The WEIRDEST People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous. His argument is that WEIRD people—Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich and Democratic—have psychological characteristics that differentiate them from most other humans who have ever lived.

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[–]jet199 5 insightful - 2 fun5 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Right so straight off he is assuming cousin marriage was the norm before the church stopped it. This isn't the case, it differed from culture to culture even within Western Europe. The main driver of cousin marriage is indeed passing on property to your extended family but that's also which makes the practice variable. During the majority of human history most people haven't owned any property to pass on. In Western Europe most people were serfs, slaves tied to the land, and even after they were emancipated in the British Isles most people were tenant farmers rather than owning land. So the church banning cousin marriage had zero influence on most people's way of thinking. If anything the West's weirdness comes from the fact people had miserable lives with no reason to commit to or care about a community which they could be turfed out of at any moment.

[–]GConly 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

our minds adapt, often over centuries through cultural evolution, to the institutional and technological worlds we encounter.”

Completely ignoring that genetic changes can happen remarkably quickly.

Jared Diamond’s 1997 book Guns, Germs and Steel.

The man is a complete froot loop. One of the Reddit anthropology subs used to have a bot explaining just how awful it is every time it was mentioned.

If you want to know one if the stabilizing forces on Western civilization it was probably monogamous marriage. It stopped women being 'collectibles' to be fought over.

But yes our dislike of cousin marriage probably helped to break down our tribal mindset.

[–]jackiesboyfriend 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

No shit.

I spent a lot of time working in the middle east and india in my younger years, All of those skyscrapers in dubai and all of indias infrastructure was designed and planned out by imported western engineers, every successful skyscraper, Gas pipeline, Plumbing system, Electrical grid, metal bridge, major highway in the world that has ever existed has been designed, planned and supervised in construction by western engineers.

Even historically the ancient middle east, northern africa, northern india and the silk road's share the same DNA haplogroups as white people, All of the ancient worlds wonders were created by proto-Europeans.

semites (all arabs) are a historically new development in the middle east.

Looking on a historical timeline I'd say the only non-western groups to have ever developed anything of note were the ancient chinese, Mayans and Maoris.