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Science Forum Index » Anthropology - Paleo Forum » The Big Idea...
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| arne97... |
 Posted: Sun Jun 08, 2008 4:36 pm |
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The Big Idea
First of all, upfront,you need to know that I am an English major.
Just a BA and that with a C average.
Never took any graduate courses in biology. No Phd or anything
remotely like a "credential" in biology.
One thing I know how to do, like many English majors, is to think
and explain things clearly.
So what I am telling you is as valid as any thesis that comes out
of Harvard's department of biology.
Just because it was thought of by an English major does not mean
it is incorrect.
About 12 years ago I read an article in a mag that said that
bonobos and dolphins are the only mammals, other than humans, who
have sex outside of estrus.
Sex? Estrus?
I did not have any idea what estrus was so I began to haunt the
library at Cornell's veterinary school. I lived close at the time
and
the library was open to anybody; even English majors.
I dug through every paper and text I could find that had anything
to do with estrus. When the Internet came into my life, I learned to
Google and search with the best of them.
So here is what I found and what it means. Speaking modestly,
this is one of the biggest ideas to come down the pike since Newton
and Darwin. Both of them studied theology.
Estrus , or oestrus as the British spell it, is "heat". When a
female cat or mare or female chimp ovulates, they go into heat .
That
means the female becomes sexually excited and will mate with any
male
of her species that is proximate.
No discrimination. No "I have a headache". In chimp land, the boys
stand in line and take turns. Polite.
Gorillas have a different model. The big dominant silverback chases
away rival males so as to keep the estrus female for himself.
Placental mammals are also called "eutherians". We are placental
mammals. We have a placenta . Kangaroos do not.
Placental mammals also have a pelvis which is different from that
of a possom, dinosaur, bird, or frog. We have a "closed pelvis". The
bones come together at the front, at the "pelvic symphysis". It is
like a closed ring of bone, containing the reproductive organs and
the lower intestines.
Keep all this in mind while I tell you more about estrus and
humans.
One definition of humans states that we are a primate that lacks
estrus. This means when women ovulate, they do not go into the crazy
frenzied heat of other eutherians. A woman who is ovulating might
want sex more than at other times in her cycle, but she still can
say "No".
This is important. It means a woman can pick and choose who she
will mate with. This is called "female choice" and is part of
Darwin's explanation of Sexual Selection. He had two brilliant
ideas:
Natural Selection and Sexual Selection. I think Sexual Selection is
much more subtle than natural Selection and that it is a bigger
discovery.
Natural Selection is what weeds out weak traits. Sexual Selection
is where one or the other of the two sexes, chooses a mate based on
some criteria.
Most Sexual Selection is female Choice. In the Galapagos, Darwin
saw finches that varied from island to island. He eventually
realized
that what had happened was that the female finches had chosen, over
the years, male finches which had certain traits that made them more
succesful in particular environments.
Geographic isolation plus female choice equals diversity .
Cottontail rabbits have estrus. Ms Bunny will mate with any male
that hops along. This makes for a lack of diversity. If she does not
choose, all bunnies end up looking alike. A Cottontail from Maine
will look like a Cottontail from Mexico.
If all the dogs in the world were let loose to breed willy nilly,
we would end up with a generic mutt. No St.Bernards and no
chihuahuas.
Women exercise Female Choice. All the variety in appearance of
humans is the result of this. Redheads and blonds exist because
somewhere, women preffered redheaded guys and blond guys. Maybe not
for hair color. Maybe because they were healthier and better mates
than other guys.
So , because women lack estrus, we have diversity in appearance.
Simple straight forward Darwinian Sexual selection. The old guy
puzzled it out all by his lonesome, sitting studying notes on birds
and people.
How then, did we lose estrus?
It happened this way.
200,000 years ago, in Africa, there were bands of H.erectus
homonids. They looked pretty much like us and even their brains were
within the range of modern humans. But they weren't human.
How do we know? Because they had been around for millions of years
and never progessed beyond the hand axe. The hand axe is a sharp
stone that you use to kill antelope or cut up meat.
One of these female H.erectus gave birth to a daughter that was
different. The daughter, when she reached puberty, did not go into
heat when she ovulated. How do we know? Because she was our
ancestor;
Eve. Eve was the first H.sapiens and H.sapiens are primates in which
the female does not have estrus.
How do we know that her mother had estrus?
Because for 150 million years there were eutherians and 99.99% of
eutherians have estrus.
