Re: Evolution of Sexism
Len Piotrowski (lpiotrow@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu)
Thu, 22 Aug 1996 16:12:27 GMT
In article <4vdae9$hmp@news.sdd.hp.com> geroldf@sdd.hp.com (Gerold Firl) writes:
>[snip]
>For one thing, you are looking at too short of a time scale to see how
>violence effects evolutionary change. I'm looking at a timescale of
>centuries, not years.
You haven't presented any evidence of "violence effects" on an evolutionary
"timescale."
>Secondly, what are these "egalitarian" societies you refer to? The
>farther we get from hunter-gather lifeways, the less egalitarian
>societies tend to get
How untrue! I suppose you've missed some of the more interesting examples of
functional-ecological "adaptations" and human social structure, from both
ethnographic and archaeological sources.
>- with an interesting exception in the case of
>the west. hunter-gatherers do not tend to engage in war, except as the
>victims of more "advanced" cultures, so the most egalitarian cultures
>are not involved in the process of adapting to an environment of
>violence and war.
Your conclusion doesn't necessarily follow from your supposition. Even
non-egalitarian cultures are not involved in the process of "adapting to an
environment of violence and war." In fact, it becomes the exception rather
than the rule if such a process even exists at all.
>you have a very romantic idea of life among the iroquois, where
>everything was wonderful, life was good, and nobody was more equal than
>anybody else.
Sounds like your romantization, not anyone else's.
> I realize it's important to you to believe that, so lets
>not use them as an example; can you name another society which has made
>long-term adaptations to war without depreciating the status of women?
I think it is up to you to name examples to support your own theory, Firl.
Where are all these "long-term adaptations" to war?
>|> > However, I've wondered about the hypothesis that universal male
>|> bias by
>|> >mothers (for males) might be related to, or else compensatory for,
>|> male
>|> >genetic weakness, i.e., at every stagew of the life cycle, from
>|> conception
>|> >onward, human males die in significantly greater proportions than
>|> females.
>|> Have I missed something? _Whose_ hypothesis is this, and what evidence
>|> is there to support such wild claims?
>See my previous reply; you have missed something. The fact that males
>die at higher rates than females at every age is well known.
Hardly "well known" to physical anthropologists. Maybe you'd like to name this
the Firl Rule!
Cheers,
--Lenny__
"If you can't remember what mnemonic means, you've got a problem."
- perlstyle
|