The first twins

Twins in the Ancient World

The first twins in the Bible were Jacob and his fraternal twin Esau. They were born around the late 1990’s BC to Abraham’s son Isaac and his 2nd cousin Rebekah. Before the twins were born, “the babies struggled together within” Rebekah’s womb. (Genesis 25:21-34) When they were born, Esau came out first and Jacob came out grasping Esau’s heel. “Jacob” means “the supplanter,” and Jacob did over the years take away Esau’s primogenitor rights as the first born.

Drawing by Eucharius Rosslin, c. 1513, Zurich, illustrates how Rosslin thought some twins were positioned in the womb. Maybe that’s how Jacob and Esau were positioned?

It did not help the brothers’ innate hostility to each other that their mother Rebekah preferred Jacob and Esau was the favorite son of Isaac. Esau, who fathered the Arabs, and Jacob, who fathered the Jews, were always “struggling” together as they are 4,000 years later in our day.

A London medical study video showing twins fighting for room in womb

Castor & Pollux

In Greek mythology the twins Castor and Pollux were so inseparable that when mortal Castor was killed, Pollux asked his father Zeus to let Castor share his own immortality. Zeus granted his son that wish and they were both changed into the constellation in the night sky known as Gemini, Latin for “twins.” The immortal king of the gods, Zeus had disguised himself as a swan and raped their mother Leda. Apparently at the same time Leda had sex with Tyndareus, the mortal king of Sparta. The boys, one immortal (Pollux) and the other mortal (Castor), emerged from one egg, so they were identical twins. We are talking “myth,” meaning “anything delivered by word of mouth” here, readers.

Aristotle (384-322 BC) said multiple births are praeter naturam, “outside nature’s normal course.

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In the United States 2% of births were twins from 1915 to 1981. Beginning in 1995 the percentage of twin birth rates began to increase until in 2010 the birth rates of twins had jumped to 3.3%, over a million more sets of twins born yearly than in the years 1915-1981. The cause—the growing use of reproductive technology. The highest birth rate of twins in the world, unassisted by reproductive technology, is in the central African county of Benin where twins are 27.9 twins out of every 1,000 births. The lowest birth rate of twins in the world is in south and southwest Asia and Latin America where there are 6-9 sets of twins for every 1,000 births.

7,000 year old woman’s bones with twins still in her uterus

The complete skeleton of a Neolithic woman was found in 1997 near Irkutsk in Siberia. Upon examination it was found she was in her mid-twenties and had died during childbirth. A set of twins were found in her pelvic region. One of the babies had tried to present feet first and the other child was head first. As a result, all three had died. It is probable that whomever tried to deliver the breech birth did not know she had twins.

Bones of twins huddled together were found in 1974 among skeletons discovered at Villa of L. Crassius Tertius, Pompeii

In August of 79 AD Mt Vesuvius erupted and buried in ash the ancient cities of Pompeii and Heculaneum. 50 skeletons were found in an underground cellar in Pompeii where they had obviously taken refuge. The bones of twins were found huddled together.

Twins were the first rulers of Sparta (c. 900-192 BC), a city-state in ancient Greece. For generations the Spartans carried on the tradition of twins as rulers. It was mythologized that the first and ensuing twin rulers all were descended from celestial twins. The most famous twins in the ancient world were Romulus, the eponymous founder of Rome, and his twin Remus. They were abandoned by their mother who placed them in a rush basket and left them afloat on the river. When the water receded, a she-wolf found them and suckled them with her teats until a shepherd discovered them and he and his wife raised them as their own sons.

The shepherd Faustulous bringing Romulus And Remus to his wife—Nicholas Mignard (1654)

As the twins grew to adulthood, they were obstreperous. They ended up founding Rome with a rag-tag group of guys. Romulus killed his twin Remus. The ancient Romans were proud their founder was suckled by a she-wolf and felt the animal part of him, his daring, fearlessness and fiery temper, was why Romans eventually conquered the whole known world.