All our close primate relatives have estrus. Women do not.
Now, before I tell what happened that made Eve different from her
mother, let me show the result.
In the H.erectus band, the females went into heat when they
ovulated. A malemerely had to be nearby and he would get lucky. Sex
with females was a sure thing. No male had to come up with candy,
dinner and a ring. he just had to be there when she went into heat.
Not so with Eve.
When she was 12 and first ovulated, she might have felt a bit
randy, but not so much that she would lift her butt for any male.
The
males in the band knew that she was ovulating because they had
really
good noses and could detect an ovulating female.
So they would hang around Eve, waiting for her to go into heat.
But she did not.
During one ovulation one of the guys was sitting patiently,
waiting to get lucky. He would watch her and get bored and scratch
himself and watch her some more. Then this anonymous H.erectus
started making noises. Grunts, humms, whatever.
One particular noise attracted her attention.
Eve looked up.
Serendipitously, he repeated the sound.
Eve smiled.
In that instant, human language was born.
Male vocalization courtship of the female.
This is exactly what happens with birds, which also lack estrus.
The boy bird vocalizes for the female. If she likes what he says,
they form a pair bond. 92% of all bird species form pair bonds. Just
like people.
It turns out that this language thing has implications over and
above the obvious.
Adult birds teach baby birds to sing. They also teach them to use
vocalization to communicate. Baby birds learn to know which sounds
mean "food" and which mean "danger". And it all starts with the boy
courting the girl.
Humans teach infants to vocalize. We teach them to recognize words
and to produce words. We teach them language.
Our brains have two halves, In one half we receive sounds. The
other side produces sounds. Hearing and vocalization.
In the middle sits our consciousness. It exists in the
hippocampus.
Our consciousness sits there sorting through words. We think in
words. When strung together they form thoughts.
Teaching the baby to talk hard wires its plastic brain to make it
more efficient. It thinks better.
Other eutherians have big klunky brains which do not think as
well. They never learned to vocalize information.
Birds think. They have elegant little bird brains. Dinosaurs had
elegant little bird brains. They did not need the big klunky
mammalian type brain . Baby dinosaurs learned to vocalize and their
brains thus became elegant.
H.erectus had 150 million years of klunky mammalian brain because
it needed it to make up for a lack of elegance.
Now, we see how the lack of estrus gave us language AND this
language transformed our klunky mammalian brains into an elegant
human brain.
So where did estrus go?
The loss of estrus resulted from a very small change in the pelvic
floor of the female.
In most eutherians, the female has, in her clitoris, "vestibular
bulbs".
These are small bodies that swell up with blood at ovulation and
put pressure on the "glans clitoridis". In the glans are
encapsulated
nerve endings called "Pathian bodies". They respond to changes in
pressure. They are the same in the male "glans penis" as well as in
the female glans.
When orgasm occurs, the blood pressure in penis and clitoris
spikes. That stimulates the Pathian bodies and gives us the
pleasurable feelings. BTW, Pathian bodies also exist in the palms
of
our hands. Go figure.
The swelling of the vestibular bulbs works just like orgasm,
putting pressure on the glans clitoridis and making the female
sexually excited.
I had thought that the estrus excitement was due to testosterone,
the only homone of desire. But it turns out that the estrus female
has LOWER levels of testosterone than she does at other times in her
fertility cycle.
A woman with a pituitary tumor has scads of testosterone. She
becomes hypersexual but she is still able to say "No".
As near as I can figure, the vestibular bulbs in Eve were
displaced about 5 cm from where they were in her mother.
In Eve, as in other women, these bulbs now reside along the
urethraq, near where it exits the body.
So you are probably wondering why nobody else figured this out. I
believe it is because it involves s-e-x.
Researchers are nervous around sex. They think it is somehow less
than scientific. Look at poor Kinsey!
You can truthfully say that women are sitting on that which made
us human.
Do you think they give the Nobel prize in science to English
majors? |
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| caldervangogh at (no spam) gmail.com... |
| Posted: Mon Jun 09, 2008 8:32 am |
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Guest
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On Jun 8, 10:36 pm, arne97 <gahada2... at (no spam) yahoo.com> wrote:
Quote: The Big Idea
First of all, upfront,you need to know that I am an English major.
Just a BA and that with a C average.
Never took any graduate courses in biology. No Phd or anything
remotely like a "credential" in biology.
