Steve Jones on Darwin and Inbreeding
A long article by Steve Jones here from today’s Guardian. (But ignore the rather feeble first paragraph. I doubt that ‘every schoolchild’ has as many ideas about Darwin – whether true or false – as this suggests.)
Interesting account of Darwin’s thought process at the dawn of the evolutionary theories.
Due to the mention of cross-cousin marriages in India, its also interesting to bear in mind that such marriages had been ritualistically prohibited in atleast some section of the brahmin elite precisely due to the very fears that Darwin had.
Namboothiri marriage system
Every schoolchild certainly wasn’t taught much about Darwin in my day – biology was for those who couldn’t do maths. On the other hand, those who could do maths were often the sort who’d find out a bit about Darwin on their own.