# Is Inbreeding Condoned Anywhere, Still? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 24, 2012, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-inbreeding-condoned-anywhere-still/610541 "2012-01-24T21:41:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2012, 5:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-inbreeding-condoned-anywhere-still/610541/21 "2012-01-25T05:10:23Z")
> [@sisu](#): > > CITE please, Finland is a land of lakes and not mountains. “A Brave New, Healthy World?”, Steve Jones, Natural History, June 1994, pp. 72,74. However, it also mentions “impenetrable forests” rather than mountains so I apologize for my faulty memory. > [@](#): > > The danger is a real one. Finland, with its impenetrable forests, has lots of isolated and inbred populations - and many local centers of inborn disease. Some are almost unknown elsewhere, while others represent isolated clusters of widespread but rare local diseases. ---
**Author:** ![grude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47774/32.png) [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2012, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-inbreeding-condoned-anywhere-still/610541/22 "2012-01-25T05:15:18Z")
You mean immediate family inbreeding? All I can think of is some aristocracy where sibling incest was encouraged for various reasons like belief in royal blood superiority or to keep power concentrated.: > **[love-egypt.com - This website is for sale! - love egypt...](http://ww16.love-egypt.com/royal-incest.html?sub1=20230725-0238-525b-bfa1-543dd07204fc)** > > This website is for sale! love-egypt.com is your first and best source for all of the information you’re looking for. From general topics to more of what you would expect to find here, love-egypt.com has it all. We hope you find what you are... Not really as severe but some religions strongly encourage marrying someone of the same religion, so depending on how isolated the community is there can be pressure to marry a distant cousin etc. I recall hearing about trying to preserve things like skin tone, and that trickles down to the more general classism and racism almost everyone faced only a few generations back. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2012, 6:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-inbreeding-condoned-anywhere-still/610541/23 "2012-01-25T06:46:35Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > For an isolated incident, maybe, but when the entire population makes a practice of it, the effects can accumulate. How will they accumulate? Cousin mating (even sibling mating) does nothing to increase the frequency of harmful alleles, it just makes it (slightly) more likely two recessive ones will come together and cause actual harm. And when they do, that is actually likely to _reduce_ the frequency of the allele in the population, as people with actual genetic diseases are less likely to reproduce. In any case, much of the human race has probably practiced cousin marriage for most of human history (and pre-history, probably) and we still seem to be around. ---
**Author:** ![yabob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yabob/32/2821_2.png) [@yabob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yabob)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2012, 7:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-inbreeding-condoned-anywhere-still/610541/24 "2012-01-25T07:08:15Z")
> [@](#): > > I assume the general abhorrence of anything closer than cousins marrying or other wise procreating - is firmly established, where there might have been social exceptions, by the adoption of Judeo-Christian formal social rules. Christian societies orran and dominated any indigenous groups in the areas around europe. I assume Islam carried this prohibition to its sphere of influence too. European aristocratic families such as the Habsburgs went a little closer than first cousin marriage - uncle / niece marriages were condoned. Again, it was a mechanism to keep money and power within a family. [Charles II of Spain](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_II_of_Spain) provides an extreme case. Look at the uncle / niece as well as cousin marriages in his ancestry, including his parents: > **[File:Carlos segundo80.png](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Carlos_segundo80.png)** > > Created by en:user:Lec CRP1 > In case this is not legally possible: Lec CRP1 grants anyone the right to use this work for any purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law. > Click on a date/time to view the file as it appeared at that time. > You cannot overwrite this file. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2012, 8:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-inbreeding-condoned-anywhere-still/610541/25 "2012-01-25T08:00:11Z")
> [@Jragon](#): > > I wonder if some cultures have softer taboos than we do, meaning it’s only incest if you grew up with them, i.e. if you and your sister were orphans, grew up in different families, and met later it’s not incest. I doubt that this kind of situation, where the brother would don’t know the whereabout of his siser would occur in traditional societies. However, the issue covered in Greek mythology, so there might similarly be legends about such occurences in those societies. I would note by the way that gods often don’t have much qualm with inbreeding. ---
