Phallic Question

[sgsandor]

This post is may be reminiscent of middle school giggles but I have to ask the historians these questions
This was after watching Rome and a few things on the TV concerning Ancient views and practices. I know that the Roman were not into circumcising (just a guess due to what art of theirs I have seen). Further how big was castration? Were the courts filled with eunuchs? How big were the practices of circumcising (I would assume it was really popular in Judea) and castration? I heard that there were a few cults who required priests to be castrated but again I just heard this never read about it anywhere.
So I guess my real questions are:
What cultures in EB if any practiced circumcising their males?
What cultures in EB had eunuchs? What part was cut off (testicles penis)?
What religion or culture required either of these practices?
I thank you for your help in my curiosity and I know this topic my seem childish but I had to ask.

[KARTLOS]

i know the greeks werent into that either. i think it was pretty much a jewish practice at the time. i have read reports of jews in the hellenic middle east undergoing some forms of re-constructive surgery. this was to help them fit in socially as in the bath houses and gymnasiums, nudity was the norm and the cut jews stood out as freaks (i.e to the uncircumcised people of the time who saw them naked. Hence the fact that some people underwent surgery to try and and hide what had been done).

[Digby Tatham Warter]

I did read somewhere that some jews competing in games tried to hide their circumcision(perphaps by pulling/stretching the foreskin), and the jewish authorities response was a not so subtle form of circumcision, so there was no easy way to hide it.

And for the record, as far as I know, castration, does not involve the removal of the beef bayonet, just the Testies!

It's easy to be freaked by religious practices that seem bizarre to us, but you have to try and respect their beliefs, as to the jews and from christian understanding it reads as a command from God. In the old testament God was going to kill Moses for not circumcising his children. But in the new testament Paul does call the jews(in Gods authority)wanting to circumcise the new non jewish converts, as "those mutilators of the flesh".

[Cheexsta]

To the original question - to my knowledge, circumcision was more of a Jewish thing, and I think it's pretty safe to say that the Greeks didn't like it. I know I keep bringing him up, but one of Antiochus IV's anti-Jewish laws was to ban circumcision...so it was a pretty direct attack on Judaism.

Also, IIRC the Ptolemies eventually accepted Egyptian eunuchs into the court but only begrudgingly.

[The Persian Cataphract]

Iranians did not normally practice circumcision; Only Medean and Persian Jews paid any regard for the brith mila tradition. An overwhelming majority saw it as an unncessary practice, ranging from the Mandaeans, all the way to Mithraists and Zoroastrians. Today, only Jews and muslims undergo circumcision in Iran, which has pretty much been the case for a long time. The practice of making eunuchs however is a completely different story, and involves castration.

[Sakkura]

i never said they were freaks, i said they would have stood out as freaks - i.e to the uncircumcised people of the time who saw them naked. Henmce the fact that some people underwent surgery to try and and hide what had been done.

Yeah, the ancient Greeks (or Romans, or whatever) did not have the same view of the world that we do today. They might very well have described circumcised men as mutilated freaks, which is an offensive description to many (most, I hope) modern people.
We would probably also disagree with their view of women, and on a great many other issues.

[antisocialmunky]

Circumcision was one of those things that originated by people who were traced back to decendents of the ancient Hebrew patriarchs such as the Edomites and Moabites who are traced back to Esau and Isaac. It also became known in Egypt at some point in time. However it wasn't done by other peoples.

In first century Christianity, the practice was dropped because it was only a requirement for physical Jews under the Mosaic Law and Christianity was opened to everyone. Therefore they didn't force people to do it anymore though it didn't matter if someone did it to themselves by choice.

[Centurion Crastinus]

Can anybody answer the eunich question?

[Elthore]

about the fire thing: Homo erectus invented fire and passed the knowledge on to both homo sapiens and neanderthals. The former eventually became homo sapien sapien, which is what we all are.

[Elthore]

We became wiser. Brain capacity increased, as well as some other physical features. This is pretty recent at 40,000 years ago.

[Centurion Crastinus]

What happened to the neanderthals and homo erectus?

[Sakkura]

Why do we have 2 sapiens at the end of homo now?