The She-Wolf suckling Romulus and Remus—Museum on Capitoline Hill, Rome

In John 11:16 in the New Testament one of the twelve Apostles is called Thomas in English. In Hebrew his name is “Tauma” meaning “twin.” When the New Testament was written in Koine Greek, the Hebrew “Tauma,” meaning “twin” was translated into Greek as “Didumos” that means in Greek “twin.” It would be strange to name a child “Tauma” if he was not a twin.

For thousands of years scholars have been baffled by the question: who was Thomas’ twin? There have been many theories: Thomas’ twin was his Oneness with God; Thomas’ complete name was Judas and Judas (not the Judas who betrayed Christ) was his twin’s name; Thomas was Jesus’ twin brother, an absurd assertion leading to absurd theological conundrums. The long and the short of it is: we have no idea who was Thomas’ twin.

Tryphena & Tryphosa

In Romans 16:12 Paul in this letter greets “Tryphena and Tryphosa, those women who work hard in the Lord.” Most have assumed these two women were twins who were in Rome and were working “hard in the Lord,” were strong women involved in evangelism and in service to the nascent church in Rome. That is all we know of those two twins.

From Muscio’s treatise on genecology

There is a curious entanglement of triplets in the womb from a copy of Muscio’s (c. 500 AD) Gynaecia, in the Bibliotheque Royale de Belgique from the 800‘s AD. The triplets appear to be about 12-14 years old and the womb itself appears to have horns.—Sandra Sweeny Silver

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World's oldest identical twins are 107 years (and 300 days) old

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Umeno Sumiyama and Koume Kodama of Japan are the world's oldest twins. (Image credit: Guinness World Records)

Two sisters in Japan have been declared the world's oldest identical twins, at age 107, according to news reports.

The sisters, Umeno Sumiyama and Koume Kodama, were born on Nov. 5, 1913, making them 107 years and 300-plus days old, according to the Associated Press. That breaks the previous record for world's oldest identical twins, held by Kin Narita and Gin Kanie, also from Japan, who were 107 years and 175 days old, the AP reported. (Kin Narita died in 2000 at age 107, according to The Guardian, and Gin Kanie died a year later at 108.)

Sumiyama and Kodama were certified as the world's oldest twins on Monday (Sept. 20) by Guinness World Records. The sisters are currently living in separate locations and were presented with their certificates by home care staff, the organization said in a statement.

Related: Seeing double: 8 fascinating facts about twins

Umeno Sumiyama (left) and Koume Kodama (right) receiving their certificates from Guinness World Records.

(Image credit: Guinness World Records)

They were born on Shōdoshima Island in Japan into a large family, with 11 total children, according to the AP. After elementary school, Kodama moved to Kyushu in southern Japan to work as a maid, while Sumiyama remained on the island. The pair rarely saw each other for decades until they turned 70, when they reconnected and started making pilgrimages together, the AP reported.

How long a person lives is thought to be influenced by genetics, environment and lifestyle, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Scientists have been studying centenarians (people who live to 100) and "supercentenarians" (people who live to 110 and beyond) to better understand the factors that contribute to long life spans.

the world's first surviving septuple twins

These four boys and three girls are considered a medical miracle. They are all twins, and they all managed to save their lives. Scientists have named the twins the mysterious word "septulet". See photos in our material.

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Life Stories

Twins

rare cases

On November 19, 1997, Bobby McCaughey and her husband Kenny from Iowa hit the headlines. The couple became the first parents known to science, who gave birth to seven children at once, each of whom survived.

The kids were named Kenny Jr., Alexis, Natalie, Kelsey, Nathan, Brandon and Joel . Babies at birth weighed from 1.13 to 1.54 kilograms.

Brandon served in the army, the other six went to college. They have an older sister, 19-year-old Michaela, who is married and lives nearby. In 2017, seven children became aunts and uncles when Mikayla gave birth to a son after getting married in 2015. Natalie was the first of seven children to marry in May 2019. Brandon also got married in August 2019.

"It's going to be a pretty big life change," admits their mom, Bobby. No wonder: the house in which eight children grew up will be empty at once.

