Quote:
Originally Posted by cpitt398
"the most likely explanation for the high frequency of twins is genetic isolation"
I think this is like 99.9% the most likely answer. Im pretty sure twins is very genetic and if they live in a place that is somewhat isolated the number of twins can easily multiply through breeding. Wouldn't surprise me if it continued to rise.
As far as a guy researching twins, without knowing anything for sure, I'd imagine his twin involvement was bc they make good test subjects bc you can compare them to each other.
I posted that after watching a Discovery Channel documentary on the town. It's a bit of an indictment against them nowadays that a lot of information from their documentaries have no sources, and I'm not finding much about what the show claimed online, so take this with a grain of salt.
The show claimed that the area also has an abnormally high twinning rate in livestock in the area, as evidence against any genetic type theory as you just brought up. They offer the Mengele theory as one explanation, and a possibly contaminated source of water as the other. The town well had been covered up around 10 years ago, and the community is drawing on a new water source now, but they claimed to have done extensive testing on the well water and found nothing unusual. But admitting that some sort of water contamination could have such genetic effects is just as wild a claim as Mengele having discovered some sort of primitive gene therapy.
It's a little too crazy to entertain seriously, but fun to think about. Not so fun when you start looking into the details of Mengele's research at Auschwitz. Around 3000 known twins passed through the walls, and less than 100 survivors were found after the war. He'd do things like force siblings to mate, and attempt to conjoin them surgically. Pretty gruesome.
