Clarisse Herrenschmidt, "Le xwêtôdas ou mariage «incestueux» en Iran ancien," in Pierre Bonte, ed., Epouser au plus proche, inceste, prohibitions et stratégies matrimoniales autour de la Méditerranée, Paris, 1994, pp. 113–25. Alan H. Bittles et al., "Human Inbreading: A Familiar Story Full of Surprises," in Helen Macbeth and Prakash Shetty, eds., Health and Ethnicity, Society for the Study of Human Biology Series 41, London, 2001, pp. 68–78. It has been observed that such incestuous acts received a great deal of glorification as a religious practice and, in addition to being condemned by foreigners (though the reliability of these accusations is questionable since accusations of incest were a common way of denigrating other groups),Porter, Roy, and Mikulas Teich, eds. Sexual Knowledge, Sexual Science. CUP Archive, 1994, p.237 were considered a great challenge by their own proponents, with accounts suggesting that four copulations was deemed a rare achievement worthy of eternal salvation. It has been suggested that because taking up incestuous relations was a great personal challenge, seemingly repugnant even to Zoroastrians of the time, it served as an honest signal of commitment and devotion to religious ideals.Scheidel, Walter. "Evolutionary psychology and the historian." The American Historical Review 119, no. 5 (2014): 1563–1575.
Clarisse Herrenschmidt, "Le xwêtôdas ou mariage «incestueux» en Iran ancien," in Pierre Bonte, ed., Epouser au plus proche, inceste, prohibitions et stratégies matrimoniales autour de la Méditerranée, Paris, 1994, pp. 113–25. Alan H. Bittles et al., "Human Inbreading: A Familiar Story Full of Surprises," in Helen Macbeth and Prakash Shetty, eds., Health and Ethnicity, Society for the Study of Human Biology Series 41, London, 2001, pp. 68–78. It has been observed that such incestuous acts received a great deal of glorification as a religious practice and, in addition to being condemned by foreigners (though the reliability of these accusations is questionable since accusations of incest were a common way of denigrating other groups),Porter, Roy, and Mikulas Teich, eds. Sexual Knowledge, Sexual Science. CUP Archive, 1994, p.237 were considered a great challenge by their own proponents, with accounts suggesting that four copulations was deemed a rare achievement worthy of eternal salvation. It has been suggested that because taking up incestuous relations was a great personal challenge, seemingly repugnant even to Zoroastrians of the time, it served as an honest signal of commitment and devotion to religious ideals.Scheidel, Walter. "Evolutionary psychology and the historian." The American Historical Review 119, no. 5 (2014): 1563–1575.