Biological foundations of the incest taboo

[Volokh, Eugene]

	As I promised in an earlier message, I've tried to look into this
question.  Unfortunately, I've only been able to take a very cursory glance;
and I'm no expert on the subject.  But I'm happy to say that my memory
wasn't utterly failing me:  Matt Ridley, "The Red Queen" pp. 282-86 (1993)
mentions this, and cites sources; E.O. Wilson mentions the same in an
interview at http://www.2think.org/hii/wilson.shtml; and a fellow lawprof
who used to be an anthropology professor echoed this view, and pointed to,
among other things, N. Bischoff, "Biological foundations of the incest
taboo, Social Science Information, 9:7-36 (1972) ("an old-ish article that's
good," my friend said, though please note that I haven't read it myself.

	I do not for a moment want to suggest that this citation is
scientific proof that there is indeed a biological foundation here; I had
originally thought that the biological foundation was fairly well-settled,
but I realize from comments of others on the thread that it is not.  Still,
since people asked for some support for my initial assertion, I thought I'd
at least forward a few cites that show that there is serious support for the
biological foundation hypothesis as well.

	Eugene