"like whether or not your weight is proportional to your height" Of course it's proportional (unless your height is 0, in which case the proportion is undefined).

It's even narrower than that.

The first three digits shoud be easy to guess if we know roughly how old he is and what state he was born in. If we had that info, I'll bet we could cut x down to 3 or 4 possibilities.

Actually, the first 5 digits can be determined based upon how old he is, and which state he was born in (assuming typical issuance at birth). The first three indicate the state (though some states have multiple triplets, which are rotated.) However, the next 2 digits are not random; they are used up in a set pattern, so it is possible to learn exactly what the first 5 digits were for any SS# issued in a given state in a given date range. Using the Freedom of Informatio Act, you can ask the governement the highest group number issued at any date! (http://www.ssa.gov/employer/highgroup.txt) Nice of them, huh?

What changed this? Christianity brining decidedly Roman attitudes.

Actually, not Christianity bringing Roman attitudes, but Romans. For the first few centuries of Christianity in Ireland and northern Great Britain, it had a distinctly Celtic flavor, including a greater degree of gender equality and married clergy. Some even believe that St. Brigid was a bishop (the evidence is not very strong in either direction). The change came when the Celts started sending missionaries to the European mainland and they came into some conflict with Rome because they did things differently. It was at that point that Rome tightened control over the Celtic church and brought them in line with the Roman way of doing things.