Telegony (inheritance)

Telegony is the idea that a female will be permanently affected when she is first impregnated, since the fetus will pass back characteristics to her that will affect all future offspring, no matter their progeny.{{cite journal |last1=Bynum |first1=Bill |title=Telegony |journal=The Lancet |date=April 2002 |volume=359 |issue=9313 |pages=1256 |doi=10.1016/S0140-6736(02)08200-4 |pmid=11955583 }}

The term was coined by August Weismann from the Greek words τῆλε (tèle) meaning 'far' and γονος (gonos) meaning 'offspring'.

{{further|Partible paternity}}

The idea of telegony goes back to Aristotle. It states that individuals can inherit traits not only from their fathers, but also from other males previously known to their mothers. In other words, it was thought that paternity could be shared.{{cite web |last1=Smith |first1=Lydia |title=Aristotle's Telegony Has Merit: Previous Male Partners Can Influence Other Men's Offspring |url=https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/aristotle-right-about-telegony-previous-partner-can-influence-another-males-offspring-1468015 |work=International Business Times |date=1 October 2014}}

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."Pausanias, Description of Greece x.6.1. Sometimes the result could be twins such as Castor and Pollux, one born divine and one mortal.

The more general doctrine of "maternal impressions" was also known in Ancient Israel. The book of Genesis describes Jacob inducing goats and sheep in Laban's herds to bear striped and spotted young by placing dark wooden rods with white stripes in their watering troughs.{{cite EB1911|wstitle=Telegony |volume= 26}} Telegony influenced early Christianity as well. The Gnostic followers of Valentinius (circa 100–160 CE) characteristically took the concept from the physiological world into the realm of psychology and spirituality by extending the supposed influence even to the thoughts of the woman. It was also implied in the Gospel of Philip, a text among those found at Nag Hammadi.Gospel of Philip, p. 112. Noted in p. 135 from: {{cite journal |last1=Grant |first1=Robert M. |title=The Mystery of Marriage in the Gospel of Philip |journal=Vigiliae Christianae |date=1961 |volume=15 |issue=1 |pages=129–140 |doi=10.1163/157007261X00137 }}

In the 19th 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.Darwin, The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication (1868).{{pn|date=March 2025}} Lord Morton bred a white mare with a wild quagga stallion,{{efn|The quagga was a subspecies of zebra, now extinct.}} and when he later bred the same mare with a white stallion, the offspring strangely had stripes in the legs, like the quagga.{{cite book |last1=Moore |first1=John Alexander |title=Science as a Way of Knowing: The Foundations of Modern Biology |date=1993 |publisher=Harvard University Press |isbn=978-0-674-79482-5 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gPbYbFt7sYYC&dq=lord+morton%27s+mare&pg=PA245 |page=245 }}

The Surgeon-General of New York, the physiologist Austin Flint, in his Text-Book of Human Physiology (fourth edition, 1888) described the phenomenon as follows:{{cite book|last=Flint|first=Austin|title=Text-Book of Human Physiology|url=https://archive.org/details/textbookofhumanp00flinuoft|year=1888|edition=fourth|publisher=Appleton, New York|location=USA|pages=[https://archive.org/details/textbookofhumanp00flinuoft/page/797 797]}}

{{Blockquote|A peculiar and, it seems to me, an inexplicable fact is, that previous pregnancies have an influence upon offspring. This is well known to breeders of animals. If pure-blooded mares or bitches have been once covered by an inferior male, in subsequent fecondations the young are likely to partake of the character of the first male, even if they be afterwards bred with males of unimpeachable pedigree. What the mechanism of the influence of the first conception is, it is impossible to say; but the fact is incontestable. The same influence is observed in the human subject. A woman may have, by a second husband, children who resemble a former husband, and this is particularly well marked in certain instances by the colour of the hair and eyes. A white woman who has had children by a negro may subsequently bear children to a white man, these children presenting some of the unmistakable peculiarities of the negro race.}}

Both Schopenhauer and Herbert Spencer found telegony to be a credible theory;{{cite book |doi=10.7591/9781501733451 |title=A Cabinet of Medical Curiosities |date=1997 |last1=Bondeson |first1=Jan |isbn=978-1-5017-3345-1 |page=159 }} August Weismann, on the other hand, had expressed doubts about the theory earlier and it fell out of scientific favor in the 1890s. 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. Also, the statistician Karl Pearson tried to find an evidence for telegony in humans using family measurement data and the statistical methods he invented, but failed to conclude that the steady telegonic influence really exists.{{efn|Assuming that later children of the same couple should increasingly resemble their father if there exists a possible "steady telegonic influence".}}{{cite journal |last1=Bessey |first1=Charles E. |title=Historical Graphics |journal=Science |date=October 1909 |volume=30 |issue=770 |pages=443–444 |doi=10.1126/science.30.770.443-a |pmid=17777275 |bibcode=1909Sci....30..443P }}

In mammals, each sperm has the haploid set of chromosomes 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). Thus, the myth of telegony is fundamentally incompatible with our knowledge of genetics and the reproductive process. Encyclopædia Britannica stated "All these beliefs, from inheritance of acquired traits to telegony, must now be classed as superstitions."{{Cite web|url=http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/262934/heredity|title=Heredity | Definition & Facts | Britannica|date=14 September 2023 }}