Because we differentiate between ourselves (homo sapiens sapiens) and other possible (sub)species such as homo sapiens idaltu or homo sapiens steinheimensis.

[Sakkura]

What happened to the neanderthals and homo erectus?

They became extinct.

[Megalos]

What happened to the neanderthals and homo erectus?

Neanderthals are thought to have been wiped out by homo sapiens.

[Cyclops]

IIRC fro ancient times there was circumcision in Europe and the mid east but not widespread. Definitely not just a Jewish practice though.

Eunuchs seem to be found in eastern court settings in ancient literature, eg Herodotus. They also appear in Byzantium but succesfull casration requires a certain level of medical ability or the death rate is too high, so i can't imagine they were terribkly common.

If you're castrating officials to make them trustworthy (ie no kids = no nepotism) then you need a fairly sophisticated wealthy society (eg Imperial China or the Persian Empire).

The Arabian Nights seems to suggest the Eunuch was a more common figutre in Islamic society from the sophisticated court setting to less wealthy or civilised areas.

If you're just hacking off balls so your womenfolk's slaves don't get her up the duff then the subject is more expendable so more folks from more backgrounds will do it.

[sgsandor]

I would think that because Greeks did not allow women to be in the theater that would have something along the lines of castrati (boys who where castrated (by the removal of their testicles) to keep their voices high) I know there where a few in Byzantine Greece (400 ADish?).
I know the Turkish sultans castrated many P.O.W.s (by cutting off the penis, inserting some kind of tube in the urethra so that the hole would not close). The last castrati died 1922 (his name was Moreschi and you can find him on Wiki). So you see these practice had to start somewhere and I thought the EB historians and EB board members here could help me out here.
Listen if you think it is cruel or mutilation that is fine, your opinion is yours. Please respect that others may not hold that same view. As I always respect all of you and we all have one common theme (that we love EB) so with that in mind if anyone has any answers I would really love to hear about them.

[Tellos Athenaios]

I would think that because Greeks did not allow women to be in the theater that would have something along the lines of castrati (boys who where castrated (by the removal of their testicles) to keep their voices high)

The idea that women weren't allowed in the theatre seems to be as outdated as the Victorian British Empire - in fact there's hardly any basis for this idea at all. There is some counter-evidence, though:

-there's a statement which says that some women spontainously had a miscariage after/during one of the songs in Aischylos' Eumenids.
-there's a statement about women hanging themselves out of shame after having been to the the comedy.

[Cyclops]

Damn the obsession with the wang . Can anyone tell me though why in particular there is and or was such and obsession with Mr. Dong in the east ?

Not just in the east.

Ithyphallic statues and images are found all over the world, India, Peru, Egypt, Hellas, Ireland, Papua etc.

"Mr Happy" is some strong magic, makes a guy feel ten foot tall, makes most women happy too, so its an obvious symbol for strength and protection as well as fertility.

Messing with Mr happy is obviously some heavy voodoo too. "How far will you go for your God?" asks Moses. "Are you willing to give Mr Happy a trim?". Imagine the look on the first guys face when he went into the tent and saw what Moses was doing with the sharp rock.

The idea that women weren't allowed in the theatre seems to be as outdated as the Victorian British Empire - in fact there's hardly any basis for this idea at all. There is some counter-evidence, though:

-there's a statement which says that some women spontainously had a miscariage after/during one of the songs in Aischylos' Eumenids.
-there's a statement about women hanging themselves out of shame after having been to the the comedy.

Yep, if there's a law against something, its usually because someone is doing it.

I think laws controlling women are related to eunuchs. You build a stratified society and one obvious stratum is "those without penises" (ie a "member's only" politcal structure).

Some societies also have a "physical perfection" culture, I don't mean the Gynmasium culture of hellas but the idea in the myth of Lugh or the Mahabharata that a King had to be physically entire, no blindness, no disability. Castration was a bar to rule as well as a guarantee of "no bastards behind my back".

