
I Googled My Mother’s Maiden Name and Found My Family’s Violent Secret - dsr12
http://www.vice.com/en_ca/read/i-googled-my-mothers-maiden-name-and-found-my-familys-violent-secret-296
======
stretchwithme
We all descended from rapists, killers, child molesters and slave owners, if
you go back far enough.

~~~
tomkwok
There was inevitable inbreeding between ancestors too.

~~~
jacobolus
The way you phrased that shows some bias toward contemporary European family
structures.

Inbreeding was standard accepted practice pretty much everywhere until 1500
years ago, and still is in many parts of the world. (In many Arab countries,
for example, marriages between first cousins make up 15+% of all marriages,
and marriages between first or second cousins make up 30+% of all marriages.)

It’s especially in Western Europe where cousin marriages out to 2nd, 3rd, or
further cousins were taboo, and universal “outbreeding” was/is the enforced
norm. (Primarily because the Catholic church wanted to break the political
power of extended families, and divert more inheritances to the church instead
of to people’s kin. In similar vein they discouraged/disallowed divorce,
adoptions, marriage of widows, etc.) I did a google search to look for quick
sources just now. This page has a summary: [http://www.collective-
action.info/_DEB_MAP_RelationMarriageP...](http://www.collective-
action.info/_DEB_MAP_RelationMarriagePatternsExchangeInheritance)

~~~
tomkwok
I'm sorry for the confusion. I just thought when the human population was
still small long ago, when there wasn't even a concept of 'incest', inbreeding
between ancestors was more common and expected. So we all descended from
incestors in today's context. Is that right?

~~~
jacobolus
Yep. If you go back 10–20 generations in anyone’s family tree, you’ll find
we’re all the product of sexual relationships between first cousins, siblings,
parents and their children, etc.

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xasos
It's a common thing to say that we Australians are descendants of criminals
(Australia was originally populated by British prisoners). It's interesting to
see that it is now one of the friendliest countries in the world, coming from
a country filled with criminals 200 years ago.

In the end, we have all descended from a criminal in one form or the other :)

~~~
nailer
We shouldn't let them get away with it though: it's still as ignorant of
history as saying Americans are descended from puritans.

There was no Melbourne (4.5M people) prison - John Batman sailed up a river,
decided 'it was a good place for a city'. There's been waves of farmers, waves
of gold miners, waves of British and mediterranean emigrees and waves of
refugees.

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bdcravens
There are probably a large number of the 6 billion alive that were the result
of rape in their lineage, even within the past 8-10 generations. I think we
want to have a connection to those in our past, but the reality is that we
have more in common with any random name on the census than those whose DNA
eventually trickled down to us.

~~~
sdrothrock
> the reality is that we have more in common with any random name on the
> census than those whose DNA eventually trickled down to us.

Really?

DNA will give you a whole lot of things. What if the theoretical rapist had a
predisposition to Alzheimer's? MS? Parkinson's? Huntingdon's? etc.

~~~
waterhouse
Well, actually, after 8 generations, each allele has 8 chances to not get
inherited. So if the rapist had, say, one copy of the Huntington's allele (an
autosomal dominant mutation according to Wiki), then you would have a 1/256
chance of having inherited the disease from that ancestor. Two copies of the
allele from the rapist would give you a 1/128 chance. I'd have to say GP's
point stands here.

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nchelluri
Leave it to a vice.com article to reference how relevant material is avoided
(twice) because of the cost for a paywall.

If the guy really wanted to find out what was going on, he'd at least pay the
$20 to find out.

~~~
johnchristopher
Christine Estima is the author.

~~~
nchelluri
Poor reading comprehension on my part.

------
johnchristopher
> I sit here, armed with this knowledge, and I think to myself quite
> shamefully, You can take the man out of Syria but you can't take Syria out
> of the man.

The author can be damn shamed about that reasoning. I hope she only take it
for granted for herself and not every Syrian on earth.

> I suppose, when you come from a family that is named after a gun, you will,
> in all likelihood, die by that gun.

Well, no. I seem to recall from reading the article 5 minutes ago that her
great-grandfather was actually a nice guy.

------
vinceyuan
As a non-native English speaker, I couldn't understand the title until I
realized his great-grandfather Michael Zarbatany is his mother's grandfather,
instead of his father's grandfather. Why doesn't English distinguish between
paternal grandparents and maternal grandparents?

~~~
anton-107
Is it really important to distinguish?

~~~
DominikD
It's a cultural thing I guess. I know some people who think of their maternal
lineage as if it were less of a family than the paternal one. Their excuse
borders religion and superstitions.

I'm interested though which languages distinguish maternal and paternal
grandparents. Just like in English, in Polish you simply qualify[1] if things
like these matter.

[1] paternal: po mieczu (sword lineage); maternal: po kądzieli (distaff
lineage)

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tim333
I guess there will be more and more of that as paper archives are scanned and
indexed. I find the family history interesting but have had to use non google
methods of research.

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azinman2
So it's interesting and all, but why is this in HN?

~~~
karlshea
Why am I seeing so many of these comments lately? It's on HN because it was
voted to the front page. Not every thread has to be about a VC, startup, or
argument about a database engine.

~~~
xtrumanx
> Why am I seeing so many of these comments lately?

I'm pretty sure I read before that PG started HN back before reddit had
subreddits because he wanted a community about a specific set of topics. Lots
of people then formed an idea of what HN was about and started visiting
regularly for more of the same. If something seems out of place and on the
front page it's perfectly natural to expect comments questioning why something
got upvoted.

~~~
karlshea
This is the very first paragraph of the Guidelines:

> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes
> more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the
> answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

I've seen lots of non-technology topics since I started reading, and to me
this post didn't seem out of place at all. The "why is this here" posts seem
to be happening more frequently in the last couple of months, but I guess it's
possible that I just wasn't noticing them before.

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Demiurge
The notion that "blood carries" anything other than oxygen and nutrients seem
archaic, intellectually offensive and as dangerous as racism.

~~~
tim333
Carries some DNA too.

~~~
jeorgun
To be completely pedantic, red blood cells lack nuclei, so aside from maybe
mitochondria or something they actually don't carry DNA.

~~~
peterfirefly
There are cells in the blood from one's mother and for mothers, from their
children.

