Women are weaker. . .

Factual Questions
41

Oh! So I should be beating the hell out of smaller guys I see who are dating women I am attracted to? That would make the whole thing a lot easier.

And there’s also no reason to think that any of them were women, either. There is just no way to know how many women took part in hunting in primitive societies. And given the number of ingrained social/religious taboos against female involvement in such things still prevalent in MANY primitive societies, I’m willing to bet female involvement was low to non-existent.
On a more realistic note, I think any woman who would claim that women could run down and kill a large, dangerous animal as well as a man could has been reading too much Andrea Dworkin. If women were/are as physically adept as men, why are the Olympics segregated by gender?

My .02 is that women are biologically wired to be attracted to power. In primitive societies power was also primitive- it was brute force and strength. This brute force and strength translated into a greater ability to provide for a mate. (So in a sense I am agreeing with cher3, I just think the whole thing is a little more complicated now.) Nowadays, power is represented by things like celebrity, fame, and money. Every pro athlete I have seen came complete with a gorgeous wife. A lot of rich guys also get “trophy” wives. I think that’s a rather demeaning term, but let’s face it: how many gorgeous women marry poor, ugly guys?

42

In modern hunter-gatherer societies, women provide most of the food. If you could work out some way a primitive tribe could continue to exist without males, it would probably be more efficient than a mixed group because females could both provide more food and live on less - 500 calories a day is a LOT, even a 5% advantage in feeding yourself is enough to provide a group a large advantage over a few generations.

Look at lions - the females provide most of the food, yet the males are still bigger. I believe the reason human males are bigger than females is the same - intra-species competition. As pointed out above, being a big guy does not help much at all in the style of hunting primitive humans are good at - in earlier stages, chasing faster prey until they either get tired or get trapped by some natural hazard then swarming it, and in later stages stalking and killing prey with missile weapons. In both hunting styles, being smaller would be an advantage.

When humans fight humans, it’s different. For one thing we can intimidate each other, which is unlikely to be applicable to animals - I doubt a wolf or auroch is more scared of a 250 pound man than a 100 pound man. Since most animals fight within their species have a surrender instinct to keep fights less lethal (rolling over and exposing your throat for wolves, curling up on the ground and crying for humans) and often fights end as soon as it is apparent one side has the advantage because of this, size WOULD be an advantage here. Since humans fight a lot for mating rights (still do) this would lead to larger males over time, especially when females started getting smart enough to realize she could form a partnership with a male trading sex and gathered food for protection and the occasional high-protein hunted food.

I also think that rape has something to do with it. When you see how common rape was in historical cultures, it seems likely it was even more commonplace before we had laws and law enforcement attempting to prevent it. A large and strong human has a far better chance of being able to impregnate a female against her will than one the same size as her. Even if 95% of pregnancies were due to consensual sex between primitive humans, that 5% that weren’t would be statistically significant over multiple generations - a 200 pound male that for some reason can’t persuade a female to mate with him is more likely to leave progeny than a 100 pound male that can’t get lucky.

43

** Lizard**
Of course I’m a only basing my assumption on what we know of modern human hunter-gatherer societies. At some stage we must have passed into a predator/prey relationship that is similar to what we have now. I’m willing to bet it wouldn’t take a smart animal like a mastodon very long to figure out that these new critters are dangerous. Added to this of course that in the case of animals with existing natural predators it would happen even faster. The efficiency of hunting large animals is one of the main reasons why I assumed primitive humans were so affected by the need to engage in the activity… As for primitive humans hunting in groups, I really have no idea either way. Is base my opinion on the methods of hunting large animals used by hunter/gatherers today. Probably in the past some human ancestor hunted in packs as baboons do today, but its also equally probable that at some stage they developed the tools to make this unnecessary and developed ‘modern’ hunting patterns. Whether this was before or after the modern male and female forms emerged I wouldn’t even like to speculate.
Your estimates on food yield appear to me to suggest that primitive humans wouldn’t have hunted mastodons except out of desperation or for social reasons. I assume any society without effective weapons would not have had any food preservation technology. Most hunter/gatherer societies today don’t. If this is the case then I see no reason to risk seven tribesmen and leave the village unguarded to kill a 2 ton mastodon that is going to rot in 7 days tops, when 4 hunters could kill 2 deer that will provide enough food for the tribe for the same week.

