July 1, 2013
to be posted on nobabies.net
Kurt Alt
Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz
Institut für Anthropologie ...>
AG Historische Anthropologie und Bioarchäometrie ...>
Colonel Kleinmann Weg 2
55099 Mainz
altkw@uni-mainz.de
Dear Professor Alt:
Forgive me for using English as it would be even more irritating for you and embarrassing for me to struggle with my long decayed German. I read with interest an internet posting
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2013/06/did-inbreeding-bind-early-farmer.html
that mentions you in connection with work done on Basta in Jorday. Tooth anomalies indicate a high degree of consanguinity there some ten thousand years ago.
I frequent a site maintained by someone who calls herself “hbdchick,” uses capitals only when in a passion and has an interest in human biodiversity. The mood of the site is that inbreeding is the root of all evil. To a degree I can only concur. Get rid of inbreeding, say out past tenth cousins, and stay there for five or ten generations and you will eliminate crime, war, alienation, paranoia, prejudice, environmental degradation, inequality, ingrown toenails and annoying email such as this. But you would also eliminate some good things like peanut butter, pretty girls, books … that’s about all I can think of. You see no population can survive without a degree of consanguinity.
Here’s a link in case you want to see the references and logic.
http://nobabies.net/A%20December%20summary.html
I’ll also attach a paper that, to the best of my knowledge, is the only one that has ever addressed the mechanism that causes this.
The site I allude to occasionally brings up the question, “Just when did this population or that one start marrying kin?” Often I will send in a message that we have been marrying kin since the first vertebrates. I am generally politely ignored.
Anyway, maybe the Bastanians were more enthusiastic about marrying kin than was absolutely necessary, but on the question of whether they did at all it seems to me the answer is that you are absolutely right.
Let me know what you think.
Sincerely,
M. Linton Herbert
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