Nature.

And one can still have that gene and be seen first, out-run, and out-shot by somebody without those genes but who has practiced those skills. Regardless of the daft fantasies of genetic determinists, training makes a big difference.

And when did they find the “Working at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001” gene?

By this line of reasoing no environmental pressure could ever lead to a change in behaviour, since the same factors apply to almost any genetic change increasing survival.

Of course it’s complex. Of course the inrease in survival probabilty is tiny. This is the point that lay persons fail to grasp time and again.

The first Australopithecine did not spring out of the womb with a complete knowledge of how to utlise tools. That is a complex behavior. While there is evidence of some genetic influence of behaviors that may increase your ability to invent tools, the relationship is sketchy at best and is most likely controlled by a plethora of different genes, as well as environmental factors. While there is genetic influence, many genes are involved, not even counting real world experience. Hence, by your reasoning, since the system is so complex, it is difficult for anything to act as a directed selective force. You cannot select for just one gene but a myriad of interacting genetic factors.

That is all perfectly true. It also did not and does not prevent hominids from having a genetic predisposition for inventiveness.

The same goes for monogamy. Obviously this trait does have a genetic basis and has evolved. The fact that the relationship is sketchy at best and is most likely controlled by a plethora of different genes, as well as environmental factors hasn’t prevented monogamy form evolving numeorus times amongst diverse groups of vertebrates. To suggest that it can’t evolve becase it is complex and affected by an interplay with environmenatl factors can be proven to be completely erroneous simply because we can prove that it did evolve.

1% of population dying of any given cause is more than enough for an effect to be selective. I don’t know what gives you the idea that it would not be.

Errr, yes. And? A bull can be huge with massive horns, and yet can still be beaten by an animal that has had more practice. Do you think that,means that size isn’t a eproductive advantage amongst bulls? I don’t think anyone is suggesting that any survival trait has to be 100% effective.

What I’m saying is that homicide, among other causes, doesn’t even come close to killing 1% of the population. Homicide is closer to .01%. Like I said, excluding disease, we don’t have any strong selective forces anymore. We don’t have predators and virtually everyone lives to child bearing age.

The evolution of complex behaviors in humans is not so much biological as it is social. Tool use is not genetically hard wired in. It has to be taught to each generation a new. Monagamy may have a genetic basis as it is clearly advantageous, especially for the female. However, in humans as compared to other animals, I think this instinct is much less influential. Humans just don’t work off of genetic instinct as much as other animals because of our intellect.

We don’t have a need anymore for the “run faster” gene or the “punch harder” gene. These traits no longer confer a reproductive advantage because survival is virtually assured and is rarely dependent on physical advantage.

And as I said earlier, it does.

By ‘we’ I assume you mean ‘westernised people’?

Even then it’s not true. Religion is strong selective force for fecundity for example.

Well that will astound all those anthropologists and evolutionary biologists who have published numerous papers and books showing exactly the opposite: human creativity and tool improvisation is genetic.

Do you have any evidence at all to support this viewpoint? Obviously a human who has never seen a computer will need to be taught to use that particular tool, But all the evidence says that tool use is very much genetically hardwired in people.

It is of course equally advantageous for both sexes, else it would not have evolved.

Which I won’t argue with. But it in no way supports your assertion that it is somehow incredibly difficult to genetically program I new behavioural traits in people.

Again I assume that you are casually ignoring 80%+ of the world’s population.

Allowing that, Mike Tyson would argue with what you have said, as would Michael Jordan. These two people did get a reproductive advantage out of exactly that type of genetic advantage.

Even if we choose to ignore that, what exactly is your point here? It doesn’t seem to in any way support your contentions that behavioural changes can’t be genetically driven in humans. Nor does it appear to support your position that a 1% death rate (or even a .01%.rate) is to small to have any evolutionary effect.

I can’t let the proposition stand that humans have evolved to be monogomous. There is no evidence that this is true. In fact, all evidence out there suggest we have evolved to be at least mildly polygamous. Monogomy is culturally transmitted, not genetic.

