I wonder how, given the lack of a genuine written history of that era, anything being reported of that nature would be reliable. Is there ever a time in history where incest was accepted? To me, it’s too strange to believe.
I don’t see how he is wrong.
Not that I think the OP’s source is credible, but Egypt? Not generally, but for the Pharaoh.
“Never” is too strong a word. It would also depend on how “onset of puberty” is defined.
I’m pretty sure coremelt has read the whole thread. marshmallow’s Post 16 refers to both types. An unplanned pregancy could certainly mean a mother getting pregnant, which is the obvious risk that comes along with the practice described in the OP.
I think quite a number of ancient culture with absolute hereditary leaders would permit brother-sister marriages; for one thing, it reduced the number of different family threads and thus reduced the number of strong claimants to the throne. There would be less outsiders married to a princess and thus having a quasi-legitimate claim to rule (backed, of course by the rule force)
Also a lot of questionable slanders about various groups are usually political or xenophobic motivated slanders propagated by their enemies. From what I understand, slurs like this were common in roman times. (Wasn’t there something about Herod and his sister?)
According to the reviews on Amazon, the book’s claims aren’t referenced to individual sources. There is only an omnibus bibliography containing many dubious and out-of-date books. Some selected quotes from the reviews:
In Roman Egypt, at least at certain periods brother-sister incest was widely accepted, even preferred, as a solution to the economic problem of fragmenting land holdings. In some districts, around a quarter of all marriages were between full siblings, as attested by census returns. It’s perhaps the best-studied example of an exception to the incest taboo. cite
Yeah ok fine, so it was probably some tall tale told by a roman soldier returning from Brittania over a flagon of ale, then credulously written down in Roman histories.
Humans beings love to accuse each other of sexual deviancy. We also love to report hearsay as fact.
Sexual initiation has been done in several cultures, so the story is not totally implausible. Just that the incest bit might be.
After a few generations of liberal embellishment about a mother kissing her infant son goodnight, something about incest and a teenaged son was inevitable.
I think Gibbons in “Decline and Fall…” has a discussion of how a decent part of the depraved behavior of Roman Emperors was not true or significant exaggeration, repetition of questionable gossip and innuendo, it was simply the slander of political enemies - who were prominent Roman intellectuals, so that writing was preserved along with much of their more solid works.
Similarly, it seems many of the explorers or armies marching into unfamiliar lands made up fanciful slurs about the people they encountered. There were several threads here that dug into what the explorers wrote about New World inhabitants. Cannibalism was a typical accusation, thus justifying many of the genocidal activities required to convert the heathens and meanwhile push them off their land. I suspect that cannibalism was a favourite because it was more abhorrent, and easier to discuss in detail in prudish society… this leaving sexual accusations with less discussion, less detail, and less opportunities to verify at the source.
I’m not familiar with the book, but I am very familiar with the evidence for Britain in this period, barring some of the archaeology. I assure you that there is no evidence for this practice.
There is no corroborating evidence from anywhere in Celtic tradition. There are a few accounts of incest in the mythological tales, but incest in mythology is not evidence of incest in practice.
The idea of parent-child sexual initiation rituals isn’t completely unbelievable for any given human culture, but it’s close, and for pre-Roman Britain it pretty much is completely unbelievable.
You don’t seem willing to accept this, weighing a remembered book which has a poor reputation above all else. It would be neat if it were true, but it’s just not.
There is (literally) more evidence for headhunting, human sacrifice, and cannibalism, on which the scholarly consensus is (respectively) quite possibly, maybe, and probably just Roman slander.
Sexual initiation has occurred, including ritual sexual initiation. Mandela described his tribes intiation and was quite miffed that he did not get it.
I read somewhere that sine schools in Japan are so competitive, Japanese moms fellate their sons to relieve stress before big exams, and so they won’t waste time with girlfriends instead of studying.
I wish this was posted in a different forum. There’s so much I could say.
Since you’ve read that, perhaps you can provide at least one of your sources, preferably not from Literotica.
ETA: Or, what Morgenstern said.
third
Yes, sexual intitation isn’t uncommon. What I’d like a cite for is an example of culturally sanctioned parent-child sexual initation, which I do not believe occurs among humans. I’m prepared to be wrong, but I’ve never seen a reference to it.
Even in modern-day US, it’s not outlandish to hear about a father taking his son to a professional woman to “make him a man” at a certain age. That would be the equivalent of a sexual rite of passage.
But not to the kid’s mom though, unless you’re watching a Jerry Springer rerun.
One of the first things you’ll notice when you read Herodotus, is how every culture in the world, apart from the Greeks (funny, that), practices some variation of pimping out their daughters.
Then again, Herodotus also explains that the Persians had learned the much more vanilla and non-deviant sexual practice of man-boy action from the Greeks. At least there’s some hope for the barbarians.
As for Romans and incest: As mentioned upthread, that’s an accusation that Romans tend to throw at other Romans that they don’t like.
Incest, and baldness. At least that’s the impression I get from Suetonius. The baldness thing is a bit weird, actually. According to Suetonius, Caesar was bald, Caligula was bald (despite being in his mid-twenties), Domitian was bald… Then you look at portraits of these guys, and they don’t look very bald. Historians will say: Aha! That means that they didn’t want to be depicted as bald, which proves that they were very vain, which proves that they were bald! I dunno. I don’t want to knock professional historians, but it seems a bit odd that we’re just taking Suetonius’s word for this stuff, considering that he’s also accusing people of bonking their sisters and mothers. But anyway, I digress…