[Jaywalker-Jack]

i m not sure where you got that idea?

i believe that there were bipedal hominids 3 million years ago, but for anatomicaly modern humans the conventional figure is ~130 000 years ago, and perhaps a little bit earlier in africa.

for example there were neanderthals living in europe up to about 35 000 years ago (they are not anotomically modern and we are not thought to have any genetic descent from them).

Well as far I can remember the genus homo is about 3 million years old, Im just telling you what they tell us in college. Human is a loose term when you go back a hundred thousand years. Anyway, its an interesting subject, which has nothing to do with penises.

[Felix Constantus Alexander]

What cultures in EB if any practiced circumcising their males?
What cultures in EB had eunuchs? What part was cut off (testicles penis)?
What religion or culture required either of these practices?

1.) Circumcision was first adopted to catch hemophilia in infants, and still is if you look at this article: http://www.hemophiliagalaxy.com/pati...s/success.html, but with limits with understanding disease and such, I think circumcision was partly done in Ancient Times so that the child would not have to live with such a debilitating disease like Alexei here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsarevich_Alexei_of_Russia

Hygene wise, there is enough debate from other members, so I won't comment.

2.) The use of Eunuchs is best known to Westerners in the Courts of Islamic Rulers to protect their Harems, but Wiki goes into better detail about Eunuchs world wide: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eunuch

As for what was removed I didn't bother researching to hard so someone else could if they like to google it.

3.) As others have posted Greeks and Romans did not follow circumcision, but it could be a different story for other semitic cultures then Jews like the Arabs (after the spread of Islam). google it and you should find something about modern practices which could direct you to when and where it began.

As for Female circumcision, (mutilation) it began as an obscure practice in Africa (Possibly in Egypt with Royalty) that gained traction with the spread of Islam through North Africa: http://www.religioustolerance.org/fem_cirm.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_...ion#Prevalence

Today some radical Africans use it as a way to attack globalization / Westernization by doing something the West doesn't tolerate (but its not religious in origin), which loses the point that female circumcision (mutilation) is like cutting up the tip of a male's penis as opposed to removing the foreskin in "male" circumcision. Female mutilation is just plain gross to me and should be stopped.

Anyway as for the original questions, I hope this info was helpful!

[Rodion Romanovich]

1.) Circumcision was first adopted to catch hemophilia in infants, and still is if you look at this article: http://www.hemophiliagalaxy.com/pati...s/success.html, but with limits with understanding disease and such, I think circumcision was partly done in Ancient Times so that the child would not have to live with such a debilitating disease like Alexei here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsarevich_Alexei_of_Russia

So, you mean it is done as a way of cleansing the gene pool of "undesirables" by letting those babies die who happened to have become inbred because their parents choose the wrong partners (like the Romanovs who, like most other kings and queens in Europe during the 18th century and onwards got inbred by the diplomatically arranged marriages)? Sounds unlikely. Do you have any source for this?

[Sakkura]

So, you mean it is done as a way of cleansing the gene pool of "undesirables" by letting those babies die who happened to have become inbred because their parents choose the wrong partners (like the Romanovs who, like most other kings and queens in Europe during the 18th century and onwards got inbred by the diplomatically arranged marriages)? Sounds unlikely. Do you have any source for this?

Hemophilia A is an X-linked genetic disorder, so it has nothing to do with inbreeding.

[Rodion Romanovich]

Hemophilia A is an X-linked genetic disorder, so it has nothing to do with inbreeding.

There was an article maybe a decade ago where they showed how the kings and queens of European countries in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries caused inbreeding because of the many diplomatic marriages, and they made some calculations on why the Romanov son got the disease because of this.

Edit: ok, here's how I think they meant the inbreeding increases the disease (though I'm no expert). Some males will always survive because they get a not too severe form of the disease. They will carry on the gene to their daughters. Inbreeding will make sure these alleles get more common among the female FMs. When they get more common among the female FMs, the male FMs too get them more likely. If you don't inbreed, you will lower the probability of the female FMs having them, because while it's likely that the non-FMs you marry also have some disease, they're less likely to have the same disease, and so you will gradually, generation by generation, decrease the probability of the disease by 75% per child. Inbreeding, on the other hand, gives a higher probability each generation.