One thing I know how to do, like many English majors, is to think
and explain things clearly.
So what I am telling you is as valid as any thesis that comes out
of Harvard's department of biology.
Just because it was thought of by an English major does not mean
it is incorrect.
About 12 years ago I read an article in a mag that said that
bonobos and dolphins are the only mammals, other than humans, who
have sex outside of estrus.
Sex? Estrus?
I did not have any idea what estrus was so I began to haunt the
library at Cornell's veterinary school. I lived close at the time
and
the library was open to anybody; even English majors.
I dug through every paper and text I could find that had anything
to do with estrus. When the Internet came into my life, I learned to
Google and search with the best of them.
So here is what I found and what it means. Speaking modestly,
this is one of the biggest ideas to come down the pike since Newton
and Darwin. Both of them studied theology.
Estrus , or oestrus as the British spell it, is "heat". When a
female cat or mare or female chimp ovulates, they go into heat .
That
means the female becomes sexually excited and will mate with any
male
of her species that is proximate.
No discrimination. No "I have a headache". In chimp land, the boys
stand in line and take turns. Polite.
Gorillas have a different model. The big dominant silverback chases
away rival males so as to keep the estrus female for himself.
Placental mammals are also called "eutherians". We are placental
mammals. We have a placenta . Kangaroos do not.
Placental mammals also have a pelvis which is different from that
of a possom, dinosaur, bird, or frog. We have a "closed pelvis". The
bones come together at the front, at the "pelvic symphysis". It is
like a closed ring of bone, containing the reproductive organs and
the lower intestines.
Keep all this in mind while I tell you more about estrus and
humans.
One definition of humans states that we are a primate that lacks
estrus. This means when women ovulate, they do not go into the crazy
frenzied heat of other eutherians. A woman who is ovulating might
want sex more than at other times in her cycle, but she still can
say "No".
This is important. It means a woman can pick and choose who she
will mate with. This is called "female choice" and is part of
Darwin's explanation of Sexual Selection. He had two brilliant
ideas:
Natural Selection and Sexual Selection. I think Sexual Selection is
much more subtle than natural Selection and that it is a bigger
discovery.
Natural Selection is what weeds out weak traits. Sexual Selection
is where one or the other of the two sexes, chooses a mate based on
some criteria.
Most Sexual Selection is female Choice. In the Galapagos, Darwin
saw finches that varied from island to island. He eventually
realized
that what had happened was that the female finches had chosen, over
the years, male finches which had certain traits that made them more
succesful in particular environments.
Geographic isolation plus female choice equals diversity .
Cottontail rabbits have estrus. Ms Bunny will mate with any male
that hops along. This makes for a lack of diversity. If she does not
choose, all bunnies end up looking alike. A Cottontail from Maine
will look like a Cottontail from Mexico.
If all the dogs in the world were let loose to breed willy nilly,
we would end up with a generic mutt. No St.Bernards and no
chihuahuas.
Women exercise Female Choice. All the variety in appearance of
humans is the result of this. Redheads and blonds exist because
somewhere, women preffered redheaded guys and blond guys. Maybe not
for hair color. Maybe because they were healthier and better mates
than other guys.
So , because women lack estrus, we have diversity in appearance.
Simple straight forward Darwinian Sexual selection. The old guy
puzzled it out all by his lonesome, sitting studying notes on birds
and people.
How then, did we lose estrus?
It happened this way.
200,000 years ago, in Africa, there were bands of H.erectus
homonids. They looked pretty much like us and even their brains were
within the range of modern humans. But they weren't human.
How do we know? Because they had been around for millions of years
and never progessed beyond the hand axe. The hand axe is a sharp
stone that you use to kill antelope or cut up meat.
One of these female H.erectus gave birth to a daughter that was
different. The daughter, when she reached puberty, did not go into
heat when she ovulated. How do we know? Because she was our
ancestor;
Eve. Eve was the first H.sapiens and H.sapiens are primates in which
the female does not have estrus.
How do we know that her mother had estrus?
Because for 150 million years there were eutherians and 99.99% of
eutherians have estrus.
All our close primate relatives have estrus. Women do not.
Now, before I tell what happened that made Eve different from her
mother, let me show the result.
In the H.erectus band, the females went into heat when they
ovulated. A malemerely had to be nearby and he would get lucky. Sex
with females was a sure thing. No male had to come up with candy,
dinner and a ring. he just had to be there when she went into heat.