What I’m not so sure about is the statement that women are genetically attracted to power. I mean I agree they are, but saying that any organism is attracted to anything in a mate simply confirms that that at some stage it must have had an evolutionary advantage. Otherwise the women who were attracted to that trait would have had less fit mates, less fit young and died out. The attraction thing is the end result of something having a reproductive advantage, not the cause.

Peace
Sorry mate I still don’t understand. To clarify a few points
.

  1. Any animal has an advantage in having less muscle, unless the lack of muscle itself proves a hindrance. The logic behind this is that all muscle chews energy all the time, working or not. In times of low food the more muscle you have the faster you starve (Yeah I know there are SA/Vol. Factors in here, but the generalisation is true). So if human females have no use for muscle that provides an evolutionary advantage it will eventually be lost.

  2. Males have an obvious advantage by being larger. Get a 50kg man to hit you and a 120kg one. Who inflicts the most damage? This equally applies whether fighting mastodons or men. Bigger men have more inertia and a higher potential hitting power. Hand to hand weapons mediate this a little, but not much, and even then a larger man will have a linger reach and the fighting advantage. This is why boxing is divided into weight classes. Within limits a taller man will also run faster and has other leverage advantages over small men.

  3. I’ll grant we have no idea what the sexual dimorphism of the ancestral ape was. Still since most primates have larger males than females I’ll assume it was present.

  4. Is sexual dimorphism more pronounced in gathering apes than in humans. I know silverbacks are considerably bigger than female gorilla, male chimps are larger though I’m not sure by how much. I don’t know the relative sizes of males and females for any ape, including human, but aside from gorilla I’d have to take your word.

  5. What leads you to know the hunting hypothesis doesn’t hold water?

  6. The differences obviously give advantages to the species or it would have died out. I think that was another general assumption of the thread. What we are discussing seems to be what the advantages might be.

  7. Early chordates had no extremities, let alone six. Many of the later vertebrates had huge numbers of extremities, more than 10. Finally six and four were settled on, and the four finned fishes led the invasion onto land. Had the coelacanth or mudskipper led the charge we probably would have six limbs.

  8. I wouldn’t argue too much about insects as a class being more successful than either mammals as a class or humans as a species. In fact the obvious advantages of a cetauroid life form is one of my favourite arguments in rebutting the creationist assumption that man was created perfect.

  9. I hope I’ve given an explanation. I can elaborate more on the origin of tetrapods if you want to open another thread, but we’ve hijacked this one too much already.

  10. Why is the moon there? Gravity, angular momentum, the condensation of gases in the early solar system. All fairly widely accepted. The question you appear to be asking is ‘Is there a purpose to the moon?’ Since this isn’t a creationist thread, and is in GQ rather than Great Debates the question is inappropriate.
    Badtz maru
    Good thinking on the rape thing. I’ll buy that.
    I don’t know about whether an animal is more frightened by a large human, but I know from experience that a large human can throw a javelin, hammer or rock faster and further than a small man. He could thus inspire fear in an animal easier, and would also be a more successful hunter for the same reason.

