Posted on 02/07/2008 5:39:12 PM PST by blam
Third Cousins Have Greatest Number Of Offspring, Data From Iceland Shows
ScienceDaily (Feb. 8, 2008) — DeCODE scientists have established a substantial and consistent positive correlation between the kinship of couples and the number of children and grandchildren they have. The study, which analyzes more than 200 years of deCODE's comprehensive define genealogical data on the population of Iceland, shows that couples related at the level of third cousins have the greatest number of offspring.
For example, for women born between 1800 and 1824, those with a mate related at the level of a third cousin had an average of 4.04 children and 9.17 grandchildren, while those related to their mates as eighth cousins or more distantly had 3.34 children and 7.31 grandchildren. For women born in the period 1925-1949 with mates related at the degree of third cousins, the average number of children and grandchildren were 3.27 and 6.64, compared to 2.45 and 4.86 for those with mates who were eighth cousins or more distantly related.
The findings hold for every 25-year interval studied, beginning with those born in the year 1800 up to the present day. Because of the strength and consistency of the association, even between couples with very subtle differences in kinship, the authors conclude that the effect very likely has a biological basis, one which has yet to be elucidated.
This study provides the most comprehensive answer yet to the longstanding question of how kinship affects fertility in humans. Previous studies in other parts of the world have suggested that the two phenomena are positively correlated, though confounding variables, such as the impact of socioeconomic status on the size of families or age at marriage, have made the results difficult to interpret.
The analysis of such a long-term series of data from Iceland effectively eliminates these variables by encompassing an entire population which has historically been highly homogeneous both culturally and economically. Moreover, the results are strikingly consistent from eras in which Iceland was a predominantly poor and rural country, to the present-day era of a highly urbanized society with one of the highest standards of living in the world.
The authors note that the findings are somewhat counterintuitive from an evolutionary perspective because closely-related parents have a higher probability of having offspring homozygous for deleterious recessive mutations, although closer parental kinship can also decrease the likelihood of immunological incompatibility between mother and offspring, for example in rhesus factor blood type.
Perhaps most importantly, these new findings also suggest that the recent and dramatic demographic shift experienced in Iceland -- from a rural society to a highly urbanized one -- may serve to slow population growth, as individuals are exposed to a much broader range of distantly related potential mates. If so, this could be of relevance to slowing population growth in the many other -- and much more populous - societies around the world undergoing transition from closely-knit rural societies to more urbanized ones. Indeed, the UN estimates that in the 2007-2008 period the majority of the world's population will, for the first time in human history, live in town and cities.
The paper, 'An association between the kinship and fertility of human couples,' was published in the journal Science February 8, 2008.
Adapted from materials provided by deCODE genetics.
The bible says something like avoid genealogies, and I'm not sure what is meant by that, but I wonder if I'm doing something I shouldn't. It may mean in some spiritual context.
As to those ties going way back in time, one indiscretion (or wrong link) along the way and the whole thing falls apart anyway. Plus there is so much hidden that was never recorded in any book or register.
Maybe all that crocheting was a waste of time, too. It served its purppose at the time. I've got one complex sweater I did that is too pretty (to me) to wear :-(.
7 feet tall? Almost missed that. Wow, there is a genetic clue or an aberration for you. That is TALL!
I'd like to get going with it too but what's with the crocheting stuff?
:-)
but what's with the crocheting stuff?
It looks like the hooded sweater is crocheted, and I'd love to make one like it. I'm not 100% positive it is, but it doesn't look like any knitting stitch I'm familiar with.
Got ya. Sorry, my mind was on some different knitting, and trust me, I'm not all that familiar with knitting that young and attractive anymore. But there was a time.... ;~))
UM, in August they seem to find their way to Torremolinos and Alicante and Benidorm on the Med coast of Spain for a tittie sunburn. And get loaded at night in the bars and discos there. The Spanish women are smart enough to get everybody S-faced drunk for tips. You have to observe this scene. You get loaded people speaking a dozen languages having fun together.
My sister and I share great-great grantparents. Are we third cousins?
I saw that stuff. If that wasn’t bad enough, go to Pamplona for las fiestas de San Fermin. In the honor of Hemingway, little kids put flowers aroung his statue under a great big tree. While their parents get drunk for 3 days and screw around.
But if there were some Icelandic chicks there --- well, you never know what really stupid thing I might try. And the girl in the photo..... I just want to meet her mom.
I'm not totally delusional. ;~))
I hadn´t seen this news, it is interesting. Here in Iceland it is quite easy to follow your ancestry, I can f.e. trace my ancestry back for more than 1000 years, to the first settlers of our nation. We also have an online tool to do it, called islendingabok.is. Most people here are related in the 8th to 10th generation, we used to be so few after the hardships of danish tyranny, lack of trade freedom, our own backwardness, and volcanic activity and subsequent colds.
One funny fact about Icelandic genelogy is that every icelander can trace his lineage to the last Catholic Bishop, that was executed in 1550 with his sons.
We regularly go to family gatherings, where the descendants of particular couples meet, often at their birth or the place they lived in the countryside. We often say that the purpose of these meetings is to know who you are not supposed to sleep with. But it is always as funny when you hear stories about when shit like that happens, especially if it happens at the family gathering. I heard one such story at my last party, so funny, so sad, in this case the perpretrator didn´t even know he was at a family gathering, he was dragged there by his parents and was shit-drunk the whole time.
Funny about the parties. Thanks for the input.
Ask Rudy about tha,lol.
I am so lost...I am my own grandpa.
As to all the pictures of the beutiful examples of Icelandic girls there is one possible reason for that, beware we are very protective of them, we don´t want foreigners to steal them as we need to continue our nation and create more beutiful girls (and there are only 300 thousand of us).
The reason could be that for centuries marriages between people related lower than in the 6th generation were banned (this I have heard), so for a limited stock and a pretty isolated valleys in an isolated island, we ensured a reasonable diversity. Men often had to travel the country from one end to the other to find a wife to marry.
Other reason, and maybe related one, is the rapid urbanisation of our country in the 20. century, I am of the opinion that the girls in the capital area are far more beutiful than generally in the countryside (there are exceptions, I have lived in both urban and rural area). Here came a lot of generally normal people but when mixed with people from other places of the country some fine specimen came to be.
But the genetic makeup is propably pretty good, I mean we are descended of nordic and keltic origin, the men forefathers more nordic (often chieftain and small kings) and the women forefathers more keltic, so we sometimes say, in joke..., well maybe it is best to let professional actors tell that joke:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6XAETjdjQU&feature=related
And periodically our country shed like one to two thirds of the population, the weak, during famines, eruptions and sicknesses. After the first 300 golden years of the Icelandic Free State, our population never passed beyone 50 thousand, until modern times.
One more thing to brag a little, we have been a literate nation (home schooling most of the time) for 1000 years, and then I mean nearly everybody could read and write.
There is a song in Iceland that says basically that, it is by a local comedian who is counting his genetical information, made even more complicated with divorces and strange marriage combination, so he finally comes to the conclusion that he is his own grandfather.
What does the data from Arkansas tell us?
If you git a divorce in Arkansas, are you still brother and sister?
It’s an old Irish ballad.
Oh, well - we all have a viking in the closet somewhere.
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