age than genetic children or children adopted at a younger age. On the other hand, a proximate cause of kin recognition would predict the following: * Societies where adultery is common (and has been for several generations) will have higher rates of father/daughter incest * There will be a higher rate of parent/child incest for children adopted at any age than genetic children. >One of my problems with sociobiological explanations for incest is that if >there's a biological avoidance mechanism in place, why do we have codified >taboos (e.g. as in the Bible)? Would we need to codify something that was >instinctive? Good question. Proximate causes are often associated with emotions. For example, we hate the smell of our feces, and this probably is a behavior of significant genetic origin, which acts through our nervous system and is experienced as an emotion of disgust. This emotion is then communicated into cultural attitudes; a culture made up of people who instinctively find human feces disgusting will probably have a cultural norm that human feces is disgusting. A similar process may be involved in translating the emotions accompanying the behavior of incest avoidance into cultural attitudes regarding incest avoidance. Culture may map this emotion onto other members of the community besides than those that elicit the proximate behavior, thus creating taboos about cousins, et. al. IMHO, anthropology can benefit greatly by looking at the genetically induced building blocks of behavior and emotion upon which the various cultures create their diverse cultural structures. -- 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.