Primitive eugenics / by A.E. Crawley.

  • Ernest Crawley
Date:
[1910?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Primitive eugenics / by A.E. Crawley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    satisfactory marriage-class. We have here,” he says, “ a phenomenon probably unique in the whole range of anthropology —a people who for generations have married their first cousins and still continue to do so, and among whom the offspring of first cousins are not only more numerous but have greater vitality than the children of persons unrelated. Nay more, the children of concubitants—of first cousins whose parents were brother and sister ”—(this, by the way, is the only first-cousin-marriage allowed by the dual exogamous system, to which it is the key, and is known as cross-cousin-marriage)—“ have immense advantages over the children of first cousins who are the offspring of two brothers or two sisters respectively. In no other part of the world does there exist so favourable material for investigating the phenomena of in-breeding among human beings. Is it possible that we have stumbled upon an important truth in our physical nature ? Is there really a wide physical difference between the relationship of cousins who are offspring of a brother and sister respectively and that of cousins whose parents respec¬ tively were two brothers or two sisters ? Ought marriage in the one case to be allowed or even encouraged, and in the other case as rigidly forbidden as if it were incestuous ? ” It is this latter detail that I referred to as unique ; this apparent superiority of the offspring of a pair of cousins, children of a brother and of a sister. This kind of marriage is very common in early society all over the world. There are a few exceptions, for instance the Malagasy allow the children of brothers to marry, but not the children of sisters. Why, I do not guess. It would be of immense interest if someone would undertake the examination of the question of cross-cousin-marriage.
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