Audrey Curry in Science:
On the wall of his living room in Lier, Belgium, Werner van Beethoven keeps a family tree. Thirteen generations unfurl along its branches, including one that shows his best known relative, born in 1770: Ludwig van Beethoven, who forever redefined Western music with compositions such as the Fifth Symphony, Für Elise, and others. Yet that sprig held a hereditary, and potentially scandalous, secret.
That Beethoven, Werner learned to his dismay in 2023, is biologically unrelated to Werner and his contemporary kin. This uncomfortable fact was brought to light by Maarten Larmuseau, a geneticist at KU Leuven who specializes in answering a question relatively few others have explored: How often do women have children with men they’re not partnered with?
In most societies, kinship is at least partly socially constructed, and for example can include adoption and stepfamilies. Yet questions about biological paternity have roiled families and fueled cultural anxieties for eons. Male authors have written about hidden paternity for millennia, including in Greek dramas and The Canterbury Tales; William Shakespeare and Molière wrote plays about it. Knowing a child’s biological father is also important for forensically identifying cadavers, recording accurate medical histories, and charting the manifold ways in which people structure families around the world.
More here.
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