![]() There are many cross-cultural variations in the incest taboo. In turn, these sexual regulations are an important component of the extensive normative structure regulating family, marriage, and kinship systems, and ultimately the larger society. A thorough understanding of the incest taboo necessarily recognizes this rule as an important part of a larger system of sexual regulations. This includes distantly related individuals to which an actual genealogical connection cannot be made (Murdock 1949). In societies composed of unilineal descent groups (e.g., lineages, clans, and moieties), the incest rule often includes all or most of a person's descent (kinship) group. Typically included in the taboo are nuclear (parents and children) and immediate (e.g., grandparents, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews, and first cousins) family members. ![]() Closely related to the incest taboo are the rules of exogamy that usually prohibit marriage between the same categories of kin forbidden by incest rules (Murdock 1949). Thus, interest in the incest taboo has an extensive history.Īlthough the incest taboo varies in meaning by society, it is frequently an important rule of prohibition, commonly encompassing religious sanctions, and usually forbidding sexual contact between particular categories of relatives and family members. ![]() Historically, western scholars believed that the incest taboo-long proposed as a cultural universal-is vital to understanding the human condition. ![]() The incest taboo is one of the oldest and most perplexing mysteries encountered by students of human society. ![]()
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