Incest
 

Not your regular topic, eh? =p I'm not going perverted on this anyway, nobody needs to worry. Instead, I was curious about something after reading an article about this the other day.

From a Religious stand point, Adam and Eve were the first two people to ever be created, and thus the first to have children. Those children would have had to fuck each other (pardon the wording) in order for more children to exist.

From a Scientific stand point, two creatures (I'd imagine) managed to mutate, very slowly, and eventually became us. In the same respect, unless we'd be talking about a whole species evolution (I'm not sure if this would be the case, I'm unaware that anyone is) then at some point down the line, there was still a select few creatures / people that would be breeding.

Whatever option you choose to go with (unless I'm missing something on either front) you're looking at mass incest, yet, wouldn't that essentially have us all unhealthy and disabled? Inbreeding is known to cause various problems, yet most of us appear to be fine.

If anyone has an explanation to this, it would make for a great read.

Re: Incest
 

I've always been under the assumption that many creatures of the same species mutated around the same time to bring us the first evolution of humans. I used to think there was only two, probably because Adam and Eve put the idea in my head that these kind of things start in two, but it doesn't make sense. If there are only two the species could die out pretty fast.

I could be wrong though, that's just my theory.

Oh. :(

Re: Incest
 

I guess the Creationuts will tell you that Adam and Eve were genetically superior so that incest didn't really matter. The fun part about a religion is that you can always insert some random magic to make the parts fit.

Re: Incest
 

You - generally - have to change a structure quite dramatically for the things you've changed to become unable to breed with the creatures that haven't changed. And in that manner your changes become more or less prevalent within whatever part of the population you and your descendants can get to to breed with.

I don't think anyone's suggesting that we went straight from ape to human - or whatever - in one clean step where just two creatures mutated.

We're so far away from any possible common ancestor - and we wouldn't be talking what came before humans here, we'd be talking way back at some incredibly distant root - that we've had time to become genetically diverse. You can measure the distance from a genetic bottleneck (there being relatively few members of a species) in terms of the genetic diversity of that species and how many generations they have over a period of time.

Strictly speaking, incest doesn't ... create ... genetic flaws. It's just that siblings are more likely to share the same flaws - and so their children are more likely to get flawed versions of the same bits of code from both parents. Whereas, if they'd slept with someone they weren't related to, the children would probably have got a good bit of code from one of the parents.

In the long run the sick ones and the freaks and so on just get selected against; evolution promotes the people who are lucky enough to mutate and get a health version of the gene - whenever that happens. In the short run you get a lot of problems.

If we had - in say the last few million years - had just two humans you'd be able to see it in the diversity of the current population. But, if you're prepared to keep pushing history back far enough - to allow humans time to have evolved out of any problems that inbreeding might have created - then you can have just a couple of people. It's incredibly unlikely that they'd have survived from such a small population, but it's not strictly speaking completely impossible.

If you have more years, fewer faults - as FancyPants said, or a larger population to dilute those faults; those I think are the relevant variables you could tweak.

Personally I find the assertion that Adam and Eve were perfect fairly laughable. Perfect creatures don't defect against god when their utility functions have already levelled off.

Which - even were I inclined on other grounds to accept the existence of A&E - would render it rather improbably. For me, that leaves an extremely long evolutionary history or a larger initial population.

Re: Incest
 

Only Space God Child from Mass Effect 3 know the answers you seek.

In other Incest news, Kevin Bacon and his wife Kyra Sedgwick(whoever that is) are apparently cousins whois family use to own slaves.





Real answer: incest only becomes a problem after generations of inbreeding, this is due to flaws in their genes being reinforced, for example if your father was prone to a genetic disorder, over a couple generations it goes from a 50/50 chance of passing it to your children then to 75 then of course 100%, as MrFancypants said, if "adam and eve" were infact created by god, then they would I would hope unless hes a cruel god would have perfect genetic coding, meaning problems would only crop up due to specific traits being bred in, in the same manner how dogs are bred to have long fur and short legs, this is done by breeding dogs with those common traits together over and over again.

Re: Incest
 

I recall reading somewhere (might have been Yahoo News or something similar) a while back that geneticists found that there is really zero harm in reproducing with anyone from like 1st cousin and farther.

Not that I would, as it is a bit weird but from a biological stand point it apparently isn't a huge deal.

Re: Incest
 

I believe I read the same thing; if I recall correctly, mutations take about three generations to build up within a very restricted gene pool (I think the example the article said was between 1st cousins).

So, for three generations, there should be no ill effects - assuming the genetics of the original two parents do not have any defects that could be passed on to begin with. If they do, then it's a very high chance a recessive gene will be expressed.

I'll see if I can find the source but search terms that get me the article will probably get me into that weird part of the internet as well...so I'm a bit loathe to do that...

Re: Incest
 

Marriage to first cousins is still common in some parts of the world, though in more 'developed' areas it is being frowned down upon. It's not apparent the first go around but continued marriage within a family can cause problems. I think one of the more notable examples of this from a historical standpoint was within the Habsburg family, particularity the Spanish line, who ended up ending with Carlos II, a deformed and sterile king who died at a young age.

Of course it emerged before then and even in the Austrian Line with the so-called "Habsburg Jaw". Indeed it really wasn't all that uncommon in 'developed' countries until the beginning of the 20th century, for the most part. Still, there's a reason why it began to get frowned down upon once people got an idea of how genetics work.

Interestingly some states in the US have outright banned 1st cousin marriages, but here in Texas this seemed less motivated as a health issue and more with problems against religious sects, in this case some FLDS groups out west with their polygamy practices.

Re: Incest
 

Here's an article that popped up regarding a ruling on an 'incestuous' couple. The German court handling the case had used as one of the reasons to break up the couple the increased chance of disabilities resulting from it. BTW, this is the extreme case of a brother and sister. Yeah.

BBC News - German incest couple lose European Court case