GOODY--CLARK

One of the main reasons first cousins or other such closely related people are not allowed to marry today is because of the lack of gene variation that results in their offspring. Because this is a strictly physiological issue and in now way related to culture, it can be assumed that during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Europe, severe genetic mutations would still have occurred from such unions. Goody notes many marriages during that time were “between first cousins, while others were between uncle and niece” (187). How is it possible that there were not genetic mutations in their offspring, and if there were, why wouldn’t it have discouraged other such marriages?