44

I understand that it’s easier to kill a mammonth if you are bigger. But why did the evolution stopped where it stopped? Why aren’t men bigger? And why banana eating gorilla is bigger than me? And what would have happenned if men and women were egual? Or if women were larger? Or if we had 3 or 5 fingers? Or why do men have beards? Or why do we all have armpit and pubic hair? Isn’t looking for purpose behind every feature in nature makes you look like creationists? And you did not explain to me about the Moon. You explained how it formed. But it is uniquely ours. No moons around our closest neighbors. Others have many. Can you answer the question: "Why there is one moon here and 13 moons at Jupiter? It was twelve when I was yonger; do not tell me that there was enough interplanetary gase for only 13. There could be 11, of slightly larger sise. Do you also know why there are 5 Great lakes? I mean, not 4 or 6? I know about tectonic plates, Glacial periods, etc.
My questions are rhetorical. By asking them I am saying that there is no specific purpose behind everything. The polar bear has fur because it helps him to survive. Why does tropical monkey have it? Some traits are irrelevant for survival, like your beard. Some men shave twice a day, others twice a year. And they all survive. Humans survive as they are. I’m sure that they woold without the sexual dimorghism or with reversed sexual dimorphism, whatever their diet is. If one day they developped gills and the Earth was flooded, they would have had gills, because they had needed them. But the sexual dimorphism is irrelevant, it is here for no particular reason.

45

How can we possibly know how smart mastodons were?

**

Eh, I was trying to prove the exact opposite. And what is an “effective” weapon, anyway? A bone spear or a club can kill someone just as dead as a guided missile.

**

Point taken…sort of. There are so many variables that it’s hard to say for sure now. Like, how big is the village? How many threats does it need to be guarded from? How easy would it be to kill deer vs. mastodons, etc? I agree that a more advanced tool like the bow and arrow would make killing a soft-skinned animal like a deer more feasible than risking life and limb killing a mastodon. But I wrote my last post assuming we were talking about societies too primitive to have suce a relatively advanced weapon. I still say expending the energy to kill one large animal makes more sense economically than killing a bunch of little ones.

**

If a big, strong man is a better provider for a woman than a weaker one, he will also be a better provider for his and her children. Thus, his children will be more likely to survive. THAT is the evolutionary advantage that women are unconsciously recognizing when they cleave to such men. If you want to take it even farther, a powerful man’s children are more likely to also be powerful, and able to protect and provide for their parents better in the parents’ old age.
With the definition of “power” having changed a bit over the millenia to be more of a financial measure, now the advantages of marrying a “powerful/wealthy” man would be that the children would have a higher place in society. They would have a better chance of going to college, etc. This really isn’t that subtle. Any parent will tell you they want the best for their children, and they will do what it takes to get it. Women know that the quickest way to move up in the world is to marry a rich man-that’s why so many women list “rich” as a desirable quality in a man, but men rarely care how much money a woman has unless she is significantly more wealthy than he.

46

Four limbs is fantastic for a hunter/gatherer. Because of our bi-pedal locomotion we can cover a heck of a lot of distance without getting tired. We can’t outrun a cheetah, a horse, or a man eating cow but we can sure outdistance them.

Marc

47

Hunting big game also yielded good things beyond a decent meal. Animal hides, bones, and tendons were shaped into clothing, various tools, and even shelter. I bet’cha that bringing home the bacon was pretty darn important.

Marc

48

Peace
Why did it stop where it did, why aren’t men bigger and what would happen if men and women were equal are some of the questions we’re trying to address here.

As for the other questions I am quite prepared to respond each and every one of them with rational answers, but please open a new thread and give me a link to it. We don’t want to hijack this one.
Looking for purpose behind every feature in nature is indeed what some creationists do. Scientists on the other hand strive to find reasons behind every feature in nature. As I suggested in my last post you seem to have reason and purpose confused. Any good dictionary will explain the difference, but basically reason means a cause that can be explained by reasoned thought rather than faith or hearsay. Purpose implies a directed will, and thus the presence of intelligence. The two are very different. Most scientists accept that there must be a reason for everything in the universe being as it is (well if we ignore those quantum thingists), but few would say there is a purpose. Everyone here seems to be seeking reasons, not purpose.
Can I answer why there is one moon here and thirteen at Jupiter? I can’t, but I’m sure any competent astrophysicist or even astronomer could. I think there’s been a thread on this somewhere, or you could just post it to GQ. Either way it has no relevance I can see to the OP. The same goes for the rest of your questions. I’m a biologist, not a physicist or geologist and even if I were this is not the correct thread. Post them on another thread in GQ and I’ll guarantee you get numerous good answers, and linked sites if you request them, explaining the reasons for all these phenomena. But:- THIS IS NOT THE THREAD.
If you are certain that humans would survive without sexual dimorphism then please explain the causes of your certainty to the teeming millions. But please stay on topic and explain the rational behind comments like ‘sexual dimorphism….is here for no reason’.

