Telegony (pregnancy)
Encyclopedia
Telegony is a theory in heredity
, now discredited but widely believed until the late 19th century, holding that offspring can inherit the characteristics of a previous mate of the female parent; thus the child of a widowed or remarried woman might partake of traits of a previous husband. This was part of the resistance to the marriage in 1361 of Edward the Black Prince, heir to the throne of Edward III of England
, with Joan, the "Fair Maid of Kent", who had been previously married: their progeny, it was thought, might not be completely of his Plantagenet blood. The theory, expounded as natural history by Aristotle
, was accepted throughout Antiquity and revived with the rediscovery of Aristotle in the Middle Ages. Both Schopenhauer and Herbert Spencer
found telegony to be a credible theory; it was only conclusively proved wrong with modern understanding of genetics
. The concept of telegonic impregnation was expressed in Greek mythology
in the origins of Greek heroes. Such double fatherhood, one father immortal, one mortal, was a familiar feature of Greek heroes like Theseus
, who had a human and a divine father, doubly conceived in the same night. By the understanding of sex in antiquity, the mix of semen gave Theseus a combination of divine as well as mortal characteristics; this explained the hero's more-than-human nature. Sometimes in Greek myth
the result could be twins, one born divine of a divine father, the other human of a human sire: see Dioscuri. Of a supposed Parnassos, founder of Delphi, Pausanias
observes, "Like the other heroes, as they are called, he had two fathers; one they say was the god Poseidon, the human father being Cleopompus."
The Gnostic
followers of Valentinius characteristically took the concept from the physiological world into the realm of psychology and spirituality by extending the influence even to the thoughts of the woman. In the Gospel of Philip
, a text among those found at Nag Hammadi
:
In the nineteenth century, the most widely credited example was that of Lord Morton’s mare, reported by the distinguished surgeon Sir Everard Home, and cited by Charles Darwin
. Lord Morton bred a white mare
with a wild quagga
stallion
, and when he later bred the same mare with a white stallion, the offspring
strangely had stripes in the legs, like the quagga.
Although August Weismann
had expressed doubts about the theory earlier, it did not fall out of scientific favor until the 1890s, when a series of experiments by James Cossar Ewart
in Scotland
and other researchers in Germany
and Brazil
failed to find any evidence of the phenomenon. Biologists now explain the phenomenon of Lord Morton's mare using dominant and recessive allele
s: the result observed by Morton would be explained in modern terms as the display in the offspring of recessive
genes
inherited, but not displayed, in the mare
or the stallion.
In mammals, each sperm
has the haploid set of chromosome
s and each egg
has another haploid set. During the process of fertilization a zygote
with the diploid set is produced. This set will be inherited by every somatic cell
of a mammal, with exactly half the genetic material coming from the producer of the sperm (the father
) and another half from the producer of the egg (the mother, obviously). Thus, the myth of telegony is fundamentally incompatible with our knowledge of genetics
and the reproductive process.
Nevertheless, telegony influenced late nineteenth-century racialist
discourse: a woman who had once had a child with a non-Aryan
man, it was argued, could never have a "pure" Aryan child again. This idea was adopted by the Nazis.
Heredity
Heredity is the passing of traits to offspring . This is the process by which an offspring cell or organism acquires or becomes predisposed to the characteristics of its parent cell or organism. Through heredity, variations exhibited by individuals can accumulate and cause some species to evolve...
, now discredited but widely believed until the late 19th century, holding that offspring can inherit the characteristics of a previous mate of the female parent; thus the child of a widowed or remarried woman might partake of traits of a previous husband. This was part of the resistance to the marriage in 1361 of Edward the Black Prince, heir to the throne of Edward III of England
Edward III of England
Edward III was King of England from 1327 until his death and is noted for his military success. Restoring royal authority after the disastrous reign of his father, Edward II, Edward III went on to transform the Kingdom of England into one of the most formidable military powers in Europe...