Not so with Eve.
When she was 12 and first ovulated, she might have felt a bit
randy, but not so much that she would lift her butt for any male.
The
males in the band knew that she was ovulating because they had
really
good noses and could detect an ovulating female.
So they would hang around Eve, waiting for her to go into heat.
But she did not.
During one ovulation one of the guys was sitting patiently,
waiting to get lucky. He would watch her and get bored and scratch
himself and watch her some more. Then this anonymous H.erectus
started making noises. Grunts, humms, whatever.
One particular noise attracted her attention.
Eve looked up.
Serendipitously, he repeated the sound.
Eve smiled.
In that instant, human language was born.
Male vocalization courtship of the female.
This is exactly what happens with birds, which also lack estrus.
The boy bird vocalizes for the female. If she likes what he says,
they form a pair bond. 92% of all bird species form pair bonds. Just
like people.
It turns out that this language thing has implications over and
above the obvious.
Adult birds teach baby birds to sing. They also teach them to use
vocalization to communicate. Baby birds learn to know which sounds
mean "food" and which mean "danger". And it all starts with the boy
courting the girl.
Humans teach infants to vocalize. We teach them to recognize words
and to produce words. We teach them language.
Our brains have two halves, In one half we receive sounds. The
other side produces sounds. Hearing and vocalization.
In the middle sits our consciousness. It exists in the
hippocampus.
Our consciousness sits there sorting through words. We think in
words. When strung together they form thoughts.
Teaching the baby to talk hard wires its plastic brain to make it
more efficient. It thinks better.
Other eutherians have big klunky brains which do not think as
well. They never learned to vocalize information.
Birds think. They have elegant little bird brains. Dinosaurs had
elegant little bird brains. They did not need the big klunky
mammalian type brain . Baby dinosaurs learned to vocalize and their
brains thus became elegant.
H.erectus had 150 million years of klunky mammalian brain because
it needed it to make up for a lack of elegance.
Now, we see how the lack of estrus gave us language AND this
language transformed our klunky mammalian brains into an elegant
human brain.
So where did estrus go?
The loss of estrus resulted from a very small change in the pelvic
floor of the female.
In most eutherians, the female has, in her clitoris, "vestibular
bulbs".
These are small bodies that swell up with blood at ovulation and
put pressure on the "glans clitoridis". In the glans are
encapsulated
nerve endings called "Pathian bodies". They respond to changes in
pressure. They are the same in the male "glans penis" as well as in
the female glans.
When orgasm occurs, the blood pressure in penis and clitoris
spikes. That stimulates the Pathian bodies and gives us the
pleasurable feelings. BTW, Pathian bodies also exist in the palms
of
our hands. Go figure.
The swelling of the vestibular bulbs works just like orgasm,
putting pressure on the glans clitoridis and making the female
sexually excited.
I had thought that the estrus excitement was due to testosterone,
the only homone of desire. But it turns out that the estrus female
has LOWER levels of testosterone than she does at other times in her
fertility cycle.
A woman with a pituitary tumor has scads of testosterone. She
becomes hypersexual but she is still able to say "No".
As near as I can figure, the vestibular bulbs in Eve were
displaced about 5 cm from where they were in her mother.
In Eve, as in other women, these bulbs now reside along the
urethraq, near where it exits the body.
So you are probably wondering why nobody else figured this out. I
believe it is because it involves s-e-x.
Researchers are nervous around sex. They think it is somehow less
than scientific. Look at poor Kinsey!
You can truthfully say that women are sitting on that which made
us human.
Do you think they give the Nobel prize in science to English
majors?
That would be the Nobel in literature? <smile>
Just a quick note to say that I did read your article. And i agree
entirely that women are sitting on that which made us human. they
'born'd us & etc.
I am not certain I agree with the part about how language began. Your
point could be disproven if we figure out that HN had language,
because the split from hss was prior to 200 kya. Current thinking is
that HN did have language, although apparently a rudimentary form
compared to ours. However, there is really no evidence one way or the
other.
Also, just a minor point. We don't "teach" infants language... they
"learn" it! Like being immersed in a great ocean of language, and
they pick out their mother tongue with all its grammar and syntax.
Think how different it is for an infant to learn language compared to
an adult learning a foreign language.
Do you have a reference for consciousness being centered in the
hippocampus? That is news to me.