[lizard]
OK, so I’m extrapolating mastodon intelligence from extant proboscidea. I should have made that clear. But do you feel it’s a reasonable assumption?
I know you were trying to prove exactly the opposite with your food yield figure. The point I was trying to make was that food yield does not necessarily equal useable supply.
As for what constitutes an effective weapon, that’s subjective. You yourself had said that we’re talking about a society too primitive to produce a relatively advanced weapon. I’m talking about the same type of weapon (read: I’m not real clear what I’m talking about). Simply following through on the original statement that before people had weapons they would have been forced to hunt in groups. Rather tangential anyway, since I simply meant that any society incapable of trapping large prey in such a way that a couple of skilled men could kill or producing weapons capable of doing so is unlikely to have food storage technology. As I said only an assumption based on modern hunter/gatherers. And I admit there are a lot of variables. Considering the largest hunter/gatherer tribes I know of only consist of 10 individuals then I assume very small family groups. (I acknowledge that sometimes family groups come together, but that wouldn’t really affect the killing of large game, since if they stayed together all the time there would be other problems) Another extrapolation. Is there any evidence on the tribe size of early humans?
How easy is it to kill a deer vs. a mastodon. Well one man can easily kill a deer with a spear or bow. If it takes only one man to kill a mastodon then there is no advantage to hunting anything in groups and my original statement stands. If it takes more than one man than it is harder. How many threats does it need to be guarded from? Again I don’t know, but if men are bringing down mastodon then they could probably bluff any potential scavengers. I don’t think ,most scavengers are actually prepared to be injured to steal a kill. (see another assumption)Since we’re talking Homo sapiens here they should also have had the use of fire shouldn’t they?
I agree still agree that killing large prey is more economical, I’m sceptical about whether this would balance against loss of life.

**
I agree with you 100%, but I thought the subject of whether men were big because it enabled them to better provide for women and their young, or whether it was for some other reason was exactly what the OP was asking. peace at least seems to think that there are other reasons, or in fact no reasons.

49

Oh! So I should be beating the hell out of smaller guys I see who are dating women I am attracted to? That would make the whole thing a lot easier. **
[/quote]

Apologies in advance if I’m taking seriously something you meant jokingly. (I just went through a whole lot of pain in another thread because people couldn’t see the irony in my original post).

Whether you “should” beat up smaller guys is a social and ethical question, not a biological one. A question whose answer is pretty clearly “no.”

Men who are not restrained by social and ethical considerations and just do what nature tells them to (I believe the technical name for such males is “assholes”) will indeed beat up smaller men who are dating, or even just eying, women they are attracted to. A bigger male will arguably be more successful at this.

This assertion falls afoul of the fact that certain modern African tribes do hunt elephants. (I don’t know if they do it in groups or individually). I think poison is the principal weapon. If elephants, why not mastodons?

Plains Indians also hunted very big game, the bison, in groups. I think their oral histories suggest they did this even before they got the horse four or five hundred years ago, probably using fire, and prehistoric remains of bison at the bottoms of cliffs suggest that Plains cultures have done this for thousands of years. One presumes that much meat was wasted, but that the humans would rather waste meat than not have enough.

I would still question whether this big-game hunting accounts for sexual dimorphism, when it seems likely that dimorphism extends back to our ancestor species who didn’t necessarily hunt big game themselves.

