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An excerpt from Empedocles' ancient text on heredity
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c. 490-430 B.C. Empedocles
Pythagoras' theory of heredity could not readily explain the obvious occurrence of shared physical traits between a mother and her child. Empedocles, another Greek thinker, accounted for Pythagoras' oversight by asserting that semen blended with female sexual fluid found inside a woman's body. An embryo, he believed, resulted from the mixing of male and female hereditary material found in these sexual fluids.
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