Neolithic familial change

Razib Khan did one of his open-threads yesterday. One of its links was to Harald Ringbauer, John Novembre, and Matthias Steinrücken: a look at inbreeding in various populations. The term there is Runs of Homozygosity. (Calling HBDChick!)

The article is an overview and a recommendation for future research. The claim here is that wherever there is first-order incest, it's in an elite burial. We have ourselves a Sun King, like the Pharaohs and Incas - or the old Irish. This phenomenon is rare. Turns out sister bumping was just as dangerous for an Irish prince in 5000 BC as it was for the Habsburgs in 1500. The softer inbreeding was more common: here, we're dealing with a gene-pool limited likely by sheer population. UPDATE 9/10 - like the Incas' subjects.

Or by caste and clan. Pakistan is notably bad here (long RoH).

Western Eurasia turns out to shorten its RoH over time. The authors figure this was a revolution in agriculture rather than in social mores: beforehand, some people would like to outbreed, but in the old days they couldn't, and now they can. Same for the Andes. Excepting their respective sun-kings.

INTERJECT 8/5: The reverse is also true. Some culturally-inbred populations were limited by the number of cousins. Europe is the exception which Razib cites. Mandarin China another exception.

One notably sharp change is Iberian: Early Neolithic 5400-5000 BC was inbred, then suddenly Middle/Late Neolithic 4800-2600 BC outbred. The authors link this to Cardial (not Corded!) Ware 5500 BC. These farmers radiated out from a small population. And I guess the population stayed small for several generations. In the early 4000 BC - the authors point out - the farmers started mixing with the foragers, as well. I'd suggest: a move to animal-husbandry among the old foragers. Now they had something to offer to the new cities; further, like the pygmies among the Bantu, the now-herdsmen adopted the city language. Intermarriage was no longer the problem it used to be, so it happened.