Not only beyond their grasp, it’s beyond what they can accept.
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How Polygamy Shaped Who We Are
- Thread starter cnystrom
- Start date
The author is struggling with the higher death rate thing because he doesn't understand biology. Men have more genetic variability for all traits. Because 1 man can fertilize multiple women, it is possible to be more risky in their genetic encoding.
For example, while men and women have the same average IQ, the bell curves are different; with women clustering around the middle while men have much fatter tails on both sides. While this results in more male imbeciles, this genetic roll of the dice serves to put upward pressure on IQ within the population. There is little value in doing this with women because there is a limit to how many kids a single woman can have; creation plays it safe with the eggs. She increases the genetic strength of her children not through her own genetic variability but through selecting the best mates from among the pool of available men.
Men are generally coded with risk seeking behavior. This allows them to push the human horizons in physical and intellectual endeavors allowing us to be a highly adaptable species. While that aggressive behavior leads to higher death rates, it also enables them to take risks women wouldn't in order to protect their families. It dries men to prove and improve themselves to be better men. The man who scales a cliff alone in the wilderness isn't directly attracting women, but he does test his own limits; educating and improving himself and imbueing himself with a sense of confidence that attracts females. But men will also engage in risky behavior in front of women to directly attract them. Men with more aggressive and risk seeking behavior advertise their toughness, attracting females. Women will even encourage this at times (let's you and him fight).
This isn't a denigration to men anymore than it is to Bower birds to notice they like to collect junk to attract females. It is just a biological realty.
So it's not polygamy that drives higher death rates among men. It is the basic facts of biology which requires polygamy to work.
For example, while men and women have the same average IQ, the bell curves are different; with women clustering around the middle while men have much fatter tails on both sides. While this results in more male imbeciles, this genetic roll of the dice serves to put upward pressure on IQ within the population. There is little value in doing this with women because there is a limit to how many kids a single woman can have; creation plays it safe with the eggs. She increases the genetic strength of her children not through her own genetic variability but through selecting the best mates from among the pool of available men.
Men are generally coded with risk seeking behavior. This allows them to push the human horizons in physical and intellectual endeavors allowing us to be a highly adaptable species. While that aggressive behavior leads to higher death rates, it also enables them to take risks women wouldn't in order to protect their families. It dries men to prove and improve themselves to be better men. The man who scales a cliff alone in the wilderness isn't directly attracting women, but he does test his own limits; educating and improving himself and imbueing himself with a sense of confidence that attracts females. But men will also engage in risky behavior in front of women to directly attract them. Men with more aggressive and risk seeking behavior advertise their toughness, attracting females. Women will even encourage this at times (let's you and him fight).
This isn't a denigration to men anymore than it is to Bower birds to notice they like to collect junk to attract females. It is just a biological realty.
So it's not polygamy that drives higher death rates among men. It is the basic facts of biology which requires polygamy to work.
This drives another observation about human behavior and genetics. Some species drive genetic improvement by having short gestation lengths and time to fertility. It matters less if you have genetic variability in females as any one female line can rapidly reproduce.
Others species have very large numbers of young with high genetic variability between them. Here too it is beneficial to have genetic variability in both females and males because that doubles population subject to beneficial changes and any loss of females due to adverse mutations is made up for by the high fecundity among good females. This is helped by the fact that fertility is one of the first things to decline with poor genetics.
Many species take advantage of both of these.
Humans on the other hand have long gestation lengths and very slow development periods. So they can't afford to have high genetic variability among females. So instead we have variability among males; who are then culled down via various factors (war, mutations, and female selection). But this only works if women are encoded to chase only the best men (which they are), and polygamy enables the best men to sire children with multiple women (which in most human societies it does).
This also tells you the problem with monogamy: it will lead to genetic stagnation and an accumulation of genetic mutations in the population. I've never heard this worried about by geneticists, though I've not looked, but I have seen some commentators worry about accumulation of genetic mutations due to the recent advances in childhood medicine.
However there is a problem with pure polygamy: with it will lead to a narrowing of the genetic pool, a loss of beneficial genetics, and eventually inbreeding, declining fertility and fitness. Hence it is genetically beneficial to either have low grade polygamy (10-20%) or to cycle between monogamy and polygamy (hello civilization cycle) where in early genetic polygamous gains are normalized though the population via monogamy, also breeding genetic distance, before switching back to polygamy again.
Others species have very large numbers of young with high genetic variability between them. Here too it is beneficial to have genetic variability in both females and males because that doubles population subject to beneficial changes and any loss of females due to adverse mutations is made up for by the high fecundity among good females. This is helped by the fact that fertility is one of the first things to decline with poor genetics.
Many species take advantage of both of these.
Humans on the other hand have long gestation lengths and very slow development periods. So they can't afford to have high genetic variability among females. So instead we have variability among males; who are then culled down via various factors (war, mutations, and female selection). But this only works if women are encoded to chase only the best men (which they are), and polygamy enables the best men to sire children with multiple women (which in most human societies it does).
This also tells you the problem with monogamy: it will lead to genetic stagnation and an accumulation of genetic mutations in the population. I've never heard this worried about by geneticists, though I've not looked, but I have seen some commentators worry about accumulation of genetic mutations due to the recent advances in childhood medicine.
