Steve Jones reports at telegraph.co.uk on the reality of the human race, and how closely we're related in some cases, but that the trend is towards an increase in genetic diversity.Islanders, from the Orkneys to the Adriatic (together with natives of the Americas, which was, until Columbus, the biggest and most isolated island in the world) have lots of such things – evidence of plenty of sex within the family, no doubt because no other option was available.He goes on to discuss genetic diseases.
Across the world, such patterns match those of surnames. A fifth of all Chinese – three hundred million people – share three names, evidence of how connected lineages have become since the titles first appeared millennia ago. In France, the average number of bearers of a particular surname is 17, and in Britain it is 28. In China, the number is 70,000 (which almost reconciles me to being a Jones).
A new survey of this kind involved 5,000 random (and supposedly unrelated) Europeans. It revealed hundreds of thousands of previously unknown family links among them, even if one goes back no further than ninth cousins (whose shared ancestor lived at around the time of the French Revolution).
There were, for example, around 30,000 predicted fourth-cousin pairs (a shared great-great-great-grandparent). As a result, taking all family ties into account, the person you sat next to on the bus this morning is, on average, likely to be something like your sixth cousin, which means that the two of you probably share at least one ancestor from the time of the Paris Commune.You don't have to go too far back in the family tree to find close relatives.
Finns (who have a history separate from that of the rest of the continent) and Ashkenazi Jews are even more likely to have close family ties; while in parts of Pakistan, the average relationship of two random people is that of second cousins, with their common ancestor alive at the time of the fall of France.
Sir Thomas Beecham (had he ever met a Pakistani, or even a Welshman) would no doubt have been outraged. But he can begin to cheer up, for in the Western world incest (or at least inbreeding) is on the way out. The proportion of people who identify themselves as of mixed race in Britain has almost doubled in the past couple of decades, and one household in eight contains members of different ethnic origins. For about half of the nation’s children with an Afro-Caribbean parent, the other parent is white, so that on these islands the pedigrees of two continents will soon merge. The process actually began long ago: seven Yorkshiremen bear the surname Revis (after Rievaulx Abbey in the county). Each carries a Y chromosome that came from West Africa, perhaps in the 18th century. It is now being joined by millions more.
Just think... there used to be people who prohibited interracial dating, marriages, and parenting, but children of interracial parents were actually the least likely to have parents who were committing "incest."
His overall point is that for much of human history, people in various regions have been closely related, but now with increased mobility that is changing. I'll point out, though, that studies still show that most people are attracted to people who look like them and that that the increased mobility is one of the factors that is going to lead to an increase in cases of Genetic Sexual Attraction. In the past, when a performing artists, sailor, soldier, other traveling professional, or a tourist became a party to a conception, there was little chance the parent would see their progeny, and even less of a chance that other children of parent would meet up with that progeny. Same thing when divorcing parents have moved thousands of miles apart and had children with new spouses. That's not so anymore.
Part 1: I live in a small area in the south, where a few families had moved. So whats funny is that I' related to everybody here now. And it's only been a few generations. I'm perfectly fine and so is everybody else here. Of course people like to point out the fact that you shouldn't go to 'my part of the county,' lol, because we are all crazy, dumb, and are typical white trash inbreds. But, they don't live here either. I've been all over the U.S., and so have some of my elders, and let me tell you a what I've learned from them and from traveling and reading up on history books versus what I know personally. The truth as to why people in the south are the way they are is because of the civil war. You can research this yourself. During the war many farms and houses were burnt down, and families separated, some left to starve. Unlike the north, homes were far apart and the food came directly from the farms themselves, and since there was no real big industry, there was no real way to import goods. The north, however, could import goods from overseas in place of what goods it lost from the south. The south also did not use the same tactics against the north, so farms in the north were left alone. After the war, many of the families were separated to the point of near isolation of one another. This is the reason for southerners dialect. If you listen, it is closer to old english than that spoken in the north or in the rest of the country. Being isolated also caused the dialect to shift more toward how it sounds today, the southern "drawl," because the words were learned by the way they were "heard." Since there were hardly any schools prior to the war, and even less afterward, this was the result of little to no education. Now to the reason why older southern people look oddly "rough," it's because many of these people (even people my grandparents age) have had to work their entire lives, from very early on, not because of incest. Heck, my grandpa remembers when electricity came to town, and he's only 70. He has always had to tend to a farm, starting at age 4. He never had the opportunity to go to school, because of the long distance and the snows here, or the mud from the rainy seasons. Ask anybody in the south, the back roads are always bad even today, at least now they have gravel. Back then they usually they didn't even have gravel, and the only paved road was main highways. Most of his generation could read and write, but my great grandparents could not. My parents generation, were much more educated.
ReplyDeletePart 2: At my family's sacrifice, on both parents sides, managed to send off my mom and my dad to college. And in my generation there are even more that have went. But, there are many family's that are still struggling because the way of life they know, is the only way of life they've ever had, and thus teach it to young as well, just as they were taught. So it's not inbreeding you see. Inbreeding really and truly doesn't even have anything to do with it, even though we all think of redneck jokes when someone talks about incest. ;) If it was true that inbreeding created those problems, then my family would be as stupid as they come, I would be disfigured, have 12 arms, 1 eye, and drool pouring out my mouth. But that's not true, everyone in my family is normal-and are just, if not smarter than most. I've been around the block--and stupid people are everywhere in the nation. It's the sad pathetic education. Just because you see stupid people in an area where something like incest may be common, doesn't mean that one is a result of the other, though they may be related via a common other issue, such as being isolated from other populations. People tend to forget that. I remember distinctly as a child, many, MANY TIMES, I would go on a date with a girl at school (or highschool even), and bring her home and we would get to talking about family, and bet your rear-end we'd wind up related somehow. :) lol So ladies and gents, If you don't agree with this site, and you think I'm the messed up backward one, the truth is you're the backward one if you could only see it. I respect any's opinion on these matters, however, denying the same rights to others that you hold for yourself, based on fallacies you refuse to admit are untrue, is never a valid justification for denying those rights. Nor is it a valid justification because it is already illegal(as in incestuous relationships.) Incest is only illegal because it was adopted from english laws. Not because someone up and decided it was bad one day. Yes, those laws in England were made after the royal family, but then again, they had forced marriages--so if a defunct gene popped up, they were still forced to marry those people who may have been genetically abnormal which spread it further. I don't know about you, but I haven't dated anyone having any genetic illnesses or physical/mental retardation lately (not trying to be rude of course) and doubt I ever will. And I've known relatively few who ever have--usually they were of the nearly the same mental capacity, or had the same handicap--and *gasp* were also unrelated. But it is also known that commoners also engaged in incest prior to those laws, just like it occurs today behind the scenes. Unlike royalty, commoners weren't forced to interbreed with those with deleterious genes. :) So..in a strange roundabout way.. incest and outbreeding both have actually distilled good genes in the gene pool, and removed the bad ones. ;) As for my final statement, after you've read these words, on this site, these articles, these comments, and from researching such yourself, I hope you come to the conclusion that you should support 'the real' full marriage equality 100%. :) k I'm done. :3 lol
ReplyDeleteAnonymous, thank you so much for your epic 2-part comment. Comment any time you feel like it. Good to hear from you!
DeleteGreat comment. :)
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