Is there such a thing as a “cowboy gene”?
I think more info is needed.
Will cowboy jeans fit your needs?
Many americans can trace their ancestry back to the colonists of the early 1600’s. Natural selection played a role in those that chose to make the risky journey and those that actually suvived the hardships of the wilds much different from the urban europe that they left. Are americans genetically disposed to be risk takers? And was natural selection at work during the westward migration across the american continent thusly was a “cowboy Gene” reinforced?
Of course there is a Cowboy Gene.
Well there are certainly people who are predisposed towards risk-taking, adventuring and thrill-seeking. Here’s an article from a few years back, I remember reading others in college:
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1175/is_6_33/ai_66278316
I’m sure that we’ve got a couple of appropriate -ologists who can explain this better and link to more recent studies.
I am not a specialist in this area, but there are a few problems I see with this theory, although I’ve heard it before, so it’s not new.
First, you’re assuming that those who went west were, in fact, risk takers. Maybe they were desperate. Maybe they were paid well and overcame their natural timidity in favor of money. Maybe they were taken along by their families and were too risk-*adverse *to move anywhere else when they were adults.
Second, you’re assuming that “being a risk taker” is a genetic trait. I question this deeply - I’d have to see a lot of evidence for this claim. My own experiences lead me to believe it’s most definitely present in early infanthood, but that’s not the same thing as genetic.
Third, you’re assuming that the timid died before procreating during the Westward Expansion, or that the risk-takers breed more. Again, where’s the evidence for that?
Finally, you’re assuming that natural selection works very quickly. We’ve only been here for about 500 years. Most genetic change, as I understand it, takes more time to make itself manifest.
I think you might be incorrect in your assumption that our ancestors were fully aware of the risks they were taking and felt themselves “up to the challenge.”
There was a lot of erroneous information about the “New World” floating around out there. Many colonists believed they were headed for a land of plenty where gold could be scooped from the streams and food would leap into their hands. A good deal of the early Colonial settlers came ill-prepared without the tools or knowledge necessary to build up a civilization. Quite a few of them were “prospecters” rather than farmers, when farmers where what was desperately needed. They starved in droves.
Later, a lot of the early trail-blazers who wanted to help settle the West deliberately down-played the hardships in order to make the trip seem more appealing and easy. (The Donner Party were famous victims of this.) Many who immigrated west turned back as soon as it became apparent that they weren’t actually going to a Land of Milk and Honey. (In some accounts of wagon trains west, you’ll read of people passing long trains that were headed back east.)
Natural selection works very quickly see latest science http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20061202/bob9ref.asp
The naturally selected traits are generalized over the species population as a whole and individuals reveal it only under special situations.
Ah ha, if the trait is seen in early childhood then it must be genetic based as the behaviour has not yet been modified by the environment. I would like you to reveal in more detail your experience with earliy infanthood as it relates to risk taking.
whether the individual thought themselves as a risk taker is irrelevent they chose to undertake the risk and they survived it, and made their contribution to the gene pool.
a species does not need to be aware of its environment, the natural selection forces, to become adapted to them!
No. A trait seen early in childhood may be genetic, by any combination of genes which may or may not mutate together. It may also be due not to genes at all, but to the in utero environment, as gender and perhaps sexuality appear to be. It can also be due to very, very early socialization (“nurture”). People interact with very young babies before they even think they’re having any effect, but they may be.
Age of exhibition is not a determination of genetics.
Those wagon trains to the “red” west passing Those long trains that headed back to the “blue” east, naturally selected a species division that is still at work today dividing the “red” rurual communities and the “blue” urban concentrations of the population.
I think you’re allowing your politics to color your analysis. The “reddest” part of the United States is the South, which has been settled for far longer than the West. And in any case why would “risk-taking” and “conservative” values line up with each other? Conservatives, by definition, want to keep things the way they are or roll things back to a better, early time. That’s the exact opposite of risk-taking.
The western expansion of the United States only took about 150 years. Frontier settlers first started moving into Kentucky in the mid 1700’s and by the early 1900’s all of the present day United States had been brought under governmental control. That translates (generously) to about seven or eight generations of human beings under whatever selection pressure the frontier might provide. That’s not enough generations to have an effect, even if a “risk-taking gene” existed. And there’s no evidence it does.
I’ll also point out that it’s inaccurate to speak of “those wagon trails to the west passing those long trains headed back to the east”. The heyday of the wagon trains was pre-Civil War. After the transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869 the wagon trains died out as new waves of settlers took the railroad west instead of slogging along the muddy wagon routes.
The consensus of the “mental Hygien” thread on the question of “Is there such a thing as a “cowboy gene”?” is as follows:
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people are predisposed towrd risk taking and their are those that are risk adverse.
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A trait seen early in childhood may be genetic, by any combination of genes which may or may not mutate together. It may also be due not to genes at all, but to the in utero environment, as gender and perhaps sexuality appear to be. It can also be due to very, very early socialization (“nurture”). People interact with very young babies before they even think they’re having any effect, but they may be.
Age of exhibition is not a determination of genetics.
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The best we can conclude is that the colonists came and the westward migration went forward based on beliefs and hopes and maybe not some genetic fluke of nature. Those that survived contributed to the gene pool that is america.
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Those wagon trains having people of differing beliefs went their seperate ways nutruing their offspring in the ways they viewed their world. Some believed it was all a pig in a poke while others belived in “the land of milk and honey”
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Can we all agree that there exists a “Cowboy Credo” and some people have it and some don’t?
What do you mean by “Cowboy Credo”?
Yes, some people are bigger risk-takers than others, but I don’t see what that has to do with being a cowboy. Being a cowboy wasn’t a particularly dangerous occupation in the overall context of the 19th century. It was far safer than being a chimney sweep for example.
Can we postulate that modern urban areas are filled with the decendents of all those thrill-seeking chimney sweeps? Maybe there’s a chimney-sweep gene that predisposes urban dwellers to be more adventurous than their rural counterparts … .
Plenty of people came to the west from further west.
Well, there is the Cowboy Code:
But you can’t understand the Cowboy Code without a Tom Mix Decoder Badge!
I guess I don’t understand what you mean. I’ve read these first-hand accounts myself.
Quite a few settlers in my area (in the late early 1800s) appropriated abandoned cabins and tools which had been cast aside by those who had given up and headed back east.
Also, the railroad didn’t reach every part of the country until much later. Settlers may have been able to travel by rail for part of their journey (if they could afford it) but they might still have to travel by wagon to get to their destination. As you can see here on this map, a settler might have been able to travel from Omaha to, say, Utah, but if they were settling in Idaho Territory, they would have to travel north by wagon.