However there is a problem with pure polygamy: with it will lead to a narrowing of the genetic pool, a loss of beneficial genetics, and eventually inbreeding, declining fertility and fitness. Hence it is genetically beneficial to either have low grade polygamy (10-20%) or to cycle between monogamy and polygamy (hello civilization cycle) where in early genetic polygamous gains are normalized though the population via monogamy, also breeding genetic distance, before switching back to polygamy again.
Interesting thoughts on differences in genetic variability between men & women - can you share some data on that? It sounds a fascinating hypothesis but I don't see how it would occur genetically.
The IQ thing is commonly known. Here is one discussion of it. While results vary, it has been thoroughly studied and there is general scientific agreement on it outside of the feminist camp. I use it as an illustration to my greater points; the theory is my own informed by my experience as an amature student of genetics. We actually have well founded mathmatical tools for tracking inbreeding, allel frequency, predicting fertility and the like within animal breeding.
When two beings mate you have a combination of two genomes. This causes variability in the resulting genetics; compounded by the opportunity for mutations during gestation as well as the changes wrought by epigenetics. The amount of that variability will vary between the sexes due to differences in how men and women get DNA (xx vs. xy and the lack of mtDNA in men). How specifically DNA in man varies more than women, I'm not sure; we just can easily see the result. Here is one example how.
As to the difference in species its just a matter of math. Think about it in terms of genetic turnover and how that varies in species that gestate in a matter of days vs months or mature in a matter of days vs. decades. Think about it in terms of net new genetics in number of offspring per pregnancy (such as 1 for humans vs. 18 for pigs vs. thousands for fish) and how that affects potential for change over time.
Another interesting bit of research going on is in 'genetic load' or 'mutational load'.
When two beings mate you have a combination of two genomes. This causes variability in the resulting genetics; compounded by the opportunity for mutations during gestation as well as the changes wrought by epigenetics. The amount of that variability will vary between the sexes due to differences in how men and women get DNA (xx vs. xy and the lack of mtDNA in men). How specifically DNA in man varies more than women, I'm not sure; we just can easily see the result. Here is one example how.
As to the difference in species its just a matter of math. Think about it in terms of genetic turnover and how that varies in species that gestate in a matter of days vs months or mature in a matter of days vs. decades. Think about it in terms of net new genetics in number of offspring per pregnancy (such as 1 for humans vs. 18 for pigs vs. thousands for fish) and how that affects potential for change over time.
Another interesting bit of research going on is in 'genetic load' or 'mutational load'.
Agree. And this is likely to be at least partially caused by genetic factors.
Men do have mtDNA. It is just inherited from the mother rather than the father, and is not subject to sexual recombination so is not likely to be a cause of great variation.
But you're right, a man does utilise more DNA than a woman, having a Y chromosome also, so this does give some potential for greater variability between males than between females simply as there's more genetic material to have variability in it. Good point.
Interestingly, because that only affects variation within the males of the species, being only in the Y chromosome, it wouldn't affect the rate of genetic change in daughters, only sons. So if the "top few" men got all the women, their male offspring would be expected to be "better" (by whatever measure we are using) than in a monogamous situation - but their daughters would likely be similar to if every male had fathered the same number of offspring. So polygamy is likely to result in higher rates of "genetic gain" among males, but not among females. If I'm wrong, say so, I'm just thinking aloud... Interesting.
Yes.
Yes I mispoke about mtDNA. In humans it is inherited from the mother. Apparently it is considered fairly stable whereas Y chromosome is considered to be the fastest evolving part of the human genome and more prone to mutation and genetic loss. I guess that explains the increased variability of results in males.
So in the polygamous cases you preserve genetic diversity of mtDNA, coming only from the mother. You would concentrate the Y traits in the population, all of a families son's getting Y genes just from Dad. But the daughters would get one X from mom and one x from dad (being the one he got from mom). So polygamy increases the concentration of the X from the paternal grandmother in the population. But this concentration is muted as the daughters will express a mixture of X's from mom and dad. So there is concentration of x genes, but conservatively so.
Ok lets pull back out of theory. Monogamy will increase the genetic diversity of men compared to polygamy but also have a reversion to mean/outbreeding depression affect; lessening the quality of males in the whole population. Conversely polygamy will increase the general quality of males in the population by more widely propagating the quality ones (until inbreeding depression sets in). It would not be too outlandish to say that the quality of men today isn't what it used to be. IOW, it is time for a little more polygamy.
Of course, that isn't the only thing at play; especially in the US. But it could certainly be one factor.
So in the polygamous cases you preserve genetic diversity of mtDNA, coming only from the mother. You would concentrate the Y traits in the population, all of a families son's getting Y genes just from Dad. But the daughters would get one X from mom and one x from dad (being the one he got from mom). So polygamy increases the concentration of the X from the paternal grandmother in the population. But this concentration is muted as the daughters will express a mixture of X's from mom and dad. So there is concentration of x genes, but conservatively so.
Ok lets pull back out of theory. Monogamy will increase the genetic diversity of men compared to polygamy but also have a reversion to mean/outbreeding depression affect; lessening the quality of males in the whole population. Conversely polygamy will increase the general quality of males in the population by more widely propagating the quality ones (until inbreeding depression sets in). It would not be too outlandish to say that the quality of men today isn't what it used to be. IOW, it is time for a little more polygamy.
Of course, that isn't the only thing at play; especially in the US. But it could certainly be one factor.