50

Gaspode, your critique about “reason” vs. “purpose” is gladly accepted. Tx. I’ll try to be more careful with words.
“Justification” was used in the OP. To me, it implies more that mere reason. It implies that a solid ground should be behind it. An example: “One eye would provide a good vision and a so-so orientation ability. Two eyes provide good both. Three eyes would be a waste of space and resources. That’s why nature decided on two eyes.” Nothing of the sort here. For two days you are discussing very weak hunting and child nurturing points. Nobody could convincingly (or at all) show why the sexual eguality or the reversal would be detrimental to the humans.
What I am saying, that there is no clear cut REASON and definitely no PURPOSE for minimal eye-catching sexual dimorphism. It is like asking a person, applying to college: “What is your height? (or even 'what’s your sex?”). Interesting, but totally unrelated.
Sexual dimorphism is of utmost importance to garment industry. It could be and should be to the government (which should provide, perhaps, better conditions for child nurturing women and/or help bulky but barren men to help weaker women). But the asked questionIs there a biological justification as to why females are weaker in sheer strength than males?
requires a short NO. The is no biological justification in the presense of XYZ species on this planet, including man, and no biological “justification” in "why females are weaker [not alwayas].

51

OK. First of all, our primate ancestors were not primarily hunters. Our hunter-gatherer contemporaries are usually not primarily hunters. Our species is not, and has never been, primarily a hunting species. And besides, why would only males hunt? In every other carnivorous mammal species, the females hunt just as much as the males, in fact more because they must feed their babies as well as themselves. It makes no sense.

So, male hunting fails as an explanation. Even if we DID hunt all the time, it would fail because just about every mammal species there is has larger males than females, and the ones that don’t have larger males have equal size males and females.

So, the question is not “why are human males larger than human females”, the question is “Why are male mammals larger than female mammals”.

And the answer to that is clearly found in the mammalian reproductive system. It requires a lot of resources months of time for females to produce offspring. It requires about 10 seconds and a few drops of protein for males to produce offspring. So, it is possible for one male to mate with many females at once, but a female can generally only mate with one male at a time…or more precisely, it doesn’t matter how many males she mates with, she will have the same number of offspring.

So therefore, males will attempt to mate with as many females as possible, while females have no such advantage. Now, we can see that if males attempt to mate with many females, there will be a shortage of females to mate with. So, the males will struggle amongst themselves in various ways. One of those ways will be physical. And once we have physical competition, then we have intimidation…males will evolve structures to intimidate other males. So, since males are struggling, the largest and strongest males will tend to have the most mating opportunities, and hence the most offspring…and hence the next generation of male offspring will be larger.

But I hear some of you asking, don’t males have to contribute resources to the offspring too? Well, not usually. In almost all mammal species the males contribute exactly nothing to parental care. And guess what? In species where the males DO contribute to parental care they tend to be about the same size as the females. Since both contribute to the offspring, both must invest equal resources…and so there is no advantage for the males to mate with multiple females.

Species that do not have a mammalian reproductive system generally do not have larger males. Many birds have larger females than males. And in those cases, generally the females lay eggs in the nest of a male, and leave him to raise the chicks. So, the FEMALES must compete for scarce males.

So, why aren’t there more mammal species where the males take care of the offspring? Because of internal gestation. Once an egg is laid, either parent can be left with it, or perhaps it can be left behind by both. But a mammal embryo is left implanted inside the female. It is much much easier for a male to walk away from the embryo than for the female. So, male mammals have generally stuck the female mammals with parental care, because they can. The female could leave the babies with the father, but usually he is long gone by the time the babies are born.

Summation: Mammal males are larger than mammal females because mammal males must compete for the chance to reproduce.

But generally, if the males fight each other for females, the males are larger.