[Sakkura]

It's a recessive X-linked genetic disorder, and those have a tendency to be much more common after inbreeding than after anything else, because the female needs to have at least one recessive allele. Besides, it's a well known fact that most of the kings and queens of European countries in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries were inbred because of the many diplomatic marriages. I'm sure you can find a graph on google showing how cousins or children of cousins or similar would marry and have children several times, and after doing this for a few generations, the Romanov heir got problems. There was some article about this a few decades ago. Naturally you can get hemophilia without inbreeding as well.

Go learn some biology please. The only thing inbreeding does is increase the relative prevalence of homozygosity, but homozygosity has no role to play when it comes to X-linked fatal recessive genetic disorders.

The female that is the original source of the X-linked recessive trait is heterozygous, perhaps because of a spontaneous mutation in her (as seems to have been the case for Queen Victoria). Once the mutation is there, it means 50% of the woman's male children will be affected by the disorder, and 50% of her female children will be carriers of the disorder. This is irrespective of the partner she chooses to have children with; if Queen Victoria had married a man from central Africa their children would still have that chance to receive the disorder. The only thing inbreeding could potentially do is increase the chance that the females would be affected by the disease, since their rate of homozygosity would increase. But the hemophilia in European royalty was limited to males, so inbreeding had no role in it.

Edit: +fatal

[Sakkura]

When it comes to X-linked genetic disorders that are often or always fatal at early ages, inbreeding is not much of an issue, since the males are culled. When it comes to autosomal recessive genetic disorders though, inbreeding is highly relevant. So go write a book about the "Austrian lip" disorder that struck the house of Habsburg.

You may want to check this out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haemoph...ropean_royalty

All the inheritance of the hemophilia A allelle in the European royal families was through the women. Most of the male children who received the allelle died at early ages (though some did indeed survive into adulthood).

The Russian royal family inherited the disorder through Princess Alix of Hesse and by Rhine. Thus inbreeding was never involved.

[Rodion Romanovich]

Interesting!

But a mathematical model I made in the last 40 minutes claims you were wrong when you said that inbreeding can only increase the number of homozygotes and never increases the number of heterozygotes as well. I made the following model (please state if any of the biological assumptions are incorrect, but I've gone through the maths once so it's hopefully correct):

Biological assumptions:
The probability of having a recessive allele for disease x is p for the entire population. Since all families aren't exactly equal, some families have higher probabilities for one disease, and lower for another, than have the rest of the population. It's more likely that members of the same family have high probability for the same disease, since they share common ancestors. So within most families, we can find a disease D such that a member of the family has higher probability p of having a recessive allele for D, than people from other families, who have it with probability q. So p > q, but both are smaller than 1 and larger than 0.

It follows that:
(assuming p and q are independent)
Probability of homozygote disease child for inbreeding:
p*p
Probability of either homozygote or heterozygote disease child for inbreeding:
1 - (1-p)*(1-p)
Probability of heterozygote disease child for inbreeding:
1 - (1-p)*(1-p) - p*p

Probability of homozygote disease child without doing inbreeding:
q*p
Probability of either homozygote or heterozygote disease child without doing inbreeding:
1 - (1-q)*(1-p)
Probability of heterozygote disease child without doing inbreeding:
1 - (1-q)*(1-p) - p*q

My claims, along with their proofs:

1. Probability of getting homozygote disease child with inbreeding is thus larger than without inbreeding because:
p > q => p*p > q*q
2. Probability of getting homozygote or heterozygote disease child with inbreeding is also larger than without inbreeding because:
p > q => 1-p < 1-q => 1 - (1-p)*(1-p) > 1 - (1-q)*(1-p)
3. Finally, there are many cases where probability of getting heterozygote also increases with inbreeding compared to no inbreeding, namely, exactly when the following inequality holds:[/B]
1 - (1-p)*(1-p) - p*p > 1 - (1-p)*(1-q) - p*q
Let's look at when the inequality holds:
(1-p)*(1-q) is always greater than (1-p)*(1-p) because p > q by the initial assumption. But it is always the case that p*p > q*p by the same assumption. The inequality holds when the first effect outweighs the second. There are two unknown variables with only one equation, so there no unique solution, but an infinite amount of solutions.

