TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2017//
TI  - Family counts: deciding when to murder among the Icelandic Vikings
JO  - Evolution and human behavior
A1  - Palmstierna, Markel
A1  - Frangou, Anna
A1  - Wallette, Anna
A1  - Dunbar, Robin
SP  - 175
EP  - 180
VL  - 38
IS  - 2
N2  - In small scale societies, lethal attacks on another individual usually invite revenge by the victim's family. We might expect those who perpetrate such attacks to do so only when their own support network (mainly family) is larger than that of the potential victim so as to minimise the risk of retaliation. Using data from Icelandic family sagas, we show that this prediction holds whether we consider biological kin or affinal kin (in-laws): on average, killers had twice as many relatives as their victims. These findings reinforce the importance of kin as a source of implicit protection even when they are not physically present. The results also support Hughes' (1988) claim that affines are biological kin because of the shared genetic interests they have in the offspring generation. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc.<p />  <p>Language: en</p>
LA  - en
SN  - 1090-5138
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2016.09.001
ID  - ref1
ER  -