There is huge maounts of evidence that it is true. Tetsicle sizes. The emotional reactions of humans to their partners. Perhaps most convincing of all, the fact tht all societies practiced some form of monogamy and no people anywhere are polygamous ( as opposed to establishing harems).

It would be more honest to say that we have no evidence that humans are not monogamous.

Yes of course we have evolved to cheat a little. We have also evolved to clim trees a little. That shouldn’t mean that I have to define every last little detail when I say that humans are terrestrial as opposed to arboreal.

No animal, AFAIK, is monogamous if you mean they never, ever cheat.

The idea that monogamy is cultural seems to be in defiance of the fact that all culture are mongamous, not to mention the biological and psychologicl factors.

I’m still waiting to see evidence for the “Working at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001” gene.

One thing that genetic determinists always like to pretend doesn’t exist is that reality is far more stochastic than their simple-minded models would have us believe. Two genetically identical trees are in a field. One is struck by lightning and killed. The other thrives and reproduces. How was one genetically identical tree genetically superior to the other?

Since the ratio of men to women is roughly 50/50, many men in polygamous societies aren’t going to get more than one wife. And how is a harem not a form of polygamy? The sexual dimorphism of our species is the biggest clue that we are not genetically monogomous.

Surely you are joking when you say no people anywhere are polygamous. Ever been to Utah? Seriously, though, you needn’t travel any further than the US (back in time about 300 yrs) when most Native American tribes practiced polygamy.

Homicide simply does not account for the death of 1% of the population.

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/hmrt.htm

http://www3.who.int/whosis/mort/table1.cfm?path=whosis,whsa,mort_table1&language=english

The second link is a WHO site. If you can find me a country where homicide kills even 0.1% of the population for that year, I’ll back down. Most are closer to 0.01% or lower. Some countries don’t have full demographic data but homicide rarely accounts for even 10% of the total deaths. If anything, we should be evolving to combat heart disease. Granted, homicide may have a larger selection effect than heart disease because it can happen before reproductive age. Furthermore, homicide is far from genetically specific. Especially with guns today. Any fool can shoot you in the head. How strong or fast or smart I am makes little difference when faced with a firearm. No one is fast enough to dodge bullets.

Here’s another site that I found interesting:

Like I said, aside from disease, there are no strong selecting factors. The article mentions the Western world having very little selection.

However, even for third world countries it only mentions HIV, which has not been debated here.

I’m not sure what a ‘genetic determinist’ is so I don’t know how qualified I am to answer your question about what they believe. I am a biologist, so I can give you the factual answer to your question.

The answer to your question is: it isn’t superior. Both had the same genetic material. You answered this yourself.

Had one been genetically shorter, or germinated form a seed that would only germinate in the shadow of other trees or similar then it would be superior in this situation since it would have had less chance if being killed.

The problem is that you are working from the flawed assumption that humans evolved in an environment similar to the USA 2003. For most of human history reproductive males dies at a far higher rate than reproductive females. Male activities, particularly hunting, defence and warfare are inherently more dangerous. The result is that for mos of human history reproductive females significantly outnumbered reproductive males.

Sloppy articulation on my part. We are discussing promiscuity/monogamy. In this context I consider a stable harem structure to be non-promiscuous. I prefer to use the term monogamous because it’s less cumbersome, and I have been using it in that context. If you find this confusing (and it obviously I) then substitute ‘non=promiscuous’ for ‘monogamous’. And ‘promiscuous’ for ‘polygamous’.

Not particularly. The most extreme examples of sexual dimorphism is seen amongst animals that are monogamous, but where the male and female utilise slightly different biological niches or fulfil different roles. Amongst those animals that are polygamous dimorphism is as often related to gender role as it is to male combativeness. This is precisely the situation we have in humans and our degree of dimorphism correlates pretty well onto the distinct gender roles necessary to raise a human child to independence.

Did you read where I said “no people anywhere are polygamous ( as opposed to establishing harems)” Are you saying that some Mormon group practices genuine promiscuous polygamy, as opposed to establishing harems? Can you provide a refernce? I’d also like to see a reference for this promiscuous Indian tribe.