52

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by peace *
Peace I accept that its easy to find different implications behind these things, but a good dictionary (and there are several available on-line) would do a lot to prevent the unnecessary hijacking of other posts and save bandwidth. Of course if I could keep my answers short and concise it would do the same thing so I shouldn’t criticise too much.
Justify (v). Show or prove to be right or reasonable. DERIVATIVES justification (n). (New Oxford Dictionary of English)
I think no implication of anything other than reason was intended. As for how solid the basis of our speculation is. Most of us have made it clear we are speculating.
Again you make assertions like ‘there is no clear cut reason for and definitely no purpose for … dimorphism’. No mention of ‘I think’ or ‘I believe’. If you have sufficient evidence to know this beyond reasonable doubt then by all means present it. I’d love to see it, particularly the bit that proves there is definitely no purpose and hence presumably proves the non-existence of God. Otherwise this is unnecessarily confrontational, since what you say is in direct contradiction to the beliefs of several other posters. The same goes for "requires a short NO. The is no biological justification in the presence of XYZ species on this planet, including man, and no biological “justification” in “why females are weaker”.
Everyone else here has presented speculation, based on at least some fact, that the answer is ‘YES’, though we disagree on what the reasons might be. If you have any reasoned thought as to why the opposite is true then please present it. I for one would be interested to hear it. But if you keep making assertions like those above without prefacing them with statements making it clear that they are philosophical belief someone is going to call you (like I’m going to right now). If you continually refuse to respond then it must be assumed that any time you make a statement it is unsupported opinion and hardly worthy of credit. I covered all this in our friendly discussion over at GD. Go check it out. I don’t want to cross swords again here.
Can you provide references for the above statements, or at the very least reasoned argument?

53

Danimal
This assertion falls afoul of the fact that certain modern African tribes do hunt elephants. (I don’t know if they do it in groups or individually). I think poison is the principal weapon. If elephants, why not mastodons?
Plains Indians also hunted very big game, the bison, in groups. I think their oral histories suggest they did this even before they got the horse four or five hundred years ago, probably using fire, and prehistoric remains of bison at the bottoms of cliffs suggest that Plains cultures have done this for thousands of years. One presumes that much meat was wasted, but that the humans would rather waste meat than not have enough
Granted! However but in both the examples cited the hunting techniques tend to imply very limited risk to the hunters. I agree wholeheartedly that if a person could obtain more meat with the same risk he would do so. My statements were intended only for situations where there was inherently more risk in hunting large game due to a lack of efficient weapons and/or traps. Also in both cases it seems that surplus meat could be obtained using either poisons or traps (cliff) without exploiting more than a few men. In cases where traps weren’t available Indians stalked buffalo single-handed or in pairs. They also had very good meat preserving technology. BTW I have no idea if it’s true, but I remember Wilbur Smith mentioning hunting elephants with huge bows.

Lemur866
OK. First of all, our primate ancestors were not primarily hunters. Our species is not, and has never been, primarily a hunting species.
I don’t have any evidence available on the dietary content of our ancestors, but I’ll take your word, though if my recollection of Aborigines dietary contributions is correct then we may have been. Even acknowledging that however, protein is usually the limiting factor in the diets of herbivores. If even a little extra protein were available there could be a huge reproductive advantage hence the reason why Chimps devote so much time and energy to catching a poultry amount of termites… I’d dispute that certain Eskimo tribes are not primarily hunters, but I’m only nit picking.

And besides, why would only males hunt?
Some suggestions from previous posts:

“Humans, however, can be either predator or prey, and are even at some danger from the animals they hunt, so large-game hunting is mostly done by the males. Even if the tribe loses half or more of its males, it can still grow at the same rate, so long as polygyny is allowed”

“If I were a proto-human male I wouldn’t let my females hunt, simply because of the chance that unsupervised and isolated they could be either fertilised by a male from another tribe, or actually driven into his tribal group”

“While rearing young, early hominid females were unable to hunt large game animals as efficiently as males. The males were therefore encouraged to undertake the inherently perilous task of hunting, while the females both reared the offspring and gathered less belligerent foodstuffs”

It’s all being discussed in an attempt to make some sense out of it.

In almost all mammal species the males contribute exactly nothing to parental care.
But this is not generally true of non-arboreal primates, and presumably not true in recent human ancestors.

