Chateau Heartiste introduced me to the work of Harvard anthropologist, Joseph Henrich. Henrich claims that the early church's ban on incest and first-cousin marriage helped the West by developing traits like individualism and non-conformity among Westerners. September 506 A.D. was the date when a gathering of church elders in Southern France resulted in the creation of these rules. I've archived a review of the study here for anyone interested:
https://archive.ph/o8jNf
Henrich also pointed out, in the pages of one of his books, that England's Cistercian monasteries helped improve the work ethic of the populations in which they were situated. The more Cistercian monasteries a county had, the more likely it is for that area's contemporary inhabitants to insist that children be taught the virtues of hard work. Here is the relevant page below:
Henrich explains that the Cistercian monks worked tirelessly to improve agricultural and industrial techniques because greater production meant that they would have more resources to fulfill their spiritual vocation. From the 13th century onwards, Henrich notes, English counties with Cistercian monasteries had better growth in productivity than other English counties which lacked Cistercian monasteries.
Additional proof of the Cistercian hypothesis may be found by studying the creation of the hydraulic hammer, which was forged in the Burgundy Abbey of Fontenay in the 13th century. This was a boon to European metallurgy.
Here are some sources for further reading concerning the above:
"The WEIRDest people in the world" by J. Henrich
"La Religion industrielle" by Pierre Musso
"Religious Orders and Growth through Cultural Change in Pre-Industrial England", Andersen & al, 2011
EDIT
I really do believe that Henrich is onto something here. Please take a look at the following maps.
Here's an archive of the
Harvard Gazette's review of Henrich's work:
https://archive.ph/3aeDt
From the
Harvard Gazette:
Comparing exposure to the Western Church with their “kinship intensity index,” which includes data on cousin marriage rates, polygyny (where a man takes multiple wives), co-residence of extended families, and other historical anthropological measures, the team identified a direct connection between the religious ban and the growth of independent, monogamous marriages among nonrelatives. According to the study, each additional 500 years under the Western Church is associated with a 91 percent further reduction in marriage rates between cousins."
“Meanwhile in Iran, in Persia, Zoroastrianism was not only promoting cousin marriage but promoting marriage between siblings,” Henrich said. Although Islam outlawed polygyny extending beyond four wives, and the Eastern Orthodox Church adopted policies against incest, no institution came close to the strict, widespread policies of the Western Church.
Those policies first altered family structures and then the psychologies of members. Henrich and his colleagues think that individuals adapt cognition, emotions, perceptions, thinking styles, and motivations to fit their social networks. Kin-based institutions reward conformity, tradition, nepotism, and obedience to authority, traits that help protect assets — such as farms — from outsiders. But once familial barriers crumble, the team predicted that individualistic traits like independence, creativity, cooperation, and fairness with strangers would increase.
Using 24 psychological variables collected in surveys, experiments, and observations, they measured the global prevalence of traits that correspond or conflict with individualism. To test for willingness to help strangers, for example, they collected data on blood-donation rates across Italy, finding a correlation between high donation rates and low cousin-marriage rates. With their kinship intensity index, Schutz said, they can also predict which diplomats in New York City will or will not pay parking tickets: Those from countries with higher rates of cousin marriages are more likely to get a ticket and less likely to pay one.
And, although willingness to trust strangers, as opposed to family or neighbors, is associated with higher levels of innovation, greater national wealth, and faster economic growth, which factor causes which is not yet known.
“We’re not saying that less-intensive kin-based institutions are better,” said Beauchamp. “Far from it. There are trade-offs.” Tight families, for example, come with inborn financial safety nets.