Tyler those references in no way support that assertion. You did understand the sentence “1 in 100 people will die as a direct result of homicide, whether in wartime or more obviously criminal” didn’t you? If not I can explain it more carefully (though I’m not sure how). Your references don’t even mention deaths from war. Didn’t the fact that the US homicide rate took a massive dip in 42-45 tip you off that wars weren’t included in that figure?

Speculation. Do you have data on the male/female ratio of even 400 yrs ago, much less 40,000? Don’t forget the increased death rate due simply to childbirth for women as a counterbalance to the increased mortality rate of males.

You completely lost me there. Sounds like you are defining a harem as being monogamous (non-promiscuous = monogamous). In a human context, I would define polygamy as males having more than one social sanctioned mating partners (to distinguish between polygamy and promiscuity, the latter being unsanctioned mating partners). Monogamy appears to be a modern and, more narrowly western, invention. I’d be hard pressed to think of a pre-farming or non-western society that did not include multiple wives for higher status males. It’s the lower status males that had to make do with only one wife.

Blake I apologize. I did not understand that you were including war in that figure. A misread on my part. Having just looked up the statistics, I see that about 1% (give or take) of the worlds population did die in WWII.

However, that still does not support your assertion. War is not genetically selective. Everybody dies in war. Like Dogface said, there is no “Being at Hiroshima” gene. War cuts a broad swath, selecting for no particular genes or traits.

Modern industrial warfare tends to kill those people who belong to cultures that value scientific technological development. It is possible that genes (or memes) that do not value this would be highly selected for in a massive world war in this ear. Since we’re so homogenous genetically, the meme scenario is much more likely.

Oops. “ear” should’ve been “era”. Dyslexic fingers.

40, 000 is stretching it a bit. For that we have to extrapolate form extant stone age and similar cultures.
“Furthermore, in primitive societies females were married at puberty, whereas most males married in their late twenties or even thirties. This helped a great deal to offset the sex imbalance. In addition, males were victims of hunting accidents (and boys have always been and continue to be more prone to accidental death in risky games than girls), though this may have been offset by female death in birth-giving. Finally, however, there was also open conflict: male death in feuding and warfare. The correlation of male violent death and women’s scarcity has been first pointed out by Warner in his study of the north Australian Murngin (1930-1, 1937), and later independently re-discovered and greatly elaborated by Divale and Harris (1976). During a period of 20 years, Warner (1937: 157-8) estimated death rate for the Murngin was 200 men out of a total population of 3000 of both sexes, of whom approximately 700 were adult males. This amounts to a range of 30 percent of the adult males. Violent mortality among the women and children is not mentioned. Pilling’s estimate of at least 10 percent killed among the Tiwi adult males in one decade comes within the same range (1968: 158). The Plains Indians showed a deficit of 50 percent for the adult males in the Blackfoot tribe in 1805 and 33 percent deficit in 1858, while during the reservation period the sex ratio rapidly approached 50-50 (Livingstone 1967: 9). Among the Eskimo of the central Canadian arctic, who lacked group warfare, violent death, in so-called ‘blood feuds’ and ‘homicide’, was estimated by one authority at one person per thousand per year, 10 times the 1990 USA rate (Symons 1979: 145; Knauft 1987: 458; Briggs 1994: 156) The !Kung of the Kalahari Desert are popularly known as the ‘harmless people’. Richard Lee who contributed to the creation of this impression, nevertheless reports (1979: 398; 1982: 44 )
that in his study area in the period 1963-1969, there were 22 cases of homicide; 19 of the victims were males, as were all of the 25 killers. This amounts to a rate of 0.29 person per thousand per year, and had been 0.42 before the coming of firm state authority.