, with Joan, the "Fair Maid of Kent", who had been previously married: their progeny, it was thought, might not be completely of his Plantagenet blood. The theory, expounded as natural history by Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
, was accepted throughout Antiquity and revived with the rediscovery of Aristotle in the Middle Ages. Both Schopenhauer and Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer was an English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist of the Victorian era....
found telegony to be a credible theory; it was only conclusively proved wrong with modern understanding of genetics
Genetics
Genetics , a discipline of biology, is the science of genes, heredity, and variation in living organisms....
. The concept of telegonic impregnation was expressed in Greek mythology
Greek mythology
Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...
in the origins of Greek heroes. Such double fatherhood, one father immortal, one mortal, was a familiar feature of Greek heroes like Theseus
Theseus
For other uses, see Theseus Theseus was the mythical founder-king of Athens, son of Aethra, and fathered by Aegeus and Poseidon, both of whom Aethra had slept with in one night. Theseus was a founder-hero, like Perseus, Cadmus, or Heracles, all of whom battled and overcame foes that were...
, who had a human and a divine father, doubly conceived in the same night. By the understanding of sex in antiquity, the mix of semen gave Theseus a combination of divine as well as mortal characteristics; this explained the hero's more-than-human nature. Sometimes in Greek myth
Greek mythology
Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...
the result could be twins, one born divine of a divine father, the other human of a human sire: see Dioscuri. Of a supposed Parnassos, founder of Delphi, Pausanias
Pausanias (geographer)
Pausanias was a Greek traveler and geographer of the 2nd century AD, who lived in the times of Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius. He is famous for his Description of Greece , a lengthy work that describes ancient Greece from firsthand observations, and is a crucial link between classical...
observes, "Like the other heroes, as they are called, he had two fathers; one they say was the god Poseidon, the human father being Cleopompus."
The Gnostic
Gnosticism
Gnosticism is a scholarly term for a set of religious beliefs and spiritual practices common to early Christianity, Hellenistic Judaism, Greco-Roman mystery religions, Zoroastrianism , and Neoplatonism.A common characteristic of some of these groups was the teaching that the realisation of Gnosis...
followers of Valentinius characteristically took the concept from the physiological world into the realm of psychology and spirituality by extending the influence even to the thoughts of the woman. In the Gospel of Philip
Gospel of Philip
The Gospel of Philip is one of the Gnostic Gospels, a text of New Testament apocrypha, dating back to around the third century but lost to modern researchers until an Egyptian peasant rediscovered it by accident, buried in a cave near Nag Hammadi, in 1945...
, a text among those found at Nag Hammadi
Nag Hammâdi
Nag Hammadi , is a city in Upper Egypt. Nag Hammadi was known as Chenoboskion in classical antiquity, meaning "geese grazing grounds". It is located on the west bank of the Nile in the Qena Governorate, about 80 kilometres north-west of Luxor....
:
Whomever the woman loves, to him those who are born are like; if her husband, they are like her husband; if an adultererAdulteryAdultery is sexual infidelity to one's spouse, and is a form of extramarital sex. It originally referred only to sex between a woman who was married and a person other than her spouse. Even in cases of separation from one's spouse, an extramarital affair is still considered adultery.Adultery is...
, they are like the adulterer. Often when a woman sleeps with her husband, but while her heart is with the adulterer with whom she is accustomed to unite, she bears the one whom she bears so that he is like the adulterer."
In the nineteenth century, the most widely credited example was that of Lord Morton’s mare, reported by the distinguished surgeon Sir Everard Home, and cited by Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
. Lord Morton bred a white mare
Mare (horse)
A mare is an adult female horse or other equine.In most cases, a mare is a female horse over the age of three, and a filly is a female horse age three and younger. However, in Thoroughbred horse racing, a mare is defined as a female horse more than four years old; in harness racing a mare is a...
with a wild quagga
Quagga
The quagga is an extinct subspecies of the plains zebra, which was once found in great numbers in South Africa's Cape Province and the southern part of the Orange Free State. It was distinguished from other zebras by having the usual vivid marks on the front part of the body only...
stallion
Stallion (horse)
A stallion is a male horse that has not been gelded .Stallions will follow the conformation and phenotype of their breed, but within that standard, the presence of hormones such as testosterone may give stallions a thicker, "cresty" neck, as well as a somewhat more muscular physique as compared to...