How did it happen that Bobby and Kenny became parents of many children? After the birth of Michaela, they were unable to have a second child, and they went for in vitro fertilization. Seven embryos took root, and since the couple is quite religious, they decided to keep them all.

Of course, they tried to dissuade them from this risky venture - but everything went relatively well, the kids managed to get out. True, two of them - Nathan and Alexis - were born with cerebral palsy, and they had to be operated on so that the guys could walk.

Nathan has been forced to learn to walk unaided day by day, Alexis still walks with the help of a walker. True, this year she was the second captain of the school cheerleading team.

An unusual family was actively helped by charitable organizations: they were given a house with seven bedrooms, the kids got the opportunity to eat for free and go on vacation. When they were born, several universities offered them free education when they grew up. The family once met with President George W. Bush.

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“I was always afraid that, looking at our work, the guys would think that this was enough for a beautiful life,” Kenny told the Des Moines Register newspaper. — I gradually explained to them what the truth of life is. There was no way I could afford to buy such a house with my salary. If you want to get something, you have to work hard for it.”

Kenny Sr. works for a metal coating company. Bobby is a teacher-defectologist and, in addition to raising eight children, teaches children with special needs. Like her husband, she always tried to instill in her children a love of work.

Alexis is going to study to be an educator, Natalie is going to be an elementary school teacher, Kenny Jr is going to be a construction worker. Nathan and Joel will be programmers. Kelsey sings in the state choir and dreams of a musical career.

“We consider ourselves best friends, not just siblings,” says Alexis.

Scientists explained in which families twins appear

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Irina Ivoilova

Approximately 2-3 percent of the population of our Earth are twins. Either full genetic copies of each other, or, as they say in Russia, twins. If in the first case twins of the same sex are always born, then in the second it happens in different ways.

Sergey Malgavko/TASS

How many of them and who are "responsible" for the fact that a double replenishment suddenly appears in the family? Professor of genetics and psychology, director of the International Laboratory for Interdisciplinary Research on Individual Differences in Learning (Goldsmiths, University of London) Julia Kovas, who has been studying twins for many years, answered: “About one-third of all twins are monozygotic (resulting from the division of one fertilized egg) , another third - dizygotic same-sex (the so-called twins of the same sex - either two boys or two girls) and the same number - dizygotic heterosexual (when both a boy and a girl are born in the family at once). 0003

Monozygotes, which are genetic copies of each other, are approximately 1 percent worldwide. This number does not change. Why the cell divides in two, scientists do not yet know. But in the birth of dizygotic (in other words, twins) there is a genetic component - if there are dizygotic twins in the relatives, then all relatives are more likely to have dizygotic twins. when one gene is responsible for something specific, for example, the appearance of some kind of disease. "There is a mutation in the gene - there will be something specific, for example, Huntington's disease (a hereditary disease that leads to the occurrence of degenerative processes, usually manifests itself in 30-50 years). There is a mutation - there is a disorder, there is no mutation - and there is no disorder. Complex genetic influences are polygenic, that is, a large number of genetic factors affect some trait.

So, twinhood is such a complex trait, which is provided by a large number of genes. Dizygotic twins are maternally traceable, possibly because some process is inherited that is associated with ovulation. However, we now know that fathers can carry these genes and can pass them on to their daughters. It is possible that other processes can increase the likelihood of twins. Many genetic factors associated with this phenomenon have not yet been identified.

It is interesting that in Asian countries, for example, in Japan, there are very few twins, but in some African countries there can be more than 20 percent of such children.

"The environmental component also plays a role here, but many factors that can explain such geographical differences in the frequency of twins have not yet been established," Julia Kovas told RG. "In recent years, the number of dizygotic twins has increased, for example, due to such technologies such as IVF.Sometimes, during in vitro fertilization, a woman is implanted with two or even three fertilized cells, which leads to a higher frequency of dizygotic twins.However, in many countries this approach has begun to be abandoned, since multiple pregnancy poses an increased risk for the mother, and for children.