What if parternity testing invented in antiquity?

Herophilos (335-280 BC), was a Greek physician deemed to be the first anatomist. Born in Chalcedon, he spent the majority of his life in Alexandria. He was the first scientist to systematically perform scientific dissections of human cadavers and recorded his findings in over nine works which are all lost. He was an early pioneer of the scientific method. Together with Erasistratus he is regarded as a founder of the great medical school of Alexandria.

Lets say he discovered the basic concept of blood groups and his successors find out about their heritability. Now there is a somewhat useful paternity test. It will admittedly probably, as in OTL, only exclude a fairly small percentage of men from potential fatherhood.

Nevertheless research showed that countries that used this form of paternity testing in the legal system in the 1920's and 1930's saw a bigger drop in fertility then those that didn't. So it seemed to to still have some measurable effects in OTL.

Now imagine having this method well known in the ancient world and beyond. How will this effect dynastic and court politics in the centuries to come ?
 
Herophilos (335-280 BC), was a Greek physician deemed to be the first anatomist. Born in Chalcedon, he spent the majority of his life in Alexandria. He was the first scientist to systematically perform scientific dissections of human cadavers and recorded his findings in over nine works which are all lost. He was an early pioneer of the scientific method. Together with Erasistratus he is regarded as a founder of the great medical school of Alexandria.

Lets say he discovered the basic concept of blood groups and his successors find out about their heritability.

How is he going to do that with the tools available in his day to measure these things?

It took more than two thousand years of technological and other development for them to be discovered OTL. Expecting him to just somehow realize what's going on with what he had to work with seems rather far fetched.
 
Apart of being quite unrealistic, it would butterfly away some of the most spicy episodes of History, like the Beltraneja issue in 15th century Castile :D
 
It'll affect laws governing adultery and pre-martial sex. With a way to prove adultery laws would changed so that a burden of proof can be added in instead of just eye witness testimony.
 
what is the most lowtech way to give a reasonable clue in which direction a parternity test would go? ...
 
Even blood groups, which require microscopes, are a very minimal 'paternity test'. They only work if the child has a blood group impossible to generate from the parents'. Which is unlikely.

But. You need microscopes a millennium and a half early, which probably means you have telescopes, which is a much larger change. You also need Mendelian genetics some 1800 years early.

Why on earth would an ANATOMIST make these huge advances. No way.
 
what is the most lowtech way to give a reasonable clue in which direction a parternity test would go? ...

Mendel's Laws, or something equivalent, are fairly lowtech (Mendel's studies did not involve advanced technology labs, just peas, a plot of land, and some time) although they would probably require an astronomical conceptual leap in the Hellenistic era.
They are still a far cry from giving a "reasonable clue" though.
Earlier Mendelian genetics would make a very interesting POD in its own right, but they would hardly bring a reliable paternity test much closer.
Maybe, if Mendelian regularities are theorized, people might believe erroneously that they have a reliable way to ascertain paternity, affecting the laws accordingly. That won't be nice, especially because it's going to a specialized knowledge; doctors will have the power to asceratain who's a bastard or an adulterer, in societies where family and inheritance are very important.
There's no way it could possibly go wrong. :rolleyes:

As for figuring out blood groups in Antiquity.... not going to happen, let alone using them in any meaningful way, much less for paternity tests.
 
Even blood groups, which require microscopes, are a very minimal 'paternity test'. They only work if the child has a blood group impossible to generate from the parents'. Which is unlikely.
But. You need microscopes a millennium and a half early, which probably means you have telescopes, which is a much larger change. You also need Mendelian genetics some 1800 years early.
Why on earth would an ANATOMIST make these huge advances. No way.

It was mostly a throwaway taught. Now to the individual points:

1. Yes the test won't be that useful, but that didn't apparently stop people in OTL from having second thoughts. This was the main reason I included the reference to the study.

