Also, when we talk about it we usually discuss it within the perspective of the visible people in the sources aka nobles.
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But the fact that their data cannot account for peasantry of which we have very spotty demographic marriage data, then this whole study is ridiculous.
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And also, it totally ignores the fact that cousin marriages were in fact very common in the post-medieval period. Like please explain to me how this works when 18th and 19th c England and Ireland have many examples of cousin marriage.
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You know what’s worse than not citing historians? Is citing historians and not actually considering what they wrote, and having a lack of engagement with the wider discourse. It means that you looked, stopped when you found what you thought you needed, and didn’t go further.
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So their map: premise is regarding the early Church contact with the world and the impact on kin structures. Okay so not only is the premise here that the early medieval Church was a Western European thing, it ignores the origins and impact of Christianity in the following places
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Ethiopia being the biggest one, but in general it oversimplifies the Church in N Africa and the Middle East quite significantly.
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Also re: data sets. They are comparing modern evidence (presumably of regular people but I have no idea) with the aforementioned spotty kinship data of the medieval period and just mashing it all up together and presenting that as a model.
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Did no one see the problems inherent in that?
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Also if someone could point out their primary sources/data sets to me in this, I would love that. Because I cannot for the love of me find them in the paper. https://science.sciencemag.org/content/366/6466/eaau5141 …
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Since some person decided to be rather rude about the medievalists who are more than justified in calling this paper out, I want to just highlight something regarding medieval history that I mentioned yesterday.
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We do not (generally) look at how the past precipated things in the distant future, whether that be nations, ideologies, impacts.
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Simply because it is impossible to boil it down to one cause, one thing.
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The Church’s rules against cousin marriage cannot explain modern Western society.
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Because not only was it not enforced in a way we can accurately understand, but for the Early Modern period when we do have much more demographic data, we know cousin marriages were very common in places like England and I suspect Ireland also.
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So you can’t say, well the systemic contact with the church led to ideas of individuality and such because...that is so Eurocentric and ignores modern data also.
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Again, I want to point out that they seem to think the medieval church had no impact on N Africa (Ethiopia!!!!) and the Middle East.
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Okay so, some final thoughts as I had a look through the supplemental data, located here: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/suppl/2019/11/06/366.6466.eaau5141.DC1/aau5141_Schulz_SM.pdf …
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(hopefully that link works). Anyway, it's long, over 50 pages. So, for future reference for myself and others, Science papers tend to have the longer study in the supplemental. I didn't realize, no one indicated that to me on Friday, or over the weekend. Only now.
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They used dispensations from the Vatican archive as evidence, but it seems that is modern evidence? p. 7
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So for medieval Church exposure: "These measures capture the average duration ancestors of modern-day countries’ inhabitants were exposed to the Churches’ MFP up to the year 1500CE. See Figure 1 in the main text for an overview..."
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"...The measures are coded in three steps. First, for each country, the starting point of the Church’s MFP is determined. Second, the years (up until 1500) during which the country was governed by a Christian ruler are counted..."
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"...Third, the measure is ancestor-adjusted to account for population movements post-1500." p. 8. Okay, so I read this as accounting for descendants from medieval peoples only? Not sure how to interpret this tbh.
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The MFP is what they call the Medieval Family Program. Started in 506 from the Synod of Agde, when the consanguinity prescriptions began properly, according to them.
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Okay so, they start from this date, except for places not yet converted, and they include them after they were properly brought into Church administration.
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So this is in effect a rolling impact presumably, as more and more bishoprics are established. This is interesting to me, methodologically, because it assumes that "Church influence" is congruent with bishoprics/admin, rather than a general societal impact.
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As far as I can tell, they do not acknowledge the enforcement of these rules would not have really been possible, at a late or early stage, and would have been targeted towards elites (who received dispensation often or flouted the rules).
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However the more I read this, the more I am unsettled by the premise that exposure to the Church results in "individualism, creativity, embeddedness, and analytical thinking."
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I see Mitterauer cited here, a few other historians like De Jong, but a lot of articles on consanguinity from other scientists.
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And perhaps I am reading this wrong. But it seems to me that this is comparing "The West" as it were with non-Christian, non-Western societies, that from their map seem to be African/Asian nations, with these outcomes. That is...idk. But it unsettles me, guys.
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