On 11/10/05, J C <greyw01f at hotmail.com> wrote: > I think that, given that Dragaerans get married at roughly 150 years of age, > they have a relatively short fertility period. Else, you could have a elder > brother over 1000 years your senior. > Why would having a sibling being 1000 years older be a problem? I don't see any reason that Savn and Polyi couldn't have older siblings. It's just that when they became old enough, they moved out and started their own families. Hmm. Positing a long fertility period, it would indeed make sense for Teckla to be highly exogamous; send the kids off far away to found new families so as to minimize the risk of inbreeding. > Savn and his sister are very close in age--probably less than a century, I > think around 2 or 3 score of years apart. Very close, in other words, > considering a 2500 year life span. True - but it still is not inconsistent with a long fertile period, all the older kids having moved out, and perhaps even far away. It would also make sense for Teckla to *plan* for a set of kids to be born as close together as you note - they can all help out on the farm together, and this way, they *know* that they are brother and sister (incest avoidance appears to be based psychologically on siblings being raised together - and even kicks in when unrelated children are raised together; see: "Westermark effect")