Nobody ever said these paternity assurances were deterministic and guaranteed, or even always right. Like every selective advantage, even if it improves the odds just 0.1%, it really adds up over millions of years. The fact that more than one mechanism is in play just serves to illustrate how critically important paternity assurance is from the genetic point of view.
Interestingly, avunculocal societies are one of the best proofs of this theory out there. Every avunculocal society I’m aware of invests the childcare in the maternal uncle. I’ve never heard of one in which it’s a paternal uncle who cares for the kids.
What’s the difference? The maternal uncle knows for sure that he shares some genes with the kid–under most circumstances, 25% of the genes. The paternal uncle may or may not share some genes with the kid.
So men in avunculocal societies trade a good chance at 50% gene-sharing for a near-certainty of 25% gene-sharing. If it weren’t about gene-sharing, wouldn’t you expect to see some societies in which it was the paternal uncle (or paternal aunt or bestest friend or something) who took on these duties?
If eye color was independently associated with bonding between blue-eyed males and their offspring, this would support the idea that blue-eyed men (and blue-eyed men alone) use eye color when assessing likeness to their children. From this, I would also be more willing to accept that blue-eyed mate preference is potentially linked with the desire to sire blue-eyed children. Maybe there could be an organic basis for that. But I have no reason to rule out the environmental influences either.
What I wouldn’t do is use evidence of any father-child eye color bonding to propose an evolutionary strategy against cuckoldry. Because that is where we go from the testable to the untestable. Show me how such a thing could arise based on what we know about evolution and maybe I’ll consider it. But not in the absence of that.
Not sure what’s going on here…of course there’s no such thing as an “evolutionary strategy.” All there is is genetic codes that successfully reproduce themselves. Is that what you mean by “evolutionary strategy”? If so, assuming that by “an organic basis” you mean “something genetic”, what’s the difference?
Or if you mean something else by “evolutionary strategy,” can you define the term so it’s not teleological?
But in the real world how likely is this? And how likely is it that the “other man” is going to look that much different from the couple involved? After all, if the theory holds true, the woman will seek an affair with someone who looks like her…and by extension, her mate as well. If most of the people in the tribe share the same traits (including eye color), it reduces one’s discriminatory power.
Which makes sense. Unfortunately, though, I still don’t get how any of these superior skills at detection translate to increased fitness.
Uh. You don’t find many societies where children are raised far from their mothers, and it doesn’t take a genius to see that children are generally closest to their closest relatives. So yeah, if the father isn’t around, it probably will be the closest maternal relative because that’s who mom and the kid is living with. It’d be really bizarre to have mom and kid living with her man-friend’s brother while man-friend wasn’t around.
We could spend all night on our various justifications. But still. none of this is science, just bullshitting and story telling.
Read what I just wrote to Chessic. Odds are the kid will look like the man, if the women seeks an outside partner who looks like her. (According to the very stuff you have cited in this thread).
The cite doesn’t say that. It says some people question its applicability to the social sciences. Doesn’t mean those people are right. Honestly, can I ask what makes speak so confidently on this subject?
The way their paper reads, I wouldn’t be surprised if they did develop their hypothesis after the fact. I think you’re catching on.
So why don’t you find societies where, after breastfeeding, children are raised primarily by dads? Or is the raised-by-mothers some sort of social universal among humans, and the males involved are overwhelmingly ones who can guarantee blood relationships to the kids?
You were the one who brought up the uncle societies. If you’re dropping them as support for your claims, that’s cool. They certainly provide no such thing.
Yes, by organic, I mean genetic.
And by “evolutionary strategy”, I mean evolutionary pressures that selectively favored the genetic propogation of this preference exclusively among blue-eyed males.
So if I’m understanding you, you could imagine research that suggests a genetic component to blue-eyed males preferring blue-eyed mates in order to sire blue-eyed children. But you can’t imagine research that suggests the specific evolutionary pressures that led to this genetic component. Is that correct?
Because in general, if something comes out of your body, it is your responsibility?
Mucus/urine/feces/semen/earwax/milk/sweat/blood/baby
I’m finding it hard to talk in generalities here, even sven.
Only if they looked at the genes of blue-eyed males with a blue-eyed preference and found that they differed from blue-eyed males without such a preference. (But I didn’t imply this in anything I’ve written, so I’m not sure how you’ve gotten this particular understanding.)
I can imagine all kinds of research, seriously. Some of it good, some of it bad. What I can’t imagine is observing a preference and suggesting not only a genetic basis for it, but making a claim about defensive mating practices, when the data doesn’t support that. I don’t understand what is objectionable about this.
Do you think the anti-cuckoldry hypothesis is testable?
Now you got it! Good for you, that’s why these researchers love this kind of research!
This is unfortunate, but since you can’t convincingly demonstrate it why don’t you stop saying it?
Given your obviously low opinion of the findings, the researchers, and the study designs, I can’t understand why you are interested in arguing this. I don’t usually argue about topics I have no interest in or a low opinion of.
You have to temper the phrase “real world” with the understanding that these traits would have evolved in times when humanity lived in small groups. So in that context, I would say it’s likely enough that it could help at least somewhat.
There’s nothing that says this must be absolutely the only means of paternity assurance in the world, or that it has to be bulletproof accurate. It just has to be a tendency that helps defend against cuckoldry in even a small percentage of cases.
Again, strike ‘superior’, I think it’s been well established that we’re not talking about superior, just ‘helps more than harms over deep time’.
