Endogamy may not seem like a topic that is relevant to western countries, however, it is crucial in understanding the history of western culture and current geopolitical events. In The WEIRDest People in the World (2020) Joseph Henrich discusses how the west got more educated, democratic and rich (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) because the mediaeval church reduced endogamy by prohibiting first cousin marriages and similar laws. Henrich has been criticised for overstating his point. However, considering how persistent endogamy was until recently I don’t think this is the case.
David Reich discusses the Indian castes system in his book Who We Are and How We Got Here (2018) and found that a lot of the Indian jati (i.e. clans) show extremely high levels of endogamy for thousands of years:
Many of the population bottlenecks in India were also exceedingly old. One of the most striking we discovered was in the Vysya of the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, a middle caste group of approximately five million people whose population bottleneck we could date (from the size of segments shared between individuals of the same population) to between three thousand and two thousand years ago.
The observation of such a strong population bottleneck among the ancestors of the Vysya was shocking. It meant that after the population bottleneck, the ancestors of the Vysya had maintained strict endogamy, allowing essentially no genetic mixing into their group for thousands of years. Even an average rate of influx into the Vysya of as little as 1 percent per generation would have erased the genetic signal of a population bottleneck. The ancestors of the Vysya did not live in geographic isolation. Instead, they lived cheek by jowl with other groups in a densely populated part of India. Despite proximity to other groups, the endogamy rules and group identity in the Vysya have been so strong that they maintained strict social isolation from their neighbors, and transmitted that culture of social isolation to each and every subsequent generation.
I have argued that food production (agriculture and pastoralism) provided selective pressures for higher endogamy and clannishness in ancient farmers and herders. The development towards exogamy came from people with a high level of hunter-gatherer admixture (hunter-gatherer types). Hunter-gatherers in contrast have strict exogamy laws and the level of inbreeding is relatively low for a band. Foragers are also highly democratic (egalitarian) and low group identification individuals may change bands frequently and freely.
High endogamy, therefore, goes hand in hand with a conservative ethos that includes various inequalities:
- High in-group identification (with outgroups often seen as inferior or hostile)
- High inequality between the genders with women having far fewer rights
From these two factors, a variety of other characteristics emerge, e.g. a high level of xenophobia. As the map shows, more than 40% of people in India (as well as in other countries associated historically with early farming) would be reluctant to have neighbours from another race.
Other characteristics that emerge from high endogamy are arranged marriages and honour killings in case of rule-breaking.
Even though western countries don’t have endogamy anymore, the remnants of our evolutionary programming. I have heard more than once that a young girl said that her father would beat her if she dated, say, a refugee.
Most of our traits show a 50% inheritance, with culture making up most of the rest. Our Western culture has been “forageragized” (WEIRDized) in a way that many traditional cultures have never been. Of course, there are always individual differences, but it helps to see human nature and culture as a map:
Forager types, also often described as highly sensitive people or neurodiverse people only make up a small percentage of Western countries (typically around 20%) and much likely even less in societies that are much more traditional, especially those that like Middle Eastern countries are reluctant to introduce gender equality. Women's rights are a gauge of how healthy a democracy is. Corruption (due to high in-groupishness), on the other hand, is a gauge of how unhealthy a democracy is. Equal gender rights are definitely a part of WEIRD societies. Steps in the opposite direction should be cause for concern for everyone.
Exogamy also contributes to a more peaceful world. It would be stupid to be aggressive towards a group that has relatives in it from an evolutionary point of view. When the war in Ukraine started a lot of pictures of Russian-Ukrainian couples were shared on the internet to show how inhuman and absurd the war is.
Check out my book for more background information on mapping human nature:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09LSF98WV
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