Example:

Since I'm too lazy to investigate the entire solution space, I'll just test a few standard cases, using data from existing diseases:

Say a disease whose average probability over the population (i.e. q in the model above) is 0.01. This is a pretty high probability compared to most genetic diseases, and it can be seen that picking a less common disease would make things worse for your case. Inserting this gives (replacing the > with a = to test where the crossover point lies, when inbreeding becomes worse than non-inbreeding):
1 - (1-p)*(1-p) - p^2 = 1 - (1-p)*(1-0.01) - p*0.01
1 - (1-2*p+p^2) - p^2 = 1 - (1-p-0.01+0.01*p) - p*0.01
1 - 1+2*p-p^2 - p^2 = 1 - 1+p+0.01-0.01*p - p*0.01
p^2 - 0.51*p + 0.005 = 0
This has two solutions:
p = 0.51/2 +- sqrt(0.51^2/4 - 0.005)
p = 0.255 +- 0.245
p1 = 0.5, p2 = 0.01

Conclusion for this example:
So, it turns out that as long as not every family member has as much as 50% chance of this disease, choosing someone with p instead of q probability of the disease (as in inbreeding) will indeed increase the number heterozygotes too, and not just the number of homozygotes.

This is still a highly simplified model (but yours, taking only 1 couple into account, was even more simplified [note: I also take only one couple into account, but by using probabilities simulate doing the same calculation over a large number of couples, and comparing the results for inbred and non-inbred]), but I still think it demonstrates and argues quite clearly why inbreeding indeed causes more heterozygote disease carriers as well. Whereas non-inbreeding behavior decreases the probability of with high probability having one recessive disease allele. The average expected value for P(having a child with some disease) is thus much lower for a non-inbreeding population.

[Hooahguy]

but I do know that Jewish boys get circumsized in their teens.

wrong. the bible says that jewish boys are to be circumcised at 8 days old. i was cut at 8 days, and so has all my other 4 brothers, and my dad, and every jewish person i know who didnt convert was circumcised at 8 days.
but some MUSLIM boys get circumcised when they are 13 or so, IIRC.
when we first heard that, a friend of mine commented aloud, "so thats why theyre so grumpy"
couldnt stop laughing for the rest of the day!

[Sakkura]

@Rodion: Look, I really cba to dig through a long calculation to either find the trivial error or the trivial incorrect assumption. All I will do is cite a basic genetics textbook (here's the website apparently connected to it: http://www.whfreeman.com/iga/):

For both positive assortative mating and inbreeding, the consequence to population structure is the same: there is an increase in homozygosity above the level predicted by the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium

The sum of probabilities must always be 1, so with increased homozygosity comes decreased heterozygosity (unless/until allelle frequencies change).

[Tiberius Nero]

.
So I guess my real questions are:
What cultures in EB if any practiced circumcising their males?
What cultures in EB had eunuchs? What part was cut off (testicles penis)?
What religion or culture required either of these practices?

1) Jews as far as I know, never heard of that thing happening in the west, cannot tell about nations in the middle east. In Greek one of the words for "circumcised" means "lecherous" as well, so I doubt it was a custom well received, nor frankly were the Jews in general, they were looked on with suspicion and frequently persecuted. I think it is Tacitus who says that they are a nation that has placed themselves apart from the rest of the world and that their morality is the exact reverse of that of the rest of humanity. If it needs be pointed out, I hardly endorse any of these, just showing that Jews weren't really that well liked in the Roman world.
2+3) Priests of Cybele had to undergo removal of their penis and testicles. The Romans called those priests "Galli" (Gauls) probably because they saw some connection of the cult of Cybele with the Gauls of Asia Minor.

EDIT: No, I did not read the rest of the thread, excuse me if it was answered before.

[Bootsiuv]

@Hooahguy

Well, I stand corrected. I thought jewish boys were circumsized at their bar mitzvah (sp?) which was like 12ish or something....although, I just may be way off. Please forgive my ignorance.

@MAA

Aren't you a mod....thus couldn't you do that yourself. I was just curious is all, but I remembered you changing the title of my aar for me.