
Why are adult daughters missing from ancient German cemeteries? - pella
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/10/why-are-adult-daughters-missing-ancient-german-cemeteries
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wahern
> "What shocked me was that you have to give away all your daughters at some
> moment,

How is this shocking? The Chinese, for example, practiced until recently
strict exogamous marriage whereby women were always married off outside the
clan and men always stayed home. Women were forbidden to have contact with
their biological family after marriage; in a sense their entire identity,
including their lineage, became that of the clan they married into. It's
similar to adoption in that regard, in the sense that in traditional East
Asian cultures you don't distinguish adopted children from "blood" relations.

Such practices, while not universal, could be found around the world, AFAIU.
It's a well known social pattern, which is why it's odd to hear it
characterized as shocking.

~~~
kbenson
Given that there are generally more women than men in a population, and that I
don't see a reason why that trend would be lessened or reversed the farther
back in history we go (I imagine it actually gets more pronounced), what
happens to the women that can't be married off because there aren't enough
males in a culture that doesn't support polygamy but is like you describe? I
imagine some small amount would become concubines/courtesans, but could that
actually account for all of the discrepancy?

~~~
klodolph
The gender ratio worldwide is currently somewhere around 101 female to 100
male (this is a bit hard to quantify, because in this group you’d also have
~3.4 intersex births). However, it is estimated that in the 17th century,
somewhere around 1-1.5% of women giving birth died. So I would not take it for
granted that the gender ratio was the same hundreds of years ago.

~~~
lugg
You can basically assume the overall population gender ratio was 1:1, the
birth ratio might have been different but that is expected.

It's a self correcting phenomenon where the ratio self selects towards 1:1.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher%27s_principle](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher%27s_principle)

~~~
abdullahkhalids
That is a long term phenomena - long enough that evolution by natural
selection can operate. Nothing to do with less than a thousand years/a few
dozen generations.

~~~
lugg
Evolution and natural selection do work on those timescales. Take a look at
rapid evolution for examples.

I'm not sure how fast exactly human birth ratios swing but I would hazard a
guess a few dozen generations would be enough to self select at least
partially back towards the norm. How long did it take the worlds population to
recover after WW1/2?

I'm happy to see evidence contrary but please don't just dismiss things as if
evolution is working on geological timescales it's just not.

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RcouF1uZ4gsC
TLDR: They were all sent away to other communities to marry. Sons stayed in
the community, but daughters once they reached adulthood left the community
for other communities.

~~~
schappim
But why were they not found in the cemeteries of other communities?

~~~
mumblemumble
They were. The article isn't saying that there aren't any adult women being
found in cemeteries. It's saying that none of the adult women being found in
the cemeteries seem to be the daughter of anyone else in the community.

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solidsnack9000
Many Native American folk tales there are suggest a similar form of exogamy,
where daughters leave the tribe to find a partner and new community to be a
part of.

What effect would this kind of exogamy have? It might lead to a fair
standardisation of the domestic arts, since women "from everywhere" came
together in each tribe and could compare and adopt methods. Whereas, the arts
of the hunt and the art of war might remain fairly distinct in each tribe.

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pan69
I didn't fully understand this from the article but, with "adult daughters"
they would mean, unmarried women? I mean, if "all" adult women were send away
to be married elsewhere then they'd have to bring in "new" women to marry the
local men, right? So, local men would also marry local women in that they did
find graves of families (ie. with mothers and fathers)? But they don't say
that.

Maybe women were married at a very young age and men could marry at a much
older age. Maybe men could marry multiple times, women would often die in
child birth.

~~~
klodolph
> I didn't fully understand this from the article but, with "adult daughters"
> they would mean, unmarried women?

No.

The article is saying that the adult women found in burial sites were
originally born elsewhere, and their ancestors are not found in the same
burial site.

This is basically some variation of “patrilocal residence”.

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pteredactyl
Something shocking something Germans were always evil patriarchs. For all of
time. The study is titled "Kinship-based social inequality in Bronze Age
Europe." I question this study, which is behind a paywall. So the idea is
women go off on their own to find mates? And they studied 104 bones(?) using
"deep regional approach" to determine this. Seems a very small sample size to
make this generalization about the past. How is it that academics always find
in the past that which validates their present views?

>"We apply a deep micro-regional approach and analyze genome wide data of 104
human individuals deriving from farmstead-related cemeteries from the Late
Neolithic to the Middle Bronze Age in southern Germany."

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chimi
I always try to explain these things with evolutionary biology. I look to the
non-human animal kingdom to see if the pattern of behavior exists in other
species too. This one does.

In many species, members of clans and tribes go off to discover mating
opportunities. I believe much of it has to do with limiting inbreeding.

I remember a scene in Game of Thrones where the guy didn't want to be eaten by
the dead things, so he said he was going to take his boats to an island, kill
all the men, and take their wives. Such things happen often in war. It might
be a reason war exists.

In the case of the German daughters, if the males work the land, know the
land, defend the land from invaders, then it would make sense the daughters
leave to be protected by such men in another land.

~~~
choeger
It does make sense. In hindsight. But why would the tribes send away _all_
their daughters in the first place? I don't think that inbreeding was a
concept back then. So what compelled a rich and powerful father to send away
_all_ his daughters. That seems rather odd to me.

~~~
dragontamer
> I don't think that inbreeding was a concept back then.

There are evolutionary guards against inbreeding. Its why brothers + sisters
can grow up and live together, but for the most part don't feel like dating or
marrying each other.

Its beyond culture: its written in our genetic code itself. Presumably, the
primitive-man tribes who did do in-breeding were probably wiped out in the
stone-age due to the (now well known) problems.

True, there are exceptions. But in the general case, the guards against in-
breeding are part of the human's genetic code. Sorta anyway: IIRC the specific
genetic programming is against "marrying people who you grew up with".

~~~
viraptor
There are also relatively-modern tribe rules which provide some protection.
For example Australian tribes use a split into subsections where you're
allowed to marry only 4 out of 8 (or some other configuration) which provides
a minimum of some number of generations before people with common ancestors
can marry.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Aboriginal_kinship#...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Aboriginal_kinship#The_subsection_system)