2. I wasn't sure if you really needed a microscope to observe the effects of blood types mixing. My mistake.

3. The reason why an ANATOMIST would make the initial observation is that he was way more than that. (I just didn't want to make the first post too long. It seems that this cuts down on the number of responses.) Anyway...

combining this:

"Herophilus is thought to be one of the founders of the scientific method. He had introduced the experimental method to medicine, for he considered it essential to found knowledge on empirical bases."

with this:

"Conventional medicine of the time revolved around the theory of the four humors in which an imbalance between bile, black bile, phlegm, and blood led to sickness or disease. Veins were believed to be filled with blood and a mixture air and water. Through dissections, Herophilus was able to deduce that veins only carried blood.

After studying the flow of blood, he was able to differentiate between arteries and veins.He noticed that as blood flowed through arteries, they pulsed or rhythmically throbbed. He worked out standards for measuring a pulse and could use these standards to aid him in diagnosing sicknesses or diseases. To measure this pulse, he made use of a water clock.
"

might have lead him to investigate the properties of blood in my opinion. He might have even tired some type of primitive transfusion experiments. A long shot but nothing out of the blue.

I never proposed that he would also be the one who discoveres the genetic linkage of blood types, that might be a bit much. But some of his followers very much might, if the interest in blood types is high enough.
In the best/worse case we get a fad, not unlike in Japan where people well off enough read some deeper meaning into them then there is. Once someone looks at the family records and voila.

But as you said, if we can't observe agglutination reaction or the lack thereof without an microscope this does indeed become moot.
 
it would butterfly away some of the most spicy episodes of History, like the Beltraneja issue in 15th century Castile :D

Hardly. Because this:
They only work if the child has a blood group impossible to generate from the parents'. Which is unlikely.

This means that through blood type testing no-one can prove to be someone's child and only in very specific situations one can be proven not to be someone's child...

Chances are - Beltraneja would have a blood type that could stem from Enrique IV's and that would prove zip.
 
Nevertheless research showed that countries that used this form of paternity testing in the legal system in the 1920's and 1930's saw a bigger drop in fertility then those that didn't. So it seemed to to still have some measurable effects in OTL.
I don't get it. Why has this happened?
 
more chance of getting nailed with legal claims that someone slept around?
Zero chances of getting nailed through blood type testing. They cannot prove that someone is someone's father. Blood type testing could only (in some specific circumstances) prove that someone is not someone's father.

This correlation between the availability of blood type testing and drop of fertility rates has no causation link.
 
It would probably lead to both more inbreeding and worse outcomes for House/family longevity among the noble and royal. The King might prefer a Charles II of his own loins to a healthy bastard, but his subjects would be far better served by a healthy outbred leader.
 
Zero chances of getting nailed through blood type testing. They cannot prove that someone is someone's father. Blood type testing could only (in some specific circumstances) prove that someone is not someone's father.

This correlation between the availability of blood type testing and drop of fertility rates has no causation link.

It should also be pointed out that in pre-modern societies most communities would be closely interrelated, so that blood testing would be all but useless. Most people in a local population would have the same blood type.
 
Even blood groups, which require microscopes, are a very minimal 'paternity test'. They only work if the child has a blood group impossible to generate from the parents'. Which is unlikely.

But. You need microscopes a millennium and a half early, which probably means you have telescopes, which is a much larger change. You also need Mendelian genetics some 1800 years early.

Why on earth would an ANATOMIST make these huge advances. No way.
You don't need a microscope to test blood types. All you need is to be able to see whether blood clots when you mix it with serum, and the naked eye is sufficient for that.

Now, I don't think premodern science is up to the task of manufacturing serum from blood (no centrifuges, for instance), so, AFAIK*, there would be no way of distinguishing, say, the reaction of AB+ with A+ and the reaction of O+ with A+. That is, all you could tell is whether two people have exactly the same blood type, which isn't as handy as modern techniques.

*Read: take the remainder of the paragraph with a big grain of salt

How are you going to have paternity tests before the discovery of DNA?
ABS in my opinion.
There is absolutely no need to identify inheritance with a specific nuclear chemical to develop a usable theory about how it works.
 
Nevertheless research showed that countries that used this form of paternity testing in the legal system in the 1920's and 1930's saw a bigger drop in fertility then those that didn't. So it seemed to to still have some measurable effects in OTL.

Correlation does not imply causation. You could argue that countries more likely to use this would be more likely to be prosperous developed economies which do tend to see drops in fertility rates.
 
Top