Short Stuff: Habsburg Jaw

The Habsburg Jaw is the result of inbreeding. But what is it? Click play and learn!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, there's chuck. Uh,
this is short stuff. Uh. Let's go, hey ho, let's
go with the Habsburgs. Habs God Jake two Habsburg jaw. Yeah,
the habsburgs. Oh Man had set it out loud until

(00:27):
just now we're in the Habsburg's jaw. I think the tendencies.
I want to say Habsburg with a P, but it's
Habsburg with a B. Although in America we've added the
P and it's just so prevalent now and we're America.
That's what it is now. It's Habsburg, Yeah with a
B is in Boy, would you look at that jaw? Right?

(00:49):
This is not to be confused. The Habsburg jaw is
not to be confused with the Hellsburg jaw, which is
what happens when you walk into a Hellsburg diamond store.
Your jaw hits the floor are because the prices are
so reasonable on really great jewelry. Oh man, if you
don't get a kick back on that, I just see

(01:10):
you next time. And you've got the big love hate
diamond rings like radio from do the Right Thing I
want I love hey diamond grill sweet. I wonder how
they'd sound podcasting probably not great. Well, Hellsburg Diamonds, let's
figure it out, you know. Alright, So who we're talking
about are the Habsburgs, and they were a big ruling

(01:33):
family in uh well, kind of all over the place
in Europe. At the peak of their fame, I guess,
or the peak at their rule, they had Austria, Hungary, Slovenia, Bohemia, Slovakia, Croatia,
and a little bit of Italy, Romania and Poland all
under their purview, like not just their purview, under their thumb,

(01:56):
in their iron grip of this dynastic family that ruled
these area is for hundreds of years. Yeah, I mean
up until nineteen eighteen. It took the First World War
to break up the Habsburg dynasty. Yeah, that's a long time,
it really is, because they originally came to power, Chuck,
and I think the thirteenth century in in Germany, when

(02:18):
a guy named Rudolph the First became the Roman German
king um, which is, you know, nothing to sneeze at
for sure, But apparently he had a rival, uh in
nearby Austria, in the form of Auto car ill prem
premise il premise. I'm going with Premisel Yeah, it feels

(02:42):
like there should be another vowel in there, but there's not.
So that why is doing like double or triple duty
right there? But it's working well. Anyway, we're gonna call
him Auto Car. Auto Car said, you know what, I
don't really recognize you as the Roman German king, so
we're going to be rivals, which really doesn't matter in
this story, yawn. The fact that it drew Rudolph the

(03:02):
first attention to Austria, and so when Auto Car was killed,
he kind of moved in and set up shop and
basically took over Austria. Yeah, and so that's where they
got their start, and then for the next century, basically
they really did a lot of conquesting, conquering, and they

(03:24):
took over they don't want to say something dubb in
front of it's great, it's charming. Uh. They took over
to the Troll, which is the place in the Alps
that Austria Northern Italy shared in the thirteen mid hundreds. Yeah,
and and also Chuck where Ootsi lived and died thousands
of years heyroleon. And by the time the fifteen hundreds

(03:49):
rolled around is when they were really rolling. The Emperor
Maximilian or I guess future Emperor married Charles the Bold's
daughter Mary, and then all of a sudden they had
control of Burgundy and also a little catch at Yeah,
from what I understand, like that was that was an
enormous move. So they were making all sorts of moves, right,

(04:10):
They were making moves, gaining and consolidating power through conquering um,
through marrying um. Well just basically those two things. But
it was working for him big time. I bet there
was one more thing. Um, let's see, how would you
do that? You would conquer things, you would marry people,
and then you would send like be known for sending

(04:33):
really great thank you notes as follow ups. Sure that
could that could definitely win you some friends. Yeah, okay,
that's what the third thing was. So here's the deal
with this jaw because you saw the title of the
episode and you've heard her say that a couple of times,
is they had a They had jaws that would make

(04:54):
Jay Leno blush if you looked up some of these folks,
Joseph the Charles, one of Spain, uh, Charles Second, Leopold Wilhelm,
they had this very very prominent lower jaw and basically
people got together and study this over the years and
we'll get a little bit more into why this happens.