Sex and sexual selection are occasionally discussed on this forum. I,
for one, always am willing to discuss these issues. Kinsey is a hero
of mine.
regards
calder |
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| arne97... |
| Posted: Mon Jun 09, 2008 10:32 am |
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.." Your
point could be disproven if we figure out that HN had language,
because the split from hss was prior to 200 kya. Current thinking is
that HN did have language, although apparently a rudimentary form
compared to ours. However, there is really no evidence one way or the
other. "
This is a bit convoluted, but bear with me.
Let's assume an H.erectus, from maybe 4.5million years ago to
200,000BCE
If my theory about the role of language in molding the plastic
brain is correct, then the absence of language would mean a smaller
intellect.
H.erectus had the hand axe but that is ,essentially, the whole
ball of wax. What we know he did NOT have are freeways or other
evidence of technology.
H.erectus had a H.sapiens range of brain size, but it was not an
elegant bird-like brain.
The best bet, BTW, for a talking primate is NOT the chimp. It is
the gibbon AND the tarsier. Both sing in ways which are complicated
and convey meaning. The morning song of the gibbon is probably a
prayer to the sun.
I tried to explain this to some chimp people but they persisted
in hand signing. That is, for a chimp, NOT the same as vocalization.
Dogs also have learned, from humans, to vocalize. Horses and
moo cows have not. |
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| caldervangogh at (no spam) gmail.com... |
| Posted: Mon Jun 09, 2008 11:26 am |
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On Jun 9, 4:32 pm, arne97 <gahada2... at (no spam) yahoo.com> wrote:
Quote: ." Your
point could be disproven if we figure out that HN had language,
because the split from hss was prior to 200 kya. Current thinking is
that HN did have language, although apparently a rudimentary form
compared to ours. However, there is really no evidence one way or the
other. "
This is a bit convoluted, but bear with me.
Let's assume an H.erectus, from maybe 4.5million years ago to
200,000BCE
If my theory about the role of language in molding the plastic
brain is correct, then the absence of language would mean a smaller
intellect.
H.erectus had the hand axe but that is ,essentially, the whole
ball of wax. What we know he did NOT have are freeways or other
evidence of technology.
H.erectus had a H.sapiens range of brain size, but it was not an
elegant bird-like brain.
The best bet, BTW, for a talking primate is NOT the chimp. It is
the gibbon AND the tarsier. Both sing in ways which are complicated
and convey meaning. The morning song of the gibbon is probably a
prayer to the sun.
I tried to explain this to some chimp people but they persisted
in hand signing. That is, for a chimp, NOT the same as vocalization.
Dogs also have learned, from humans, to vocalize. Horses and
moo cows have not.
alrighty then... I'll wait for the evidence.
regards
calder |
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| arne97... |
| Posted: Wed Jun 11, 2008 12:22 pm |
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Guest
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Bonobos, BTW, have sex outside of estrus. That does NOT mean that the
females engage in sexual selection, however, since they still are
forced, by the estrus impulse, to mate with ANY proximate male.
So a girl chimp that fools around with one guy for 25 days of the
month will still pull a train when in heat.
I once tried to talk to one of the girl gorilla Koko's keepers She
seemed insulted when I tried to find out how the beast reacted when in
heat. One aspect of heat is that no training will work when the female
is under the influence.
Chicks. Talk trash to them and they get huffy. |
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| Day Brown... |
| Posted: Wed Jun 11, 2008 1:05 pm |
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Another factor worth consideration is seen in the Bonobo, who've been
reported to carry herbivore bone shards to dig tubers with. Whereas the
Chimp, Gorilla, & Orang alpha males can control a food supply, like a
favorite fruit or nut tree, with the digging trowel, the Bonobo
dispersed across the forest floor, and there was no way for the alpha
male to control the source of food, and therefore the females.
Wrangham & Peterson, "Demonic Males" say that as a result of the grit on
the tubers, the Bonobo have, by far, the thickest dentine of all
primates. This, but one: the hominids.
They were called "spears", but for sure the wood found in Europe dating
from Homo Heidelbergensis would've been fine digging staves for turnips.
Which make in a mere 45 days despite some frost. And when thrown in the
back of the cave, will keep all winter.
Barford, "The Early Slavs" starts out with them in the 6th century after
the recession of the Roman empire. For hundreds of years the Legions had
been used as slave raiders, and this resulted in a no-man's land 100km
wide from the Rhine delta south, then East along the Danube to the Black
Sea. And it was Slav couples that first pioneered this bush, building
tiny 2x3 meter earth bermed log cabins with massive stone/clay ovens to
heat the place.