{{Update section|date=June 2024|reason=New research}}

The theory of telegony has been revisited in the 21st century with new speculations of non-genetic mechanisms of inheritance.{{Cite journal |last1=Nejabati |first1=Hamid Reza |last2=Roshangar |first2=Leila |last3=Nouri |first3=Mohammad |date=Oct 2022 |title=Uterosomes: The lost ring of telegony? |journal=Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology |volume=174 |pages=55–61 |doi=10.1016/j.pbiomolbio.2022.07.002 |pmid=35843387 }}{{Cite journal |last1=Nejabati |first1=Hamid Reza |last2=Roshangar |first2=Leila |last3=Nouri |first3=Mohammad |date=2022 |title=Uterosomes: The lost ring of telegony? |url=https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0079610722000682 |journal=Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology |language=en |volume=174 |pages=55–61 |doi=10.1016/j.pbiomolbio.2022.07.002|pmid=35843387 |url-access=subscription }}

A few studies in the 21st century have indicated that an organism can inherit traits that are not mediated by the genetic (DNA) material inherited from parents. The study of such effects is called epigenetics. One study published in 2014 reported the existence of telegony in Telostylinus angusticollis as a non-genetic mechanism of epigenetic inheritance.{{Cite journal |last=Patlar |first=Bahar |date=January 2022 |title=On the Role of Seminal Fluid Protein and Nucleic Acid Content in Paternal Epigenetic Inheritance |journal=International Journal of Molecular Sciences |volume=23 |issue=23 |pages=14533 |doi=10.3390/ijms232314533 |pmid=36498858 |pmc=9739459 |doi-access=free }}

{{See also|Scientific racism}}

Telegony influenced late 19th-century racialist beliefs. A woman who had a child with a non-Aryan man, it was argued, could never have a "pure" Aryan child at a later point in time. This idea was adopted by the German Nazi Party.

Telegony re-emerged within post-Soviet Russian Orthodoxy. Virginity and Telegony: The Orthodox church and modern science of genetic inversions was published in 2004. Pravda.ru gave an overview of the concept and a brief review of the book, saying that the authors invented "scary and incredible stories" to "make women be very careful about their sexual contacts" and that the idea was being used by the Church to scare the faithful.{{cite news|title=Woman's first partner may become genetic father of all her kids, telegony says |url=http://www.pravdareport.com/health/27-06-2007/94136-telegony-0/ |access-date=8 November 2016 |publisher=Pravda Report|date=27 June 2007}} Anna Kuznetsova, who was appointed Children's Rights Commissioner for the Russian Federation in 2016, had said several years earlier that she believes in the concept, amongst other fringe views. The founding editor of the business newspaper Vedomosti, Leonoid Bershidsky, interpreted the appointment of someone with such views as a sign that Russian President Vladimir Putin was becoming more ideological.{{cite news|last1=Bershidsky|first1=Leonoid |title=Putin Promotes the Next Generation of Ideological Cronies |url=https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-09-12/putin-promotes-the-next-generation-of-ideological-cronies|access-date=8 November 2016|url-access=subscription|agency=Bloomberg View|date=12 September 2016}}

The Korean religious practice known as P'ikareum is an unusual variant in that it holds that one can purify one’s own bloodline from sin by having sex with a holy person, such as the founder of one of the religious sects that engages in this practice.

Within popular culture, the belief that an illegitimate child would look like the mother's husband instead of the biological father gave married women some freedom to commit adultery without getting caught.

• Maternal effect
• Microchimerism
• Racial hygiene
• Transgenerational epigenetic inheritance

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{{reflist}}

• {{cite EB1911|wstitle=Telegony |last= Ewart |first= James Cossar |volume= 26}}
• {{cite journal |last1=Liu |first1=Ys |title=Telegony, the Sire Effect and non-Mendelian Inheritance Mediated by Spermatozoa: A Historical Overview and Modern Mechanistic Speculations |journal=Reproduction in Domestic Animals |date=April 2011 |volume=46 |issue=2 |pages=338–343 |doi=10.1111/j.1439-0531.2010.01672.x |pmid=20626678 }}
• {{cite book |doi=10.1016/bs.adgen.2018.05.009 |chapter=Darwin's Pangenesis and Certain Anomalous Phenomena |title=Darwin's Pangenesis and its Rediscovery Part B |series=Advances in Genetics |date=2018 |last1=Liu |first1=Yongsheng |volume=102 |pages=93–120 |pmid=30122236 |isbn=978-0-12-815129-7 }}
• {{cite journal |last1=Nejabati |first1=Hamid Reza |last2=Roshangar |first2=Leila |last3=Nouri |first3=Mohammad |title=Uterosomes: The lost ring of telegony? |journal=Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology |date=October 2022 |volume=174 |pages=55–61 |doi=10.1016/j.pbiomolbio.2022.07.002 |pmid=35843387 }}
• {{cite journal |last1=Pascoal |first1=Sonia |last2=Jarrett |first2=Benjamin J. M. |last3=Evans |first3=Emma |last4=Kilner |first4=Rebecca M. |title=Superior stimulation of female fecundity by subordinate males provides a mechanism for telegony |journal=Evolution Letters |date=April 2018 |volume=2 |issue=2 |pages=114–125 |doi=10.1002/evl3.45 |pmc=6121788 |pmid=30283669 }}

• {{Cite EB1911|wstitle=Telegony|noicon=1|short=1}}

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Telegony (Pregnancy)}}

Category:Obsolete biology theories

Category:Pseudoscience