The somewhat better data which exist for primitive agriculturalists basically tell the same story as those for the hunter-gatherers. Among the Yanomamo about 15 percent of the adults died as a result of inter- and intra-group violence: 24 percent of the males and 7 percent of the females (Dickemann 1979: 364). The Waorani (Auca) of the Ecuadorian Amazon hold the registered world record: more than 60% percent of adult deaths over five generations were caused by feuding and warfare (Yost 1981; Robarchek and Robarchek 1992). In Highland New Guinea independent estimates are again very similar: among the Dani, 28.5 percent of the men and 2.4 percent of the women have been reckoned to have died violently (Heider 1970: 128); among the Enga, 34.8 percent of the adult males have been estimated to have met the same fate (Meggitt 1977: 13-14, 110); among the Goilala, whose total population was barely over 150, there were 29 (predominantly men) killed during a period of 35 years (Hallpike 1977: 54, 202); among the Lowland Gebusi, 35.2 percent of the adult males and 29.3 of the adult females fell victim to homicide; the high rate for the females may be explained by the fact that killing was mainly related to failure to reciprocate in sister exchange marriage (Knauft 1987: 462-3, 470, 477-8). Archaeology unearths similar finds.

In the Neolithic site of Madisonville, Ohio, 22 percent of the adult male skulls had wounds and 8 percent were fractured (Livingstone 1967: 9).”

www.cals.ncsu.edu/academic/honors/ als398spr00/HumanInfertility.htm
“The problem of the unbalanced sex ratios becomes truly problematic at times of war. Native American Indian tribes used to suffer highly unbalanced sex ratios after wartime losses”

http://www.sas.upenn.edu/African_Studies/Articles_Gen/Role_Women.html
“Nubians have a largely agricultural society. This fact, coupled with the largely disproportionate number of women to men, has led to the continuation of the matrilineal society”

From about 1500 years ago we have really good records form censuses etc, and they mostly show a heavy skew towards reproductive females. The ones that don’t are invariably open to debate.

https://ats.tamu.edu/books/Cultural%20Anthropology/rtf/ch_08.rtf
“In societies practicing wealth-generating polygyny, most men and women do enter into polygynous marriages, although some are able to do so earlier in life than others. This is made possible by a female-biased sex ratio and/or a mean age at marriage for females significantly below that for males.”

www.cals.ncsu.edu/academic/honors/ als398spr00/HumanInfertility.htm
“After the second world war, there were 7,300,000 more women than men in Germany (3.3 million of them were widows). There were 100 men aged 20 to 30 for every 167 women in that age group “

There are plenty of other sources out there if you can be bothered to look for them.

I don’t think that 10% of women ever died in childbirth, which is what is required.

There are factors that help to level out the numbers, but I have never seen a pre-Roman society without a sex ratio skewed to females. If you have evidence of such then by all means present them.

I suppose I am inadvertently. I already explained this. There is little to be gained form continuing to argue this point when I have already pointed out that it can be easily reconciled by substituting one word. I will repeat: you find this confusing (and it obviously I) then substitute ‘non=promiscuous’ for ‘monogamous’. And ‘promiscuous’ for ‘polygamous’.

What exactly do you mean everybody dies at war? That’s just nonsense. Of course people survive war. The vast majority of people survive war.

Again, this is clearly nonsense. A small man will have an advantage when it comes to fighting in tunnels as seen in Viet Nam. A fast man will have an advantage when advancing even open ground. A man with good night vision has an advantage at night. A man with good co-ordination has an advantage in a dogfight. To suggest that these things aren’t selected for is just plain silly.

You seem to be making the same mistake I already addressed earlier. Of course it’s complex. Of course the increase in survival probability is tiny. This is the point that lay persons fail to grasp time and again. Evolutionary changes hinge upon these advantages. I really can’t explain it any better. If you have a problem with this fact (yes it’s a fact) then you will need to tell me exactly what it is so I can elaborate. Simply making obviously erroneous statements that everyone who goes to war die is getting us nowhere.

I would call that speculative at best.

You would be hard pressed to find a people today who don’t value those things. Perhaps some of the hill tribes of Viet Nam/Cambodia or the native farmers of Colombia or the pygmies of the Congo. The monks of Tibet definitely qualify. The trouble is all those people have suffered worse in the wars in their areas than anyone else.

