On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 01:14:41 -0400, Keith Henson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > At 05:05 PM 26/07/04 -0700, you wrote: > > > Robert Seeberger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > [Snip everything for the sake of a tangent] > > > > > > The question going through my mind is : Are genetic > > > imperatives rational? > > > >Not at all. Just look at how insane MAD war is/was, > >although in caveman days it made genetic sense to wipe > >out a competing tribe in times of severe privation > >(say many years of drought and famine). > > Even stranger, it made genetic sense under these conditions to make a > suicidal attack on a stronger tribe where the chances were very high *ever* > warrior in the weaker tribe was gonna get killed. You have to grok both > Hamilton's inclusive (kin) selection and the well known tendency for human > tribe to consider the women of a defeated tribe to be booty for this to > make sense.
The "Big Daddy" theory of human evolution! "One of the anthropological shocks of the 21st century was the discovery that the gene pool of central Asian men is dominated by such a limited range of Y-chromosome characteristics that the only conclusion is that one small group of closely related men dominated impregnation across the region about 800 years ago. They were probably all Mongols closely related to Genghis Khan... "Studies by geneticists from Italy, Portugal and Spain recently suggested that sexual dominance by very few men may have been widespread before about 18 to 12 thousand years ago, around the beginning of the warming that closed the last glacial epoch (Dupanloup, I. et al. 2003. A recent shift from polygyny to monogamy in humans is suggested by the analysis of worldwide Y-chromosome diversity. "...Dupanloup et al. show that the rise of agriculture around 10 thousand years ago seems to coincide with a breakdown of massive polygamy and more common monogamy. There are other possible interpretations of the data. In a largely monogamous society, if males stayed where they were born while women moved to live in their mates' home area, men would be closely related to others in their area, eventually resulting in very similar Y-chromosomes being shared by many. Different migration patterns or early deaths for most men while hunting may also have led to the genetic bias that is causing great discussion among evolutionary geneticists." http://www.earth-pages.com/archive/Anthropology.asp October 2003 Of course, socio-biology isn't destiny. -- Gary Denton _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
