Posted on 02/27/2007 6:43:39 PM PST by blam
Why we are closer to cousins from our mother's side
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
Last Updated: 1:51am GMT 28/02/2007
We tend to help cousins on our mother's side more than cousins on our father's, according to a study published today.
Evolution by natural selection has shaped us to mistrust paternity, say researchers, and their findings confirm a prediction by evolutionary scientists that we tend to be kinder – altruistic – to the children of our mother's sister than those of our father's brother.
Evolutionary biologists say that the more likely we are to have genes in common with our kin, the more likely we are to put ourselves out for them.
One would expect us, therefore, to be equally helpful to all our cousins, since they are equally genetically related to us. However, reality is less straightforward because a small but significant fraction of men throughout history have brought up another man's child, often not even realising their wife has been unfaithful.
Therefore, we are related to our father's brother's children with two uncertain links and to our mother's brother's children and to our father's sister's children with one uncertain link.
In contrast, there is no uncertainty whatsoever in our genetic relatedness to our mother's sister's children.
Today, in Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences, Joonghwan Jeon and Prof David Buss of the University of Texas at Austin publish the first evidence that we treat our cousins differently based on this evolutionary logic.
They looked at 84 women and 111 men students and measured their willingness to act altruistically towards cousins in a life-or-death situation where they may be trapped in a burning building.
"We predicted and found that… humans act most altruistically toward mother's sister's children, followed by both mother's brother's children and father's sister's children, and least altruistically toward father's brother's children," the researchers said.
So how does this apply to say, Appalachian marriage?
My first ex wife is a cousin from my father's side. Can't get too much closer than that.
The cousins on my mothers side are liberals. The cousins on my fathers side are inmates. I grew up running around with my second cousins on my dad's side of the family.
You had to ask, didn't you!
In ancient Germanic culture, the 'sweoster-sunu' was considered an especially important relationship. Men were supposed to give gifts to their sister's male children, and help introduce them to male culture.
I'm the offspring of one of those Appalachian marriages.
My father's brother married my mother's sister, so their children are first-first cousins to me. We are as close as brother and sister, both literally and figuratively, having different parents but the same grandparents.
Cue the proverbial "Deliverance" banjo music...
My mother and father were first cousins. That's why I look so much alike.
Double cousins
You are just double cousins, nothing weird about that.
I am from Bakersfield as well.
Just down the road in Littlerock (CA).
Ummmm. I might be wrong......but doesn't this have more to do with the fact that women are more likely to organize social family gatherings....thus the children would be in more contact with her side of the family than his?
Deliverance music.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyKvD-4IxOY
This is a keeper.
I'm getting dizzy almost thinking about the permutations.
What if my mother's sister had a different father and either did not know it?....etc...
I'm Appalachian too. I'm closer to my mother's cousins - because my mother HATED my father's family & from an early age we were told how horrible they all were.
I suspect a mother has a lot more influence in that aspect than a father.
Therefore, you became closer with your maternal cousins.
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