Genetics, Ecology and the Origins of Incest and Exogamy

Abstract

The biological consequences of inbreeding are often advanced as the cause of the evolution of incest and exogamy in human societies. This paper attempts to show that genetic analysis does not support such a conclusion. An alternate reconstruction of the origins of incest and exogamy based on cultural and populational consequences of these phenomena is proposed to show that reconstructions of human cultural evolution can contribute to the interpretation of human biological evolution.