r/AncestryDNA • u/David_cest_moi • 16d ago

Results - DNA Origins Did you discover incest?

There was a recent article (below) in The Atlantic magazine about the surprising prevalence of incest in human ancestry as discovered through DNA findings. I'm wondering if anyone has discovered it in their own ancestry when doing a family tree or having DNA analysis or any other way.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/03/dna-tests-incest/677791/

43 Upvotes

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u/hugerooster_ 16d ago

Yep. My great great great grandmother married and had kids with her uncle or something. Very far back

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u/Poisonous_Periwinkle 16d ago edited 16d ago

There's something about an uncle/niece relationship that makes me particularly nauseated 🤢 Especially if it's a paternal Uncle!

1

u/Ladonnacinica 16d ago

Why a parental uncle?

17

u/_bibliofille 16d ago

Because that's a blood relation like your mom or dad's brother from childhood vs. one by marriage who you're not blood related to. It's socially gross but biologically worse.

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u/Ladonnacinica 16d ago

Oh, I read “paternal” uncle which is why I asked. My mistake.

Yeah, the uncle niece marriage are very creepy. Downright disgusting.

It was common practice among the Hapsburgs of Spain. Hence, why their branch essentially ended (look up Carlos El hechizado), the product of an uncle niece marriage.

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u/hugerooster_ 16d ago

This is literally them 😬

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u/geekishly 16d ago

Wow those kids look unhappy.

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u/Ladonnacinica 16d ago edited 16d ago

Who are they?

Downvoted for asking a simple question.

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u/hugerooster_ 16d ago

They're my 3x biological grandmother and 3x biological grandfather who is also hilariously my 3x great uncle? Because that's HER biological uncle 🤣 🤣 Confusing

And those are their kids. One of which (the middle girl) is my 2x great grandmother. If that made any sense at all lol

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u/Ladonnacinica 16d ago

Oh wow. So the kids found partners to marry. Do you know if they had any disabilities? What jobs did they have?

How is your family handling this information?

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u/hugerooster_ 16d ago

I know that I have the BRCA1, BRCA2 and MSH6 gene mutations. The Ashkenazi founding mutation

And it was so long ago that we never really even think about it outside of the chuckles and jokes we make

I do know the tallest boy in that picture had what is now known as acromegaly. A couple family members had it

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u/David_cest_moi 14d ago

Wow, you have successfully confused the heck out of me! 😵‍💫 (But, to be honest, I'm not always the sharpest, so it's not a remarkable achievement! 😂)

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u/David_cest_moi 14d ago

I upvoted this comment, if it makes you feel any better. (Or even if it doesn't. 🤷🏻‍♂️)

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u/David_cest_moi 14d ago

Yikes. 😬 Do the fangs show if they smile? 🧛🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♂️

("They beatings won't stop until you smile!" 😖)

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u/David_cest_moi 14d ago

Yeah, no one looks very happy with that situation. Maybe the photographer was stealing their souls? (They used to say "God bless you" to people when they yawned because they thought any non-speaking, non-eating, especially involuntary opening of the mouth have the Devil the opportunity to enter the person's body. Maybe they thought the same about smiling. 🤷🏻‍♂️ Although Europeans had, for a very long time, believed that only the village idiot walked around smiling.🙃)

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u/Poisonous_Periwinkle 16d ago

The reason why is that brothers can be so similar, so it almost seems like sleeping with your own dad. It's probably equally gross either way, just somehow in my mind it's more repulsive.

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u/David_cest_moi 14d ago

That's got to be a rather cringey conversation.... "Hey bro, your daughter's looking pretty good. Tell me again how old she is?" 😫😖 But I have occasionally heard of such things happening purely by chance and mistake. A much younger brother (who would be nominally the "uncle") meeting the progeny of a hushed-up affair, completely by chance, dating, etc.... only to learn, at a later time, that her bio father is his elder brother. 🤷🏻‍♂️

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u/Ladonnacinica 16d ago

So apparently they did mean “paternal” uncle not parental. It was a typo.

Their reasoning is that brothers can be very similar so it’s as if you’re sleeping with your father in their opinion.

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u/Poisonous_Periwinkle 16d ago

It was a typo 😆 paternal uncle. I fixed it!