They didnt grow wheat, but lived off tubers. They'd seen enuf of Roman
and barbarian armies coming thru, stealing all the grain and burning the
rest in the fields. You cant burn a field of turnips. You cant bury
wheat in the ground to hide it like you can turnips. You wont read about
this in the History books because the reports were all made by scribes
in the pay of the warrior class, but whole armies were starved out when
the peasants switched from grain to turnips.
When they heard an army was coming, they packed up what they could
carry, buried the rest of their tubers, and hid in the forest. One of
the better known results was Napoleon in Russia, and its why they still
love borscht.
It was tubers that freed women from the domination of alpha males in
Europe, and it was tubers that freed the women of the early hominids. A
Slav woman who was dissatisfied with her mate selection could run off in
the bush and her husband, even if he had a posse, could not stop her,
and could not find her in the vast forests of Europe.
Women in the Levant and Egypt didnt have forests to flee to, and there
alpha male tyranny was successful, and still is. In the rest of africa,
a woman fleeing would simply be kidnapped by the next tribe. population
density was way higher without a winter to thin the gene pool of all but
the most competent men. Same deal in India, SE Asia, Central America.
But China, Korea, and Japan had both tubers and some forest. Were it not
for the remarkably high production of rice, tyranny would not have been
possible; but every couple hundred years a dynasty collapsed and women
got more choice in husbands. Gibbon noted that in times of confusion,
each man rises to that station which his nature endows him. IOW, the
good old boy alpha male network dont work.
All the hype by the alpha male warrior class hides the fact that it is
the refugees fleeing who discover new ecosystems and are desperate enuf
to try to figure out how to live there. And the warriors forget just how
widely and thinly dispersed ancient hominids were.
Anthropology reports jungle tribes with 100 sq miles of hunting
territory. the next tribe was only a day's hike away, a convenient
target if hunting other prey did not pay. But in ice age Europe, there's
no evidence that hominids ever exceeded 100,000- spread across 3 million
sq miles of territory. Subtract the femals, kids, and elders, and that's
30,000 hunters, or 100 square miles *per hunter*. The next Mammoth bone
Long house was 100 miles up the Don. Not a convenient target. The real
enemy was not foreign warriors, but Old Man Winter.
this also empowered women. They didnt need alpha males for protection;
nor did they need the impulsive aggression in the crowded space of the
mammoth bone long house. 30X6 meters with 120-150 people. Body heat kept
it warm. Bodies also filled it with pheremones. It musta been a 5 month
orgy all winter. Jealous jackasses would have been kicked out... of the
gene pool, and today, their descendants are not nearly as misogynistic
as in the Levant or the tropics.
---- Posted via Pronews.com - Premium Corporate Usenet News Provider ----
http://www.pronews.com offers corporate packages that have access to 100,000+ newsgroups |
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| Day Brown... |
| Posted: Wed Jun 11, 2008 1:41 pm |
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Another factor worth consideration is seen in the Bonobo, who've been
reported to carry herbivore bone shards to dig tubers with. Whereas the
Chimp, Gorilla, & Orang alpha males can control a food supply, like a
favorite fruit or nut tree, with the digging trowel, the Bonobo
dispersed across the forest floor, and there was no way for the alpha
male to control the source of food, and therefore the females.
Wrangham & Peterson, "Demonic Males" say that as a result of the grit on
the tubers, the Bonobo have, by far, the thickest dentine of all
primates. This, but one: the hominids.
They were called "spears", but for sure the wood found in Europe dating
from Homo Heidelbergensis would've been fine digging staves for turnips.
Which make in a mere 45 days despite some frost. And when thrown in the
back of the cave, will keep all winter.
Barford, "The Early Slavs" starts out with them in the 6th century after
the recession of the Roman empire. For hundreds of years the Legions had
been used as slave raiders, and this resulted in a no-man's land 100km
wide from the Rhine delta south, then East along the Danube to the Black
Sea. And it was Slav couples that first pioneered this bush, building
tiny 2x3 meter earth bermed log cabins with massive stone/clay ovens to
heat the place.