The Amish certainly qualify, but I don’t think they would last long if their towns were occupied by an invading force.

If you mean people who don’t have access to the trappings of scientific technological development you have a bigger sample. These people still value scientific technological development, they just don’t got it.

So then we look at what happened to the people of Poland, Russia, Nanking and so forth who didn’t have the trappings of scientific technological development when they last world war started. They were selected against, not for.
Can you name any specific groups that don’t ‘value scientific technological development’ who have been advantaged by this in war?
Can you name any groups that don’t have the trappings of scientific technological development who have been advantaged by this in war?

I’m not saying you’re wrong, I just can’t understand why you think this is correct.

Blake, I do conceed your point. Where I need clarification is exactly how selective these microadvantages are and how much they affect the population at large.

On that note, what do you think are the major selective pressures facing mankind today? Where do you see us ending up?

Of course no one can say because we don’t have a control. It might be best looked at by seeing the ridiculously small pressures that have prompted evolution in other species.

There are several species of Passion-vines that develop round, light green nodules on the base of the leaf blade. Why? Because they look like moth eggs, and the moth species they mimic is less inclined to lay near other moths eggs.

There is no evidence that this moth has ever or could ever kill a vine. It just defoliates it and sets it back. Moreover the ruse only reduces the moth’s tendency to lay there, it doesn’t stop it.

So here we see an evolutionary change wrought by somewhat reducing a pressure that never killed any individuals. Nature is full of these sorts of things.

Then we have a situation in human where one effects like homicide kills 1% of all individuals and severely reduces the fitness of 10 times that number. Granted it’s more disperse than moth predation, but it’s also more concrete.

How selective it is we don’t know. Perhaps the best way to look at it is to ask “what would happen if a man evolved who could never die in war?”. Within 20 years that man would outnumber his competitors by 1%, within 40 years by 2% and so on until within a mere 2000 years this man would have fathered all the men on Earth. Had he been born alongside Jesus Christ he would now rule the planet.

Obviously this is horribly simplistic, but it shows how strong a ‘microadvantage’ can potentially be. We can’t say how strong they are until we have some idea of what traits might evolve, and we can’t do that because mutations are more or less random.

Again, I assume you mean in the western world. In the third world disease and starvation are still the biggest killers.

I seriously believe they are memetic in origin. It’s full blown capitalism versus quasi-socialism/environmentalism versus communism vs totalitarianism. It’s religion vs. science vs a hybrid. That is what will determine which group lives and which group dies. It only comes to the crunch every 50 years or so, but when it does it takes a big swipe out of human populations.

On a more physical theme we need to look at what causes discrepancies in fecundity, and that seems to be very strongly linked to education/intelligence. As it stands there is a strong correlation between IQ and fecundity. We are effectively selecting for a lack of a specific type of intelligence, and for a specific type of ambition/social formation.

Granted these things are very complex, but if there is any genetic component to these traits then that is what we are selecting for.

Of course I don’t believe this will continue long enough to be of any concern given the absence of any well defined populations.

No idea. Making predictions is a good way to prove oneself wrong. The social and physical systems we have now are radically different for the ones we had in 1953. So the ones we have by the time my kids are retired will be radically different to what we have now.

Blake:

Regarding the male/female sex ratio: I don’t even know why we’re debating that since the original issue was that you claimed humans are genetically monogomous and I claim the evidence points to us being genetically predisposed toward mild polygamy. The sex ratio is irrelevent. Why not look at the data from hunter gather tribes as to weather polygamy is practiced or not? You’ll find that the norm is not monogomy. I’ll repeat. Monogomy is a western cultural artifact. It’s wasn’t even practiced in non-western farming/industrial societies until the modern era.

As for war killing off technicallly oriented societies, if you actually read my post, you would have seen that I said “it is possible” not “it is a fact”. Of course it’s speculation. And I was actually defending the position that you took earlier that war could have a selective effect on humans by giving a possible example. If you want to change your position, then go ahead and do so.