**In species where the males DO contribute to parental care they tend to be about the same size as the females. Since both contribute to the offspring, both must invest equal resources…and so there is no advantage for the males to mate with multiple females. **
Baboons, gorilla and lions strike me as notable exceptions to the rule. All are notably larger and with a solid harem structure. The difference in this case is that the contribution they make towards caring for the young is in challenging predators and competitor males that pose a threat. Lions defend the pride from hyaena and other male lions that would otherwise kill lionesses and cubs, baboons from leopards and other species of baboon and gorilla from leopard and humans. I agree with your point in general Lemur, but I think the difference becomes more pronounced when we are dealing with species where the male contributes food and protection. This may be the reason why humans inherited sexual dimorphism. I’m just speculating on whether human social structure has enhanced it.

54

Gaspode, I presume that ancient humans hunted. I remember that animal bones were found in fossil dwellings. So, I might say that they probably ate animals, hunted down or found dead. But I give them the benefit of the doubt. Still, I cannot see how bigger frame (than female’s) made them better hunters. I liked Lemur’s hypothesis more, although it it just more feasible to me, it is not convincing. I do not understand what kind of prove you want: I told you about binocular vision, childbearing, etc. This ain’t a scintific forum, but it’s usually the affirmative party burden to present prove. I, logically, cannot present arguments to support a negative point, i.e. why something is not so and so. The question was: why women are weaker. If you know why, “justify” it, whatever your definition is. I said that there was no reason (or I do not know it) What do you want me to prove?
And lastly. Now you know that English is not my mother tongue. I might make an ocasional mistake. But I know what “justify” means. You did not show WHY it (stronger frame) was right or reasonable. The sexual explatation was plausible. I always prefered sex to hunting.

55

**

Bigger, stronger, and faster all make for a superior hunter. When hunting large game humans probably didn’t make very many quick clean kills. More then likely they wounded the animal and spent a period of time harassing it to death. Hunting was dangerous and thicker muscles could help prevent serious injuries from that elk that just knocked you down.

But on the other hand it still requires the use of a noodle to capture prey. But having bigger muscles and a larger lung capacity does help. When you gotta haul your ass across the frozen tundra chasing a bison, after jabbing him with your spear two days earlier, it does end up making a difference.
Marc

56

Peace

I too assume primitive humans hunted. No one here seems to doubt this in any way whatsoever. Good to see we’re all in agreement.

**
I repeat: “Males have an obvious advantage by being larger. Get a 50kg man to hit you and a 120kg one. Who inflicts the most damage? This equally applies whether fighting mastodons or men. Bigger men have more inertia and a higher potential hitting power. Hand to hand weapons mediate this a little, but not much, and even then a larger man will have a longer reach and the fighting advantage. This is why boxing is divided into weight classes. Within limits a taller man will also run faster and has other leverage advantages over small men." As I later stated larger men can also throw projectiles futrher and faster and have an advantage with the bow.

**
Then don’t state them as facts in direct contradiction to the statements of others, it is offensive. I again refer you to our discussion in GD and The Pit. I don’t want proof. I want justification for your statements, otherwise they are only opinion and belief. There are better Fora for opinions and belief.

In response to your other comments:

  1. Every serious post here contains reasons why humans may exhibit sexual dimorphism. Read them. No one aside from you states they ‘know’ the reasons, only possibilities.
  2. You make assumptions about why mammals have binocular vision. It cannot be proven. There are many alternative theories that could be advanced and successfully argued with some success just as we are advancing theories on why sexual dimorphism developed. I would dearly love to discuss binocular vision with you ON ANOTHER THREAD. Hijacking this one is bad netiquette.
  3. This isn’t a scientific forum. It’s a friendly discussion and the only burden of proof falls on the person willing call someone out by contradicting their statement. That is simply bad manners and I imagine the only penalty will be a lessning of others’ opinions of you. Even in a scientific forum the burden of proof does not fall on the affirmative party. Again we can start another thread or continue this in the Pit or GD. NOT HERE.
  4. Everyone here is attempting to justify what we believe except you. (Check that dictionary under ‘Justify.)
  5. What do I want you to prove? Simply “that there is no clear cut REASON and definitely no PURPOSE for minimal eye-catching sexual dimorphism”. Even then I don’t want proof, simply some input of relevant facts, or reasoned argument that will support your assertions and add to the knowledge base of the readers of this thread.
  6. Everyone here is attempting to show why we believe it is right and reasonable. No one here aside from you has claimed to know absolutely the answer one way or the other. That alas is for the Gods alone, and apparently you.
  7. Ah, so you’ve read the thread dedicated to you in the pit. Good, take some of the advice on good manners so we don’t have to keep repeating ourselves. Lack of fluency in the language in use is not an excuse for bad manners. From what I’ve seen everyone is welcome here provided they make an effort to be civil and responsible.
  8. “The sexual explatation was plausible. I always prefered sex to hunting.” “although it it just more feasible to me, it is not convincing”. If these is your quotes are good. No one can take exception to that or dispute it. It is opinion stated as opinion.

