MovieChat Forums > The Man from Earth (2007) Discussion > Would the guy have to remain celibate?

Would the guy have to remain celibate?

posted 8 years ago by creatorof2002
5 replies | jump to latest

1. If he had sex with probably tens or hundreds of thousands of women over the millennia he would have god knows how many grand children all over the world depending on how many "greats" there were, that means any woman he sleeps with could be one of his grand children meaning INCEST.

2. Its legal to have sex with or marry a cousin as long as she is not the first or 2nd cousin (3rd in some parts of the world). It is actually fairly common for people to find out they are married to tenth cousins (happened to the actor Kevin Bacon). But that is different from being someone's parent or grand parent.

3. Laws do not really exist for this since nobody lives long enough but if human life spans for some reason were to commonly become hyper long would laws have to be passed similar to "cousin numbers" where at some point if there are enough "greats" it becomes legal to have sex with a grand child? Such a law would need to exist for the character in this movie because keeping track would be too difficult and the only way to guarantee he is not guilty of some form of incest would be to be celibate forever.

[–] neonaoki1 8 years ago

Why would it matter if he had sex with one of his grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-(etc) children?

Any earlier descendants than that and he could surely keep up and not sleep with his grandchildren. Like normal grandparents do.

[–] jcosyn-1 8 years ago

I think you're very confused about the laws regarding marriage and the definition of "incest" between people with common bloodlines. They differ considerably in various regions (including differences from state-to-state in the U.S. -- many people are surprised to learn that marriage between first cousins is legal in a lot of places), and are based on degrees of consanguinity, not on the mere fact that somewhere back in the past the two parties share a common ancestor.

[–] razielim-2 8 years ago

Incest is not that bad from a biological standpoint - it's mostly being blown out of proportions due to it's taboo status.

Even in case of a Parent-Offspring mating, the resulting offspring has probability of genetic defects(or benevolent mutations) is increased by 50%(so a hypothetical 0.05% becomes 0.075%).
It's only problematic in completely isolated communities with a very small population, where the risk accumulates exponentially over each successive incestuous generation, until the gene pool becomes unviable.

In a sizable, intermingling population where constant injections of fresh DNA vastly outweigh it - it's literally a non-factor.

[–] Dejay 8 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cousin_marriage

Worldwide, more than 10% of marriages are between first or second cousins.

Some scientists contend that the risk is relatively small at 5%, compared with a 3% risk for children whose parents are not genetically related.

[–] iroquoisjoe 8 years ago

To answer your question...

if human life spans for some reason were to commonly become hyper long would laws have to be passed similar to "cousin numbers" where at some point if there are enough "greats" it becomes legal to have sex with a grand child?

My guess is that whatever technologies facilitated 'hyper-long' life spans would also be used to
a. nullify birth defects that would result from in-breeding.

and/or

b. provide inexpensive blood tests that would easily/accurately detect pairings of too-close consanguinity.

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