(05:16):
And they said, we're just gonna go ahead and name
this the Habsburg jaw because it's so prevalent in this
family line. And they did. That's why everybody calls it
the Habsburg jaw. And if you have never seen it before,
you probably haven't didn't really realize it. But if you haven't,
either way, just go look up Habsburg jaw h A
B S b U R G jaw and it will

(05:40):
bring up some old timey um Middle Ages Renaissance era
oil paintings and you will see quite clearly what people
are talking about when they say the Habsburg jaw. So
if you haven't seen it before, um, it's just a
very prominent lower jaw and there's an underbyte and it's
just it's very distinctive. Yeah, And if you don't, if

(06:00):
you're if you're driving or something right now and you
can't look it up. You know, like the cartoonish characters
of like the Blue Blood who are like, oh, that's
astonding that that face that the cartoon makes is they're
they're drawn with the Habsburg jaw. They're actually making fun
of aristocrats as well. We'll see you in a minute.
And here's the thing. We don't want to make fun

(06:22):
of anyone that has something like this, but we were
just trying to figure out a good way to describe it.
It's a prominent lower jaw such that there's even an underbyte. Yeah.
So so well, let's take a break real quick and
we'll come back and talk about it a little bit more. Okay, Yes,

(07:07):
all right, Chuck. So we're back, um, and we were
talking kind of describing the Habsburg jaw. There's actually a
medical term for it, because the Habsburgs aren't the only
ones who have this jaw, um, and you can have
it to varying degrees. But technically it's called mandibular prognathism.
And that is where the lower jaw juts really far forward,

(07:27):
so that you have what what you would colloquially colloquially
call it an underbike, right, But the with the Habsburg
jaw in particular, it's to such a degree that the
teeth no longer even line up. It's just really sticking
out there. That's mandibular prognathism. And then what they also
figured out is that the Habsburg also had something called

(07:49):
mandibular deficiency to right, Yeah, and that can affect your
ability to eat, your ability to speak. Um. And you know,
I don't have anything to this, agree, but you know
you remember from brook Sisum, I've got a sort of
an even by it, and my lower jaw sticks out
a little bit. I'm not I'm not Habsburgian, no, but
I feel their pain with the Habsburg jaw in particular.

(08:12):
It's it's pronounced enough to degree that like the muscular
skeletal composition is um. It's it's different. It's it's just
a very prominent um. Look like you said, so um.
What they figured out was that because of this, and
based on some documentary evidence too, that some Habsburgs at
least um. I believe Charles the second, the ruler of Spain,

(08:36):
there's a contemporary account of him from the eighteenth century
UM that basically said, like his jaw was so out
of line and his teeth were so out of line.
Because of this jaw, he couldn't chew. He had to
swallow his food whole. Can we just read this? It's
so yeah. This is from Spain under Charles the Second
by Alexander stan Hope. That's Doug Stain, Hope's grandfather. Wait,

(09:00):
he's Dug Stain up, the stand up comedian. Oh, that's right. Um.
And he was speaking about Charles the Second. He has
a ravenous stomach and swallows all he eats whole, for
his nether jaw stands so much out that his two
rows of teeth cannot meet to compensate, which he has
a prodigious wide throat, so that a gizzard or liver
of a hen passes down whole in his weak stomach,

(09:23):
not being able to digest it, he voids in the
same manner. So he's just pooping out whole chicken, gizzards,
gizzard and gizzard out. Yeah, that's what that's the old
the old statement. So, Um, when people started talking about
the Habsburg jaw like like, it's because they figured out
over time, like this is a real thing and it

(09:45):
was very distinct for this family. Um. And it became
a thing years ago, centuries ago, people were aware of
the Habsburg jaw and and and and just remarked on it.
But it wasn't until I believe that the one century
that people started doing studies on it as best they could. Um.
I guess you could say they're kind of made up

(10:06):
studies and that there was no actual genetic um testing
to figure out what what you know, accounted for the
Habsburg jaw. But they were doing the best they could
based on portraiture of of prominent Habsburgs um and came
up with some pretty interesting stuff. Well yeah, I mean that. Uh,
I mean, do we need a drum roll here to

(10:26):
say what's actually going on? If you haven't figured it
out by now, then sure we'll give you a drum roll, Dave,
when you put a drum roll and put alrighty. The
Habsburgs like to keep it in the family. And when
we say keep it in the family, we mean really
keep it in the family. This jaw was a result uh,
pretty obviously of in breeding, yes, which is not to

(10:49):
say that anybody who has mandibular prognathism today uh is
the result of in breeding, of course not. Yeah, I
mean it's a recessive trade. And um, you know, when
people that aren't in the same family get together, you
know you're gonna have those heterozygous genes and they're going
to carry different traits and that's all how it's supposed
to work. But if you are in the same family. Um,

(11:11):
that may not be the case. If you have homozygouss
and get together with a family member and make another
family member, they're going to have those same traits right, right,
because the chromosomes are going to be so similar that
the chances of both parents having the recessive gene and

(11:31):
donating that to the kid really increases the likelihood of
that kid having that recessive trait. There's a guy that's
quoted in this article. Um, he's a geneticist named. This
guy's name is Great Montgomery Slatkin's great he. Um. He
says that if you are a child of inbreeding, you

(11:54):
have your chances are hundreds of thousands of times greater
of receiving these recessive traits then of um children of
parents who aren't related in any way. That's right. So
that was it. The Habsburgs. They wanted to consolidate power
so much so that they just said, you're marrying your sister,
whether you like it or not, and that the sun

(12:15):
would say, but jan And that's it for short stuff Everybody.
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