Fifty said:
I think that everyone just claims they are only against incest for biological reasons (like unhealthy babies or whatever) as a front... the real reason is just that everyone thinks it is gross.
yeah but why do people think it is gross ?
My views, heavily influenced by that of Claude Levi-Strauss, is that incest is a way to force the tribe/clanic family to expand outside its boundaries, insuring its long-term success.
Over the years, the centuries, the milleniums, this taboo has been so deeply marked in our social behaviours that the result is that today we find it gross.
An argument for that over the biological argument is that a lot of primitive societes, particularly Amazonians tribes, have really complex incest taboos where incest is not between, say, father and daughter, but between daughter and the father of the brother.
This tends to show that incest taboos are not biologically driven, but respond to economical/social/expansionnic motives.
Another blow to the biological argument is that infant death rates were way too high for people to notice, and act upon, genetical defects in their congenital offspring. Especially if it concerns the immune system, at times when people drank directly from rainwater
