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Michael A Alexander's avatar

Henrich’s focus on cousin marriage is not because it lowers IQ and increases the chance of genetic diseases becoming rampant. Cousin marriage serves to support the complex kin-based social structures prevalent in most societies. People living in such societies grow up and come of age amidst a dense network of familial relationships that provide direction in life and insurance against failure. Family connections may determine a young person’s occupation, and family obligations influence who they employ.

Cousin marriage strengthens this family networks by making both sides of a couple come from the same family. Without cousin marriage, when you child marries they may join the other family rather than stay in yours, reducing the number and strength of family bonds. Planting the idea that cousin marriage is incest no different that brother-sister incest (which many people have an intrinsic aversion to) means family networks loss members every generation, weakening them. It becomes harder to place rising adults in some family occupation and young people may go to work as apprentices with unrelated people, or strike out on their own. Such individuals are social naked in the world with no support structure. Then tend to create communities of like-minded, unrelated persons, to replace these structures.

These can be religious; the 11th and 12th centuries saw strong growth in monastic communities. The could be commercial, some young people went to the rising towns, where, if they survived, they might form associations with others like them for mutual protection and friendship. These associations later developed economic functions to become the medieval guilds. Those with an academic bent might attend university, training to become a lawyer or administrator in the church or state. By the High Middle Ages the discouragement of cousin marriage had done its job, Europeans had developed identities as individuals. The process was irreversible, later removal of cousin marriage bans by protestants had no effect.

You propose that restriction on cousin marriage was part of Indo European culture, and so would be widespread. But on page 238 Henrich reports that exposure to Roman Catholicism explains nearly 75% of the variation in rates of cousin marriage in Italy, France, Turkey, and Spain. He then shows excellent correlation between four dimensions of psychology and cousin marriage. Your Indo European explanation would be expected to give a fairly uniform incidence of cousin marriage through the range when the Indo Europeans went, and similar psychologies. The West would not be different from Central Asia, Turkey, Iran Northern India and elsewhere the Indo Europeans went.

But Henrich goes to great lengths to show that the West IS different. And it’s not even Europe, but only that part of Europe with length exposure to Latin Christianity, as opposed to Greek, or Islam.

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Helen Dale's avatar

Classicist & civil lawyer here (ie, have practised in a mixed system and studied Roman law in order to qualify). You are correct. Pagan Romans hated cousin marriage.

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