, and when he later bred the same mare with a white stallion, the offspring
Offspring
In biology, offspring is the product of reproduction, of a new organism produced by one or more parents.Collective offspring may be known as a brood or progeny in a more general way...
strangely had stripes in the legs, like the quagga.
Although August Weismann
August Weismann
Friedrich Leopold August Weismann was a German evolutionary biologist. Ernst Mayr ranked him the second most notable evolutionary theorist of the 19th century, after Charles Darwin...
had expressed doubts about the theory earlier, it did not fall out of scientific favor until the 1890s, when a series of experiments by James Cossar Ewart
James Cossar Ewart
James Cossar Ewart FRS was a Scottish zoologist. He was the son of John Ewart, a joiner, and Jean Cossar....
in Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
and other researchers in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
and Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
failed to find any evidence of the phenomenon. Biologists now explain the phenomenon of Lord Morton's mare using dominant and recessive allele
Allele
An allele is one of two or more forms of a gene or a genetic locus . "Allel" is an abbreviation of allelomorph. Sometimes, different alleles can result in different observable phenotypic traits, such as different pigmentation...
s: the result observed by Morton would be explained in modern terms as the display in the offspring of recessive
Recessive
In genetics, the term "recessive gene" refers to an allele that causes a phenotype that is only seen in a homozygous genotype and never in a heterozygous genotype. Every person has two copies of every gene on autosomal chromosomes, one from mother and one from father...
genes
Gênes
Gênes is the name of a département of the First French Empire in present Italy, named after the city of Genoa. It was formed in 1805, when Napoleon Bonaparte occupied the Republic of Genoa. Its capital was Genoa, and it was divided in the arrondissements of Genoa, Bobbio, Novi Ligure, Tortona and...
inherited, but not displayed, in the mare
Mare (horse)
A mare is an adult female horse or other equine.In most cases, a mare is a female horse over the age of three, and a filly is a female horse age three and younger. However, in Thoroughbred horse racing, a mare is defined as a female horse more than four years old; in harness racing a mare is a...
or the stallion.
In mammals, each sperm
Spermatozoon
A spermatozoon is a motile sperm cell, or moving form of the haploid cell that is the male gamete. A spermatozoon joins an ovum to form a zygote...
has the haploid set of chromosome
Chromosome
A chromosome is an organized structure of DNA and protein found in cells. It is a single piece of coiled DNA containing many genes, regulatory elements and other nucleotide sequences. Chromosomes also contain DNA-bound proteins, which serve to package the DNA and control its functions.Chromosomes...
s and each egg
Ovum
An ovum is a haploid female reproductive cell or gamete. Both animals and embryophytes have ova. The term ovule is used for the young ovum of an animal, as well as the plant structure that carries the female gametophyte and egg cell and develops into a seed after fertilization...
has another haploid set. During the process of fertilization a zygote
Zygote
A zygote , or zygocyte, is the initial cell formed when two gamete cells are joined by means of sexual reproduction. In multicellular organisms, it is the earliest developmental stage of the embryo...
with the diploid set is produced. This set will be inherited by every somatic cell
Somatic cell
A somatic cell is any biological cell forming the body of an organism; that is, in a multicellular organism, any cell other than a gamete, germ cell, gametocyte or undifferentiated stem cell...
of a mammal, with exactly half the genetic material coming from the producer of the sperm (the father
Father
A father, Pop, Dad, or Papa, is defined as a male parent of any type of offspring. The adjective "paternal" refers to father, parallel to "maternal" for mother...
) and another half from the producer of the egg (the mother, obviously). Thus, the myth of telegony is fundamentally incompatible with our knowledge of genetics
Genetics
Genetics , a discipline of biology, is the science of genes, heredity, and variation in living organisms....
and the reproductive process.
Nevertheless, telegony influenced late nineteenth-century racialist
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
discourse: a woman who had once had a child with a non-Aryan
Aryan
Aryan is an English language loanword derived from Sanskrit ārya and denoting variously*In scholarly usage:**Indo-Iranian languages *in dated usage:**the Indo-European languages more generally and their speakers...
man, it was argued, could never have a "pure" Aryan child again. This idea was adopted by the Nazis.