EARLY IDEAS ON INBREEDING AND CROSSBREEDING 3 



then no other women on the earth. Indeed Adam and Eve themselves were not 

 entirely unrelated. The marrying of a sister was obviously respectable, and 

 it seems to have occurred routinely among the Hebrews and their ancestors 

 for several thousand years. Abraham's wife, Sarah, was also his sister. At 

 times even closer inbreeding took place. Abraham's nephew, Lot, impreg- 

 nated his own two daughters. The latter instances occurred, however, under 

 exceptional circumstances — and Lot was drunk. But as late as the time of 

 King David, brother-sister marriages took place. The imbroglio between 

 David's children, Tamar, Ammon, and Absalom, shows that a legal mar- 

 riage between half-brother and sister would then have been a routine oc- 

 currence. 



The Greeks also could hardly have had scruples against inbreeding, as 

 evinced by the pedigrees they invented for their gods. Their theogony shows 

 many instances of the closest inbreeding possible for either animals or gods 

 in which the sexes are separate. Zeus, the great father of the gods, married 

 his sister, Hera. Their parents, Kronos and Rhea, also were brother and 

 sister, and were in turn descended from Ouranos and Gaea, again brother 

 and sister. Thus the legitimate offspring of Zeus — Hebe, Ares, and Hephaes- 

 tus — were the products of three generations of brother-sister mating. 

 Moreover, the pedigrees of the Greek heroes show an amount of inbreeding 

 comparable to that in our modern stud books for race horses. They were 

 all related in one way or another and related to the gods in many ways. A 

 single example will be cited. Zeus was the father of Herakles and also his 

 great-great-grandfather on his mother's side. Herakles' great-great-grand- 

 mother, Danae, who had found such favor in the eyes of Zeus, was herself 

 descended from Zeus through two different lines. With immortals, back- 

 crossing offered no real problems. 



East and Jones (1919) have pointed out that close inbreeding was com- 

 mon among the Athenians even at the height of their civilization. These 

 scientists were of the opinion that most of the freemen in Attica were 

 rather closely related to each other. Marriage between half brother and 

 sister was permitted, and marriage between uncle and niece fairly common. 

 A Grecian heiress was nearly always taken as a wife by one of her kinsmen 

 so that her property would not be lost to the family. Common as inbreeding 

 was during the flowering of Greek culture, it was as nothing compared with 

 the inbreeding which occurred in the period after the Trojan War and before 

 the true historical period. In this intervening time, Greece was divided into 

 innumerable independent political units, many of them minute. One island 

 six miles long and two miles wide contained three separate kingdoms. 

 Political boundaries as well as bays, mountains, and seas were functional, 

 isolating mechanisms; and the Greeks were separated into many small 

 breeding units for fifteen to twenty generations. Isolation was never com- 

 plete, however, and there were enough wandering heroes to supply some 



