This is actually quite common amongst birds. Australian magpies and kookaburras also practice this type of breeding. Amongst mammals naked mole rats actually have a system where one reprodcutive female sterilises the rest of the warren. Only when she dies does another female begin cycling, and this in turn sterilises all the rest.
In gorilla societies only the dominant one or two males breed, although the rest of the silverbacks defend the young and females.
So the idea that not reproducing amongst mammals must be a genetic disadvantage is obviously seriously flawed.
Well to have an evolutionary advantage they wouldn’t actually need to. If they don’t have children and because of this leave any property in their will to any relatives that gives an evolutionary advantage to those carrying their genes. All we’d need is statistics showing that homosexuals leave a greater percentage of property to relatives than straight people. I’d hazard a guess that this is so even given the families who disown homosexuals.
In ancient societies of course it would also be automatic. Even if not deliberate, in even a large hunter/gatherer tribe of 10 people a homosexual man who killed a deer wouldn’t be able to eat it all and would share it with the tribe. Almost everyone in that tribe would be a relative with some shared genes. If he helped defend or attack in times of war he would also be inadvertantly helping his relatives. So the simple act of living would make a homosexual man an asset to the tribe and as such give the tribe an evolutionary advantage even if he never had children.
So long as any such benefits outweighed the obvious disadvantage of not having children homosexuality could be an evolutionary advantage. The fact that one man can impregnate numerous women means that so long as warfare was common and big game plentiful homosexuality was almost certainly an advantage to the tribe. It increases the hunting and military strength of society while at the same time limiting the amount of intra-tribal friction between males caused by competition over mates.
It may not be true but it seems like a logical case for the evolutionary advantage of homosexuality.
Putting on boxing gloves and preparing to fight ignorance.
Gods, isn’t classical history a requirement anymore?
SPOOFE: the Romans (both in the Republican and Imperial periods) were extremely homophobic… lots of nasty legislation passed by the Senate making it a crime with rather, um, extreme penalties. Indeed, Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” goes on at great length about how the failure of the later Imperial period to enforce such legislation led to the downfall of the empire. The Romans (by and large) considered homosexuality effeminate and contrary to the masculine standards of their Republic. They thought of it as a “Greek” vice.
You are referring to some Greek philosophical debates over the nature of love when saying that the highest form of love was between two men (see particularly Plato’s “Symposium”). Of course, this was the Greek elite talking, remember, only those with sufficient property were really part of the Greek democracy… slaves and women didn’t count. And the actual physical expression of this was more akin to what we would consider pedophilia than sexual expression between consenting adults.
Uh… You sure about that? Because every source I’ve found contradicts that. Especially the one that mentions that the Romans considered gay men to be the best for the legions, since they were found to fight better as a team.
Though I think the quote about “men could only truely love another man” did come from the greeks, not romans, but I’m not sure
I beleive alexander the great had alot of homosexuals in his army. That’s part of why they did so well, because they weren’t just fighing for their friends, but for their lovers.
