When everyone from the one family marries a relative?

Question

When all following generations of a family marry their second and third cousins, would all the children ressemble other in some way?

Answer 1

Of course, since they would continue to carry the same genetics, without any outside "fresh input"..

In US history, people actually did often marry relatives, but not exclusively.  The only exception I can think of is a well known cult that has been in the news recently.  Obviously, your question is too hypothetical.

Answer 2

Relatives don't all have the same DNA as each other.  So no tehy won't look exactly the same.  They will have an increase in common DNA.  This could be slight.  They would be less than siblings genetically with some chance exceptions, except for siblings who would be slightly more similar to each other than siblings (average/average). They just won't be exact copies or identical twins..

Answer 3

Perhaps you missed out on high school biology.... but yes, they would look alike. This is also called inbreeding. Eventually, it would lead to genetic mutations.

Answer 4

You get your autosomal DNA 50-50 from both parents coming down from all your ancestors. So certainly the children would all probably bare some resemblance.  However, each individual is made up of a lot of people.  Even if you marry 2nd or 3rd cousins there are some family lines they have that you don't and vice versa.

If people can go back far enough, they will probably find distant cousins marrying. Actually some people find they are married to a distant cousin after getting involved in genealogy.

Genetics and genealogy are not the same thing. In genealogy, we trace our ancestors with records and documents one generation at a time.  You might get more detailed answer if you go back to the Home Screen of Yahoo Answers, pick out Science and Mathematics and then select Biology.  

In genealogy we do take an interest in genealogy DNA and how it matches one family tree with another.