Short Stuff: Habsburg Jaw

B is in Boy, would you look at that jaw? Right? 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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.

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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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. 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, 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,

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, 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 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 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

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 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,

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 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 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 would say, but jan And that's it for short stuff Everybody. Stuff you should Know is a production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works. For more podcasts For My Heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.