They didnt grow wheat, but lived off tubers. They'd seen enuf of Roman
and barbarian armies coming thru, stealing all the grain and burning the
rest in the fields. You cant burn a field of turnips. You cant bury
wheat in the ground to hide it like you can turnips. You wont read about
this in the History books because the reports were all made by scribes
in the pay of the warrior class, but whole armies were starved out when
the peasants switched from grain to turnips.
When they heard an army was coming, they packed up what they could
carry, buried the rest of their tubers, and hid in the forest. One of
the better known results was Napoleon in Russia, and its why they still
love borscht.
It was tubers that freed women from the domination of alpha males in
Europe, and it was tubers that freed the women of the early hominids. A
Slav woman who was dissatisfied with her mate selection could run off in
the bush and her husband, even if he had a posse, could not stop her,
and could not find her in the vast forests of Europe.
Women in the Levant and Egypt didnt have forests to flee to, and there
alpha male tyranny was successful, and still is. In the rest of africa,
a woman fleeing would simply be kidnapped by the next tribe. population
density was way higher without a winter to thin the gene pool of all but
the most competent men. Same deal in India, SE Asia, Central America.
But China, Korea, and Japan had both tubers and some forest. Were it not
for the remarkably high production of rice, tyranny would not have been
possible; but every couple hundred years a dynasty collapsed and women
got more choice in husbands. Gibbon noted that in times of confusion,
each man rises to that station which his nature endows him. IOW, the
good old boy alpha male network dont work.
All the hype by the alpha male warrior class hides the fact that it is
the refugees fleeing who discover new ecosystems and are desperate enuf
to try to figure out how to live there. And the warriors forget just how
widely and thinly dispersed ancient hominids were.
Anthropology reports jungle tribes with 100 sq miles of hunting
territory. the next tribe was only a day's hike away, a convenient
target if hunting other prey did not pay. But in ice age Europe, there's
no evidence that hominids ever exceeded 100,000- spread across 3 million
sq miles of territory. Subtract the femals, kids, and elders, and that's
30,000 hunters, or 100 square miles *per hunter*. The next Mammoth bone
Long house was 100 miles up the Don. Not a convenient target. The real
enemy was not foreign warriors, but Old Man Winter.
this also empowered women. They didnt need alpha males for protection;
nor did they need the impulsive aggression in the crowded space of the
mammoth bone long house. 30X6 meters with 120-150 people. Body heat kept
it warm. Bodies also filled it with pheremones. It musta been a 5 month
orgy all winter. Jealous jackasses would have been kicked out... of the
gene pool, and today, their descendants are not nearly as misogynistic
as in the Levant or the tropics.
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| spiznet... |
| Posted: Wed Jun 11, 2008 11:06 pm |
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Guest
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On Jun 11, 6:22 pm, arne97 <gahada2... at (no spam) yahoo.com> wrote:
Quote: Bonobos, BTW, have sex outside of estrus. That does NOT mean that the
females engage in sexual selection, however, since they still are
forced, by the estrus impulse, to mate with ANY proximate male.
So a girl chimp that fools around with one guy for 25 days of the
month will still pull a train when in heat.
I once tried to talk to one of the girl gorilla Koko's keepers She
seemed insulted when I tried to find out how the beast reacted when in
heat. One aspect of heat is that no training will work when the female
is under the influence.
Chicks. Talk trash to them and they get huffy.
So the idea you have is that while these bonobos were out scavenging
for seaweed in the shallow Pliocene seas, that they were attacked and
impregnated by a herd of dolphins, and from this event the human race
springs.
good theory, it is probably encouraging to MV and ilk!!
-spizzy |
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| Day Brown... |
| Posted: Sat Jun 14, 2008 2:19 pm |
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Guest
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arne97 wrote:
Quote: Bonobos, BTW, have sex outside of estrus. That does NOT mean that the
females engage in sexual selection, however, since they still are
forced, by the estrus impulse, to mate with ANY proximate male.
So a girl chimp that fools around with one guy for 25 days of the
month will still pull a train when in heat.
I once tried to talk to one of the girl gorilla Koko's keepers She
seemed insulted when I tried to find out how the beast reacted when in
heat. One aspect of heat is that no training will work when the female
is under the influence.
Chicks. Talk trash to them and they get huffy.
As may be; but alpha males still could not control mating
with either Bonobo or Hominids that were digging tubers
because the food resource was so widely dispersed.
It is unfortunate the women cannot discuss estrus dispassionately,
but we also see alpha males cant handle the idea that there were
situations in which the status was meaningless.
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