On the Origin and Extension of the Incest Taboo

Melvin Ember

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Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior Animal Behavior and Reproduction Language and cultural evolution

Abstract

This paper presents new evidence and a model which are consistent with the theory that the prohibition of familial mating became universal and may have originated because of the problem of inbreeding. The new evi dence has to do with why the incest taboo may be extended to first cousins; of all the available theories, only that of inbreeding seems to explain the cross-cultural variation in cousin marriage. The model described here gen erates estimates of reproductive rates that might have obtained in earlier hypothetical populations. These estimates suggest that the differences in re productive rates between familial and nonfamilial matings may have been great enough for people to have recognized the disadvantage of inbreeding and to have consciously prohibited it.

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References

2026Childhood and Society 1913Totem and Taboo 1969The Elementary Structures of Kinship 1967Ethnographic Atlas: A Summary 1970The Elementary Structures of Kinship 1889On a Method of Investigating the Development of Institutions; Applied to Laws of Marriage and Descent 2013Sex and Repression in Savage Society 1970Childhood Association and Sexual Attraction: A Further Test of the Westermarck Hypothesis

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1989Disappearance of the Incest Taboo: A Cross‐Cultural Test of General Evolutionary Hypotheses 1991Problems of Measurement in Cross-Cultural Research Using Secondary Data 1999Modeling Folsom Mobility, Mating Strategies, And Technological Organization In The Northern Plains 2016Afrasian Instability Zone and Its Historical Background 2010What We Know and What We Don’t Know About Variation in Social Organization: Melvin Ember’s Approach to the Study of Kinship

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