Marriages between relatives are widespread in the Middle East

[VetLegion]

Re: Re: Marriages between relatives are widespread in the Middle East

Originally posted by Lul Thyme


Meaningless statistics alert.

OR MORE DISTANT RELATIVES.

In other news ,

Marriages between relatives are widespread in the U.S, particularly in California, where a government study has found that 100% of all marriages are between first and second cousins or more distant relatives.

Err, you're a mathematician, right? Think

I have complained in the OP that the statistics don't break up the numbers. Still, if we assume the worst possible scenario, that the numbers were acquired by a poll which didn't have a cutoff (at third cousin or fourth) but simply asked "are you married to a relative?", we still get valuable information.

How many people in any average country outside of Middle East would answer "yes" to that question? Single digit percentage, I bet - in sharp contrast to the region we discuss.

[VetLegion]

Originally posted by GePap
Marriage within the extended family has always been rather common. Most people never travelled more than a few miles from where they lived, who else would they meet?

Few miles is quite enough in an agricultural society.

[VetLegion]

Originally posted by Wernazuma III

One "thumb rule" is: the higher the mountains, the narrower the valley and the bigger the distance to bigger population centers, the higher familiar endogamy. Islands also may qualify.

I agree with this. In defense of those areas I can say that they didn't turn that occassional practice into a social custom. As soon as transportation improved, it practically dissappeared. At least in Croatian islands, don't know about Austrian valleys

[VetLegion]

Some more numbers:

http://www.isteve.com/cousin_marriage_conundrum.htm

In Iraq, as in much of the region, nearly half of all married couples are first or second cousins to each other. A 1986 study of 4,500 married hospital patients and staff in Baghdad found that 46% were wed to a first or second cousin, while a smaller 1989 survey found 53% were "consanguineously" married. The most prominent example of an Iraqi first cousin marriage is that of Saddam Hussein and his first wife Sajida.

Americans have long dismissed cousin marriage as something practiced only among hillbillies. That old stereotype of inbred mountaineers waging decades long blood feuds had some truth to it. One study of 107 marriages in Beech Creek, Kentucky in 1942 found 19% were consanguineous, although the Kentuckians were more inclined toward second cousin marriages, while first cousin couples are more common than second cousins pairings in the Islamic lands.

http://isteve.blogspot.com/2006/03/middle-eastern-cousin-marriage-at-work.html

Bedouins do not carry more genetic mutations than the general population. But because so many marry relatives — some 65 percent of Bedouin in Israel's Negev marry first or second cousins — they have a significantly higher chance of marrying someone who carries the same mutations, increasing the odds they will have children with genetic diseases, researchers say

[Lul Thyme]

Re: Re: Re: Marriages between relatives are widespread in the Middle East

Originally posted by VetLegion


Err, you're a mathematician, right? Think

I have complained in the OP that the statistics don't break up the numbers. Still, if we assume the worst possible scenario, that the numbers were acquired by a poll which didn't have a cutoff (at third cousin or fourth) but simply asked "are you married to a relative?", we still get valuable information.

How many people in any average country outside of Middle East would answer "yes" to that question? Single digit percentage, I bet - in sharp contrast to the region we discuss.

How is that the "worst" scenario?
(What do you even mean by worst in this case?)
What if they actually took a sample and researched the numbers, using a certain cut-off.
That's entirely possible and in fact, that's how a good research would have been done.

In that case, we would know what the percentages ARE but not what they mean and would be at a loss to interpret them.

[Lul Thyme]

Originally posted by VetLegion
Some more numbers:

That's great!
As I said, I never disputed the claim made.
I was just pointing that the information presented in the OP contained numbers about very vague terms and were very unreliable for that reason.
Now you bring in new quotes, which at least mean something.

[VetLegion]

For example, if 30 % of people are married to 4th cousins, is that a lot?

Well, they're not. In Islamic countries they seem to prefer first and second cousins. See quotes in my last post.

[GePap]

Originally posted by VetLegion


Few miles is quite enough in an agricultural society.

No its not. You forget that given this rule, those people within a few miles are the decedents of people in that area before, and you go back not too long, you get to a small gene pool.

There is also the fact that marriages were used for economic and political reasons, and it would be advantageous for certain clans to continually cement their friendships and economic relations by marriage.

Marrying first or second cousins was a common thing.

Here is a site that explains what first,second, and thid cousisn are.

http://www.genealogy.com/genealogy/16_cousn.html?welcome=1024425787

The notion of romantically marrying some complete stranger you just met is a very modern thing, that many modern people do not follow anyways. Just look at Einstein.

And an article about the genetics of the issue:

http://www.discover.com/issues/aug-03/features/featkiss/

[VetLegion]

Originally posted by Lul Thyme


That's great!
As I said, I never disputed the claim made.
I was just pointing that the information presented in the OP contained numbers about very vague terms and were very unreliable for that reason.

I agree. I've read about this issue before so I had a somewhat wider context (and more info) than could be expected from the average poster here. My mistake.

[DaShi]

Originally posted by aneeshm


At least in my family, we don't like such things. I'm personally repulsed by such things. A friend of mine, who comes from a wealthy business family, told me that all marriages not just within the family, but also with anyone of the same surname, were forbidden.

At least, now we know which specific people he was talking about.

[Dr Strangelove]

I believe that most of the states in the US permit marriage between second cousins. Genetically such marriages are pretty safe anyway unless you have a known genetic disease prevalent in the common family.

[Kuciwalker]

Re: Re: Marriages between relatives are widespread in the Middle East

Originally posted by Lul Thyme
Meaningless statistics alert.

OR MORE DISTANT RELATIVES.

Actually, it's significant in that it implies 43.2% are less distant than first cousin

[Elok]

No, s/he means that the phrase "or more distant relatives" is a pretty loose term. We're all distant relatives, if it comes to that. IIRC, no two people on earth are more than twenty-somethingth cousins or some such, and once you get past second or third the DNA in common isn't that significant in most cases provided they aren't related in more than one way. The phrase could be used as a meaningless scare for any data. So the term is poorly chosen. On those limited grounds, I agree.

[Straybow]

Originally posted by aneeshm
Doesn't change the fact that it is forbidden.

Brahmins have an extra restriction. They are not allowed to marry anyone of the same gotra. This rule is no longer followed, however.

Gotra refers to the lineage. Every Brahmin is considered a descendant of some or the other great sage of antiquity. So marrying within the same lineage is considered incest.

Except this lineage is paternal. A brother and sister each marry a member of a different gotra. The brother's children are still the same gotra. The sister's children are counted of the husband's gotra. The brother's child could marry the sister's child without breaking the rule.

[Odin]

Originally posted by Elok
No, s/he means that the phrase "or more distant relatives" is a pretty loose term. We're all distant relatives, if it comes to that. IIRC, no two people on earth are more than twenty-somethingth cousins or some such, and once you get past second or third the DNA in common isn't that significant in most cases provided they aren't related in more than one way. The phrase could be used as a meaningless scare for any data. So the term is poorly chosen. On those limited grounds, I agree.

I read that most Western Europeans are decended from Charlemagne and most Chinese are decended from Confucious. if you back far enough most people in a certain region at that time are your ancestors, the farther you go back in time the larger the region. The mathematics of geneology is almost scary.