The Nomadic Alternative – Page 164

VI

"None of you shall approach to any that is near of kin to him, to uncover their nakedness: I am the Lord." Leviticus 18.6. Immediately interlinked with our primal need to trade is an obsessive care to prevent incest. The innate idea, known as the Incest Taboo, forbids the sexual coupling of close kin, and is universal to all human thought. A Bushman brother and sister may not sit next to each other, nor may they even exchange glances. In 'higher' cultures the likelihood of incest increases and mythology continually harps on its dire consequences.

No comparable institution exists among the animals. Some, it is true, forge bonds severed only at death. The Chinese gibbon has moved emperors to poetry by its conjugal fidelity. Baboons on the other hand mate promiscuously with the high ranking females that sidle alongside them. In an animal society natural selection, working through the dominance hierarchy, prevents the biologically inferior from breeding and the weak succumb. Furthermore territorial defence arrangements safeguard the lebensraum of the group.

But the Incest Taboo supplants the agency of natural selection and serves two complimentary functions. First, it prevents the maladaptive consequences of inbreeding and insures against long-term biological decline. In early times purity of blood would have neither point nor purpose. The mixing of diverse ethnic strains will have rescued the species from atrophied isolation. Sleek female baboons may well compete for the favours of the supermale, but the mutual attraction of opposite types is a glaring feature of human sexuality. Human attractions are ultimately under intellectual control.

Second, and more immediately important, the obsessional care of the savage to "marry far" suggests there is more at stake than biological decline. Exchanges of 'blood' compliment exchanges of