Did Mengele Create Twin Town?

More likely this is the work of aliens......

One of my pet hates - hens "lay", the town "lies". _{pedantic grumpy old man}

"Nestled in a remote area of Brazil lays the town "

My vote is for founder effect. It's an established fact that the tendency to twin is hereditary, so inbreeding is sufficient to explain the phenomenon.

Anyway, I never heard of Mengele doing anything harmless.... If there was really a point to making 'more Aryans' by twin births, well the heirs of that policy would be having litters of puppies with the technical means in this day and age... I don't see it happening. Besides, twins have lower birth weights and extra stress - hardly the program for an "uber" race. The best bet for babies is spaced two years apart to make sure they get optimal resources for their growth and development.

The only real point of twinning for a mind like Mengele is to breed identical twins for experiments: the ideal test subject and identical control.

Artsmith:

As a parent of identical twin girls, I would not put too much emphasis on your hypothesis of smaller, more stressed, therefore lesser in some way to other single birthed children. Our girls are now 24, both completed degrees (Royal Military College and Queens University). They are 5'9" tall and as strong as a lot of lesser single birthed guys.

If Mengle was involved in the Brazil twin phenomenon, he could very well have been involved in an "uber" society . I do not disagree with your statements that Mengle was up to no good. He was evil personified. It is a fact that twins, at least fraternal twins, are a result of genetics in many cases. Identical twins are random and can happen in any family.

Both of my twins played very competitive soccer with one girl named Canada's top varsity player. Yet they were twins born 6 weeks premature (my wife is not a large woman and would never have been able to go full term). All children can become very productive but we as parents must believe in them as capable people. Never underestimate a child's worth no matter how they started life.

kevinm: I hear you, and let me reassure you, I did not mean to suggest that twins are in any way inferior, neither are premature, low birth weight babies. Most survive and do very well, in these days of specialized medical care. It does not affect their basic genetic material, intelligence or any other strengths inherent in them. I would never underestimate a child's worth because they started out at a disadvantage and had to overcome some obstacles or survive some risks.

Low birth weight and premature birth are stresses on the newborn infant and a mortality risk. This is well known in medical circles and established in fact. This means that in the first days of their life they are at a disadvantage for survival, and depending on the environment and the care available, some lives may be lost.

In a resource-short environment, it is difficult to care and provide for two infants instead of one. It is taxing to the health of the nursing mother to provide for two, unless she is really well fed and cared for herself. And the infants themselves will be short of resources in that environment because they must share or compete for what is available.

There is no adaptive advantage for humans to having twins instead of a single birth - and maybe that's why it is not the dominant genetic pattern for humans. I don't see how it would fit into the "uber" mentality, to have the uber-infants be more vulnerable in resource-short conditions.

I ranted and apologize. Maybe I was just crowing. It may well be that twins have a harder start and can become very competitive. This competition imparts a distinct lifestyle with its own set of Darwinian advantages. Compared to an older sibling, they did walk earlier, pottied trained earlier, and had their own language at a very young age. I think sometimes the social aspects of being a twin can be advantageous. In many ways twins can exceed single birthed babies in development. However in our experience, their older sibling has proven to be quite accomplished in his own life and so does not make an obvious contrast to compare with the twins.

I would never underestimate Mengle's motive or design of human experiments. He may have recognized something others just overlook in genetic twins. He may have just been aiming to increase the Aryan population and in his own distorted mind. It still is a big leap to prove he started this phenomenon in Brazil. But it does make an interesting conversation.

Kevin

Occam's razor says it is the Founder Effect. You could look for any anomalies in Mengele's path and blame him. That way lies the path to conspiracy theory.

I already saw that movie: The Boys From Brazil

just to make sure we are comprehensive.. I have another possibility.

I read somewhere that there is an old wives tale that the gender of children can be reliably selected by using specific sexual positions during ^_fornication copulation. The ^{_storytellers} authors of the story were insistent that this worked well. sorry I have no link. ^{_{(there is also a myriad of other factors... PH etc.)}}

Is it possible that some of these factors are responsible. Do the men of these towns practice one position more than others? Is there something in the water that changes the ph of the mother's reproductive system?...

Chris

Many years ago, I was on the staff of a maintenance department for a plant that manufactured (among other things) synthesized D.E.S. a female growth hormone used to cause cattle to gain weight during their days in the feedlot. The chemical engineer who developed the operation was "imported" from a company in Germany and he mentioned that the process was a product of experiments performed during WWII. but did not elaborate. He mentioned the end product to be highly concentrated and having the properties whereby it could not be broken down, only diluted. The dust control for the blending plant where this D.E.S. was applied to the feed was lacking and the male production workers developed breasts, among other effects. So there was no doubt as to the potency of this compound.

Many things came out of that war that will continue to haunt us.

Don't forget the Kukuckskinder.

This was also their creation.

They're even around in Europe now !!

Cândido Godói is not that remote, it's only 50 miles to supermodel Gisele Bündchen's hometown Horizontina, best known by engineers for the harvesting combine factory SLC.

BTW, Gisele has a fraternal twin sister.