That aside, for a male to unknowingly invest in raising another male’s offspring, genetically speaking, this is about the worst possible outcome imaginable for him, worse even perhaps than death. Not only do you not invest in your own genetic offspring, but you’re helping your competitors. That’s why this arms-race of deception happens in so many animals, and the ones who fail to keep up will be selected out.
It is not clear how this supposed trait would really help anything on a practical level. Sure, no man wants to take care of another man’s kid. But it’s improbable that early man was investing all that much in his children anyway. Given how promiscuous people likely were during prehistory (and the lack of contraception), men probably had a lot of children running around. Him unknowingly giving some attention to one or two children that were not his biologically doesn’t strike me as a loss significant enough to write home about.
And of course, this is from the viewpoint of modern man. Early man had about eleventy billion things other than paternity to worry about. Staying warm/cool, coping with disease, maintaining shelter, finding food, building fires, fighting invaders. The list goes on. Given this, I find it highly implausible that unknowingly “caring” for another male’s offspring was on their list of concerns at all, let alone the “worst possible outcome imaginable”.
Here is a critique of that paper that I came across that explains my POV pretty well. This in particular sums it up well:
I know for certain you could not possibly find a single thread of evidence that what you describe here was the case so I will only jokingly ask for a cite: cite?
I’m glad to see you’ve progressed to acting like the caricature of evolutionary psychology that you and others believe it to be.
A whole list of behaviors that protect their children. How awful it would be to do these things for another man’s offspring.
Sentence 3 of paragraph 2 is factually incorrect. It’s far too broad a generalization for somebody that understands experimentation much less evolution.
Paragraph 3 is “I recognize the data fits best with the hypothesis but I just don’t want to agree to it!”. It should just be erased entirely.
Paragraph 4 is close to what people actually find, but its off the mark showing this person understands this stuff only superficially.
Paragraphs 5 -7 are gibberish. Even if he did describe a single circumstance where there is no benefit to this behavior he is ignoring the fact that these are slight relative benefits over extremely long time scales.
Paragraph 5 ignores the fact that we do not need to be educated in genetics to understand heredity. As evidence I give you every single domestifuckingcated animal ever. We’ve been domesticating a breeding animals since about the time the blue eye phenotype showed up.
Paragraph 8 and 9. That seemed like a reasonable criticism after I posted that cite from the Senegal study earlier? Really? It’s further study type of stuff.
Paragraph 10. Study in Senegal. Polygamy. Guess his “for instance” is just not all that informative.
Paragraph 11. Adoptees. This Norwegian study was supposed to explain everything, including adoptees?
Paragraph 12. Your favorite paragraph. This is your POV? Your POV is a stereotype of masculine behavior? Men don’t invest in their kids enough for it to be worthwhile that their paternal investment is directed toward their biological offspring? Give me a single human culture where all men invest so little in their offspring. This wasn’t our behavior in the past and its not in the present and even if there is some culture where everyone is just extremely promiscuous its under some bizarre ecological circumstances.
I don’t even know what he’s trying to get at with the last paragraph.
This guy is just flinging whatever his mind can come up with. It’s a scatter-shot poorly though out series of “criticisms” that do nothing to enlighten. Instead they obfuscate by creating a series of easily refutable but nevertheless tiring barriers to understanding the subject.
As should be obvious, any investment of limited resources into genes which are 0% yours is an evolutionary failure in most respects. Factors which would increase the ability of a sexually reproducing organism to make sure that its efforts went to its own progeny would not need to have anything but a marginal effect to have a selection pressure acting on them. Whether or not it was a loss significant enough to “write home about” is nonsensical as evolution deals with relative successes, not absolutes.
This attitude betrays a rather significant level of ignorance about basic genetics. From the point of view of any replicating set of genes, there is pretty much nothing more important than that replication. Anything else you mention is simply an adaptation that the gene-carriers have in order to more effectively propagate more copies of their genetic package. That’s the reason we see a host of maladies in those past breeding age but a comparatively minor set in organisms still in their prime reproductive years.
Really? All men had a lot of children running around? Think about that for a minute and I’m sure you’ll see the problem with it.
Suppose he’s taking food out of his (known) childrens’ mouths to feed children he thinks are his, but aren’t. It’s genetic suicide.
Absolutely false. In every animal where the male makes any significant investment in their offspring, cuckoldry and cuckoldry detection is a significant dynamic (in fact, we get the word from the cuckoo bird) . And it bears repeating, neglecting your own offspring to feed someone else’s is the quickest path to genetic oblivion, because it simultaneously works in favor of your competitor’s offspring, but against your own.
Again, we’re not talking about day-to-day issues, as if early man woke up every morning with a laundry list that said “verify paternity.” All the tasks you mention are important, but they all are ultimately in service of successful reproduction.
The “fighting invaders” part of it, come to mention, is extremely important. After all, men don’t really need to fight invaders. Why bother, when they could turn heel and leave the women and children undefended? It can only be to guard that genetic investment. And of course, if you’reexpected to interpose your ribcage between an enemy spear and a child, then it would be a very useful instinct that would guide you to abandon the child to your left, which doesn’t really look like you, in favor of a child child to your right, which looks a lot more like you.
The genetic aspect of it really isn’t debatable; the only debatable thing here is whether paternal investment was important enough in early societies that paternity assurance was important. On balance I think it’s pretty clear that it was as important then as it is now.
Right, and you are “pretty sure” because you made a good bar-room argument for it.
Still not science.