Archaeologica.org

This is rather ironic, because just last week I had some computer connectivity problems and re-installed Windows Vista on my PC. I didn't "back it up" and lost everything. There was really nothing of any major importance, but it was a pain in the ass re-installing all my programs and re-populating my favorites list. But, having said that, it's beside the point, because the program in question was recorded on a DVR/Tivo device. I have no interface between that device and my computer. Also, there is no back up function on the device so once deleted it's just gone. Discovery channel will air it again...ad nauseum, I'm sure. Maybe I can record it again on a DVD and then load the DVD on my PC and convert it into some kind of file that I can post on here. I just don't see myself going to all that trouble. Sorry.

Quite understandable, Frank. And that's why automation was invented. And why compatibility is so essential to it. Let computers work for their keep. Not you. In keeping with my motto: work smart, not hard.

Further to this discussion, and wandering off topic somewhat??? it has occurred to me that both Darwin and Mendel must be dumped if inbreeding is assumed to always be a bad idea. So I throw this into the ring, how do you get a new species from parent stock without inbreeding?

Roy.

You've touched the raw nerve, Roy -- perhaps the biggest single lie in the falsification of human cultural history.

In 1991, Lloyd DeMause (a Psychiatrist) touched off a a panic that still hasn't subsided with his landmark study, On the Universality of Incest. Reaction to it in the various professions it impacted was hysterical, and largely remains so.

[T]he only universal trait that Contemporary social scientists and historians agree has been found in every known culture is the prohibition of incest. As one standard text puts it, "The taboo on incest within the immediate family is one of the few known cultural universals."(1) Kroeber stated, "If ten anthropologists were asked to designate one universal institution, nine would likely name the incest prohibition; some have expressly named it as the only universal one."(2) That "no known tribe has ever permitted incest"(3) has been a truism for cross-cultural studies ever since Durkheim and Westermarck's early books on the subject.(4)

Furthermore, the same authors go on to state that the universal prohibitions on incest are virtually always effective, so that incest itself is rarely found in any society. Even when societies are found that approve of incest, they only "serve rather to emphasize than to disprove the universality of intra-family incest taboos," according to George Murdock.(5) Incestuous societies simply cannot exist, since, according to Talcott Parscins, the effective prohibition of incest is "linked with the functioning of every society."(6) The abolition of incest was accomplished at the beginning of human culture, Leslie White says, since without it "social evolution could have gone no further on the human level than among the anthropoids."(7) As Levi-Strauss concluded, "the prohibition of incest can be found at the dawn of culture... [It] is culture itself." (8)

The certainty with which the effective prohibition of incest has been declared leads one to look for the evidence these authors might have for their assertions. Yet such a search soon proves quite fruitless. Most of them cite no evidence at all, or at most refer to a single cross cultural survey by Murdock in his book, Social Structure. Murdock's study, however, turns out not to be about incest at all, if by incest one means actual sexual relations between family members other than spouses. What Murdock studied was marriage rules. Yet authors continue to assume Murdock proved that a universal prohibition on incest itself exists, not just a prohibition on intra-farnily marriage.(9)

Indeed, rather than examining the actual occurrence of incest in either historical or contemporary groups, the voluminous literature on the subject instead speculates on why incest supposedly doesn't occur. Many explanations have been proposed: the biological impairments attendant upon inbreeding, the utility of social alliances, the collapse of the family if sexual rivalry is allowed, even boredom with family members. When exceptions have been acknowledged-royal incest in dozens of societies,(10) sibling incest among the general population in others,(11) widespread pederasty in still others,(12) - discussion has continued to focus on why incest is supposedly rare, not on whether it really is.

One begins to realize how odd this is when it is compared, say, with the study of other deviant acts, such as homicide. Although effective laws against murder long preceded laws against incest - and were far more often enforced rather than winked at - no one thinks of writing hundreds of studies on why mankind has a "universal homicide taboo."(13)

This essay is intended to consider the evidence for the opposite hypothesis: That it is incest itself - and not the absence of incest - that has been universal for most people in most places at most times. Furthermore, the earlier in history one searches, the more evidence there is . . .
http://www.psychohistory.com/htm/06a1_incest.html

Well I have to admit uni that I am singularly unshocked!

Roy.

Beautiful cat, by the way, R/S.

We've got four (cats -- not Bengals) ; two are domestic longhairs that, I'm convinced, would be incapable of survival in the wild. The one has such long, silky fine hair around her bottom that a bout of the runs creates a solid plug. If we didn't notice this and cut it away with scissors, she'd be a goner. The other, a beautiful Brown Tabby Maine Coon type licks the fur on her back neurotically until she's got a solid ball of hopelessly tangled fur there that spreads over time until it too is scissored away.

Longhairs are pretty, no doubt. But that nature doesn't produce them isn't , IMHO, without significance.

But that nature doesn't produce them isn't , IMHO, without significance.

Of course. But it might well depend on what significance you attach to that.

Roy.

How 'bout if I meet you halfway and acknowledge that creatures poorly designed for survival tend not to survive and reproduce ?

Which is still not "the survival of the fittest" -- only the tendency of the unfit to not survive.

That's a very fine distinction I think, anyway, what's wrong with 'survival of the fittest?'

Roy.

Where people are concerned, at least, the evidence that, previous to the dawn of the "survival of the fittest" dogma, care of the crippled/infirm and elderly is self-evident from the archaeological record -- even back in Neanderthal times. I.e., the survival of the non-fittest.

(edit: spelling)

True, but when coined that was not the intended point.

Roy.

I think, on the contrary, it was, Roy. And precisely.

The usurers who'd gained the uppper hand in England with the Restoration operated precisely along those lines : every man for himself, and the devil take the hindmost. Once accepted (because it was what people saw around them), the formal notion of the Survival of the Fittest made this retroactive.

Whoever controls the past, controls the future.

By re-imaging the past, the present seemed (somewhat) less the imposition of alien values to people who detested, but endured having to live according to them. As did Calvin's doctrine of Election, the model it copies.

Any time you see a dogma like that enforced with the tenacity it has been -- evidence be damned -- it is in the service a much larger agenda.

Usury not withstanding the phrase was coined within a particular context...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survival_of_the_fittest

...and should be understood as such.
Some time ago, on another forum, a poster objected to my use of the word 'vermin' in ref to the Fox. I pointed out that the use of the term to describe practioners of anti social behaviour etc fails to understand the correct usage. Vermin means any non domesticated animal that is not 'game.'
Thus the Hare is 'game' and the Fox is vermin.
SotF meant specifically as described in the Wiki link and thus needs no apologists.

Roy.

Objection, Your Honor. Only myopically true. In the bigger picture, the dog-eat-dog ethos had been the name of the game for 250 years. Pretending that the coinage in a narrow application did not reflect this is disingenuous.

It may well be applicable to other scenario uni but was coined, as I said, to present a special set of circumstances.
That it may have been hijacked to cover other events does not alter that fact.
None of which answers my question as to whether a new species can be obtained without inbreeding.
I was hoping to hear a number of opinions on that suggestion.

Roy.