Peter misses the argument here, making the entire piece misleading. Once you understand the actual argument, the aDNA data is largely supportive. See below
https://twitter.com/NoahCarl90/status/1938224850268787084
The argument is that ONE branch of Christianity (not "Christianity") diffused a set of prescriptions and prohibitions that dissolved the pre-Christian kinship structures into monogamous nuclear families. It's NOT about "cousin marriage" per se.
These norms enforced monogamous marriage (ending common polygyny, concubinage, sex slaves) and tabooed levirate marriage along many types of unions, which included genetic cousins as well as spiritual kin (e.g., goddaughter) and all in-laws. Lots of non-close-genetic relatives.
The norms also altered post-marital residence and inheritance (by testament instead of customary). This is elaborated in great detail in my book.
These changes dramatically reduced what anthropologists call "kinship intensity", which captures the broad and tight social networks formed by kinship norms. (economists renamed these "kinship tightness"). The classic corporate "tight" kin group is the clan. @JF_Schulz
The aDNA strongly supports this view by confirming the prevalence of polygynous patrilineal clans (without marrying women) in pre-Christian Europe. There's even evidence for levirate marriage, which is the first thing the Church banned in Late Antiquity.
So, even if we take the claims about cousin marriage at face value (which I don't), the aDNA still supports a decline in kinship intensity... which is the key issue. The clans were dismantled.
In his effort to clump Europeans together psychologically, he ignores the application of this theory to explain the variation among Europeans today. E.g., knowing how long a population was under the medieval Church predicts their individualism, conformity & imp. prosociality
The Church's exposure predicts psychological variation in Europe. science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…
It also works globally
However, if Peter's reading of the aDNA is right, why does Church exposure predict rates of European cousin in the 20th century?
Curiously, after banning cousin marriage, the medieval Church realized that Europeans wanted to marry their kin so much, they monetized by selling dispensations...made big bucks. There was demand... why? Suddenly, people want to marry cousins?
Why does knowing the rates of cousin marriage among Italian provinces tell us so much about psychological variation within Italy?
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