Scientists: Incest Doomed European Royal Dynasty

FOX News ^ | April 16, 2009 | Andrea Thompson

[heartwood]

My southern line also has cousins marrying and ancestors showing up in several lines - you wouldn’t have any Ledbetters there, would you? Those people were infatuated with their cousins. And many of them lived into a good old age, child mortality very low. I’m inclined to ascribe that to rural living with enough food.

My New England ancestors NEVER married cousins - the Puritans kept excellent records. When they urbanized in the 19th c., they started dying young, TB for adults and high child mortality from infectious disease.

Palace living was probably great grounds for contagion, and the prescribed diets for children were often faddish and malnourishing.

[Cheburashka]

Why isn't this in breaking news?

[twigs]

Child mortality was low in my lines as well, at least the ones that married cousins over and over again. No, I do not have Ledbetters in my lines. The cousin-marrying family was Turner. I’ve met cousins here on FreeRepublic in the past. I guess the fact that we are cussedly independent makes us more likely to pop up in places like this.

[kalee]

ping

[reformedliberal]

No incest in my family, but I have a first cousin that the rest of us called Crazy Janie almost from the time she was 14. No one ever asked who we meant, either.

She wasn't clinically insane, just gay, Marxist and with a full-blown eating disorder about 35 years before those attributes became commonplace. Her parents lied about her constantly, trying to intimidate their siblings with the *perfection* of their daughter.

[Verginius Rufus]

A girl dreaming of being swept off her feet by a prince on a white horse would be safer, genetically speaking, marrying the horse.

This happened in ancient Greece...hence the centaurs.

[Verginius Rufus]

Mary II was married to her first cousin, William of Orange...maybe it was just as well that they had no children.

[Cheburashka]

Royalty married royalty. King George V of England, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany and Czar Nicolas II of Russia were related (at least by marriage, all descended from England’s Queen Victoria.

---

Nicholas II wasn't descended from Queen Victoria, his wife was. George V and Nicholas were cousins due to the fact that their mothers were sisters, daughters of the King and Queen of Denmark.

[Mila]

"a homeschooling parent? - surely your child did not learn about them in public school"

Not home schooled, but not public school. She went for twelve years, thirteen if you count kindergarten, to Catholic school and four years University of New Orleans with a B.S.in Psychology.

[Mila]

"If you go to a family reunion to meet women, you might be a redneck. Or a Habsburg."

Good one!

[Mila]

"Ironic, because from what I do remember, Joanna the mad’s sister was Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII’s first wife."

You're right of course! I recently learned that and I was quite surprised. I never imagined that someone as well educated and accomplished as she was being related to Charles ll, of course they were many generations removed from each other.

[reagan_fanatic]

What?!! You mean Adam and Eve couldn’t possibly have lead to 6.2 billion people from just that one mating pair? Don’t tell the Creationists.

Yes, thank the Gods of Random Chance that our ancestors simply crawled up out of some pool of muck a hundred million years ago and grew into what we are today. That's much more believeable.

[DuncanWaring]

You mean Adam and Eve couldn’t possibly have lead to 6.2 billion people from just that one mating pair?

Wellllll, the problems with inbreeding arise from combined recessive genes causing genetic anomalies.

One would expect that Adam and Eve, being directly created by God, would be free of genetic problems.

[MyTwoCopperCoins]

Following your illogic, practically everyone born alive today would have serious genetic defects from the accumulation of the defects of each generation that has lead to today’s 6.2 billion-plus population.

[DuncanWaring]

Not hardly.

A recessive gene that’s present from only one DNA donor doesn’t manifest itself in its bearer.

Those with severe defects generally don’t reproduce.

[MyTwoCopperCoins]

For your hypothesis, it is necessary for the existence of diversity, so that the defective genes are recessive compared to the dominant ones from this diversity.

However a single mating pair as would be the case with Adam and Eve, cannot bring about this sort of diversity, because the defective genes would quickly dominate the gene pool with a few generations, as the article illustrates, but at a faster rate, because of incest.

[DuncanWaring]

My assertion is that in the first few generations there would be no defective genes.

[MyTwoCopperCoins]

You are proposing a cumulative model, which does not square with the reality. Per your model, the first few generations would be defect-free, but would quickly degerate through the accumulation of sin, over the generations, such that anyone born after enough generations, would be genetically defective. That, is not the reality.

[DuncanWaring]

The article on which this thread is based demonstrates a cumulative model.

[Churchillspirit]

He dumped Di for horse face with a donkeys butt Camille.

I assume you mean Camilla.....how shallow.