Michael Lorry writes:
> There are also taboos, like incest, murder, rape, theft,
> etc that are universal to all cultures.
This statement seems rather simplistic to me.
Incest: wasn't a taboo in Europe's aristocracy for a long long time. [Now
that we have birth control and adoption, I don't see why it should remain
taboo either.]
Murder: different groups of people have quite different conceptions about
which kinds of homicide constitute murder and which do not. [Countries with
capital punishment vs. countries without it seem like the most innocent
example, but there are probably more examples - whoever said something about
Iceland(?) and how they only interpreted homicide as murder if it wasn't
reported to neighbors?]
Paedophilia: see one of my earlier messages regarding Greeks.
There are probably more examples like this; if there is a historian or an
expert in cultures on this list, they will be best equipped to comment on
this issue.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 09:56:25 MDT