I too have always preferred sex to hunting, but I don’t get enough of either.

57

furnishesq: aren’t you glad you asked?

In case you missed it in my first post (which I foolishly thought would answer the OP…has this become a GD, BTW?) the link seemed authoritative enough. THIS SITE has, as a start, an extensive bibliography in addition to a brief discussion of the matter.

I think that a quick reading (Ha-ha!) of a few of the cited sources in the article would be of immense help.

Danimal said:

Yes. Exactly. That’s the debate. Current anthropological doctrine holds that sexual division of labor with respect to food gathering in European Late Pleistocene hominids may have contributed additionally to previously extant sexual dimorphism.

I’m sorry if I didn’t make that clear enough in my first post.

With that said, the primary explanation for human sexual dimorphism is sexual competition in males. There may be other factors. YMMV.

One of the problems, furnishesq, is that you asked for ‘biological justification,” and I’m not sure exactly what that means.

58

Very nice, appreciated. But is anyone else finding that other than the biblio, the page coding is gogglygook? Help?

European late pleistocene? Are we limiting ourselves to Europe? Just a nug to broaden the discussion.

59

Quoth Jingo:

It’s walking a mighty thin line, but so far, I think that this thread is still in GQ territory. It may yet end up being moved, though. Stay tuned.

60

Sure, but Eskimos are not typical of our early hominid ancestors. Of course our ancestors ate animals. Our dental and digestive structure shows that we “should” eat more meat than, say, chimps. So our ancestors probably hunted more than chimps. But they didn’t hunt mammoths, they hunted lizards, baby birds, termites, and rodents.

This assumes that we hunted dangerous animals. I stongly doubt this. We hunted animals that were not dangerous. Big-game hunting is only possible with advanced technology, like bows and arrows.

But this already assumes that the females are “yours”. How did they get that way? How do you control their movements? How do you stop the other males from kicking you out and taking “your” females? By fighting, or the threat of fighting.

Again, assumes that we hunted dangerous animals. Look, if hunting is incredibly dangerous, then the proto-humans that tried it would be extinct. I agree that killing a mammoth is dangerous, killing a buffalo is dangerous. Killing a lizard is not dangerous. It is true that our ancestors were in danger from predators, but they were in danger of predators while gathering as well. You aren’t in more danger while killing a lizard than you are while picking berries.

The males provide almost no food. When male chimps hunt, they sometimes give food to the kids. But ~99% of a baby chimp’s or baby baboon’s food comes from its mother.

While the males may fight other males or predators, they provide no food…in fact, male lions take the food that female lions hunted. But we are confusing cause and effect here. The males provide protection because they are larger. But they are not larger because they must provide protection. They are larger because larger males have a greater chance to mate. Our proto-human male ancestors may have hunted more than the females, but only because they didn’t have to take care of the kids like the females did. Male baboon, male gorillas, male lions do not invest a lot in parental care. They are primarily guarding against males of their species. The only benefit the females and babies get from this is that a new male is likely to kill all the babies in a new harem. A harem is a female social structure…the females stay together and cooperate. A male attaches himself to the harem, kicks out any adolescent males, and mates with any new adolescent females. At some point, another male from outside takes over. But the females continue their social network for most of their lives.