**Author:** ![Toxylon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f05b48/32.png) [@Toxylon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Toxylon)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2012, 10:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-inbreeding-condoned-anywhere-still/610541/26 "2012-01-25T10:14:14Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > It’s not well-known outside of some scientific circles, but Finland is a hotbed - so to speak - of inbreeding because the mountains tended to separate villages. All sorts of genetic diseases can be better studied there because of this. Where they exist in handfuls elsewhere, they exist in workable percentages in Finland. > > What I don’t know is how much if any of this still occurs or when it stopped if it did. But it has to be fairly recently. It’s seriously a real-life Appalachia. Whoa. You have a point, but inject it with such crass ignorance it’s not even funny. Finland is (a geographically flat) hotbed of genetic disease research, not of inbreeding (by the definition in the OP). The reason for certain rare genetic diseases being more common there than in many other places is due to much more subtle reasons than family members banging each other while banjos play. Founder effect, the fact that initial, post-glacial settlement of Finland consisted of a small population, genetic drift in said population and possibly the bottle-neck effect of prehistoric demographic catastrophies on it are the reasons behind rare genetic disease present in Finland today. As far back as we have any data on, inbreeding has been a strict taboo in Finland, like elsewhere (including the ‘aboriginal’ Sami). Even cousin marriage was prohibited until modern times. ---
**Author:** ![Quasimodem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/e274bd/32.png) [@Quasimodem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quasimodem)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2012, 12:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-inbreeding-condoned-anywhere-still/610541/27 "2012-01-25T12:09:22Z")
No, I didn’t. Y’all did.😃 That means you guys are responsible for making me think to put this here: [Finland - YouTube](http://youtu.be/pN2ZJBh92SM) Be sure to look at the weather map.🙂 Sorry to interrupt. Y’all go ahead. Q ---
**Author:** ![Toxylon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f05b48/32.png) [@Toxylon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Toxylon)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2012, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-inbreeding-condoned-anywhere-still/610541/28 "2012-01-25T15:16:19Z")
**Quasi** , Yep, you did nothing. I admit getting a bit riled with the thread going from the OP: Is Inbreeding Condoned Anywhere, Still? to Finland, to “What I don’t know is how much if any of this still occurs or when it stopped if it did. But it has to be fairly recently. It’s seriously a real-life Appalachia.” I had to check this is GQ at SDMB. ---
**Author:** ![ecseas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/35a633/32.png) [@ecseas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ecseas)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2012, 5:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-inbreeding-condoned-anywhere-still/610541/29 "2012-01-26T05:24:15Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > Royalty? > > In my anthropology class I was told that in some Australian aboriginal tribes, the _only_ person you are traditionally allowed to marry is your “cross-cousin” (IIRC that means a cousin on the side of your parent who is the opposite sex to you). The teacher said this was one of the reasons these tribes were dying out, not because of genetic issues (actually genetic problems arising from cousin marriage are scarcely more likely than those for marring those who are completely unrelated) but because when your tribe falls below a certain size, there is a high probability that you will not have any cross-cousins of the opposite sex. > > I am pretty sure that cousin marriage in general is condoned and even encouraged in many cultures, and not just ‘exotic’ ones. It seems to have been common amongst the upper classes in Victorian Britain, for instance. I rather think the taboo on cousin marriage is largely a fairly recent American hangup, like women not being allowed armpit hair, or teeth having to be perfectly straight. > > On the other hand, I believe virtually all human societies regard sibling-sibling or parent-child sexual relations to be abhorrent. (That is not to say it never happens, but that most people in a society will regard it as icky.) Er, I’ve always heard that marriage was based on skin colour,(referred to as moiety) to make sure people stayed diverse. It was also encouraged to marry someone who was geographically distant. Cousin can however, mean someone of the same generation, in aboriginal English. So, I suppose the term cross cousin may refer to someone of the same age in a different skin group. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-inbreeding-condoned-anywhere-still/610541.md?page=1)