My brother passed a book to my niece who is a psychology major: Human by Michael S. Gazzaniga. It is mentioned in Chapter 4 The Moral Compass Within that all cultures on earth have incest taboo. But where does it come from? One may say that the off springs resulted from incest stand high probability of being deformed or having genetic shortcomings. Of course communities would make those who infringe this taboo outcasts. In ancient societies, being out casts means a shorter life span. As only a group of families of a certain size could survive in the jungle. In modern societies, such taboos are enforced by law. Individuals who commit such crimes are imprisoned.
In Israeli kibbutzim, unrelated children are brought up together, they formed lifelong friendships but very rarely marry. ( Shepher, J. 1983 Incest: A Biosocial view Academic Press) Yet in Taiwan, an ancient custom called shimpua marriage where a family raises the future wife of their son from infancy. These marriages often result in no off spring. It is thought that the partners do not find each other sexually appealing. ( Wolf, A.P. 1966 Childhood association and sexual attraction. American Anthropologist 70) Interestingly my maternal uncle who is in his late seventies rejected his shimpua and married someone else.
Edward Westermarck proposed in 1891 that humans have evolved an innate mechanism whose function is to discourage incest. By his nature, a person would be uninterested in or averse to having sex with those he had spent a lot of time with as a child.
Despite all that have been mentioned, incest among siblings still occur in my country. In the newspaper we find young females found to be pregnant, where the police and welfare officials traced it to forcible rapes by elder brothers or step brothers. It is difficult to find out if such siblings have been brought up together. But it is quite apparent that such crimes are often found with parents where the father is polygamous and the mother has been divorced and remarried.
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