Re: coherent, complex & dynamic timeline


"Day Brown" <daybrown@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1169691716.222380.286320@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


On Jan 24, 6:22 pm, "Chapstick" <chapst...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I would like to hear your opinion about the effect of sexual
selection
on our species.... a "list" of those characteristics that you believe to
be
so selected....
Hominids lived in a lotta different ecosystems, and since the agrarian
revolution in the Eolithic, a lotta different lifestyles.
But yes, I agree that while a Homo Erectus mite seem ugly to us, here
anyway, well educated honkies, as I noted before, other men are not so
gifted, nor so fussy. I recall a few times when I was young that I did
not take the chance to get laid because of perceived repercussions. But
then, I didnt get the clap.

All of the estimates I've seen of the hominid population in early times
are extremely low. We think of the warrior class, but much of the time,
over the vast emptiness early hominids faced, inter-tribal warfare
would have made no sense. They *needed* the genetic diversity. As
hominids moved into the colder regions from the lower latitudes,
territory was up the yin/yang. I've read that old man Winter in the ice
age committed genocide several times, wiping out the megafaurna that
depended on grass not ice, and thus the hominids that relied on them.

I find the "Golden Age of Peace" entirely credible. We have the example
of the Little Big Horn, where it'd been a good year after a mild
winter, and the plains tribes that normally were bitter enemies were
having a barbi when Custer crashed the party.

yes, a long period of peaceful co-existence with "ourselves" is credible to
me, too. I don't necessarily buy the argument that since mankind has always
been warlike then we always will be warlike... we may have had a few million
years without war! however, the NA's certainly did have lotsa' warfare, but
on a different scale before 1492. so your data ref'ed below may be in
effect.


Then too, IIRC, it was Sass, in "The Substance of Civilization" who
calculated that when agronomy came in, the amount of land needed to
support a community shrank by a factor of *500*. We have the example
of 19th Century Ireland, where before the potato blight, a mere 1/20th
of an acre was sufficient to support a person. Altho- not sustainably.

In Northern Euorpe and China, women would have preferred not aggressive
warriors, but *farmers* with the foresight to put up enough food and
firewood to survive the winter. A lotta warriors lacking that skill,
but snowed in, didnt make it. Their personalities also have immense
problems with cabin fever. There is an evident increased power of Women
in the Native European tradition. Nowhere is this spelled out more
clearly to me than a report written by someone coming across a cabin
the American Wilderness.

In the yard was the grave of the man's wife. Inside the cabin was his
dead body. No wife, no family, no purpose. Europe had, and indeed still
has, vast tracts of forest; this pioneer lifestyle goes all the way
back to the development of the bronze axe 7000 years ago.

I've seen some facial reconstructions from skulls of yeoman farmers.
Ugly mugs, both men & women. Then too, we have the paintings of the
Dutch peasants; I dont think they were exaggerating that much. I've
read that DNA reveals that Native Europeans descended from villages of
150-300 people. That aint a lotta mates to choose from. Women werent
looking for "Mr. Wright", but "Mr. Yule Dew".

while i *do* agree with what you are saying here, this concerns a difference
between what we might call "romantic love" versus a sort of utilitarian
existence that is the lot of most people.
meanwhile, the sexual selection that I was asking about is more along
what darwin said about the Pea***. or, that he said that sexual selection
could "rapidly" bring about the exaggeration of some feature or another that
had no other survival function. Some persons on this forum (sap) have
debated whether or not sexual selection is true or not... that maybe darwin
came up with it when no other concept met the need. IMHO, sexual selection
MIGHT explain a plethora of hss traits: "naked" skin, breasts, large penis,
face shape, exaggerated buttocks, large hips in the female, etc. etc. One
question that immediately comes to mind for our species is "who is selecting
who." Well, at any rate, that is our constant debate on sap... what on
earth caused us to look and act the way that we do...
--chap


I was born on a Minnesota farm in 1939, and have lived most of the last
30 years in the Ozarks. Looks just dont cut it. Women know who the men
are, which family lines produce the hard working honest responsible men
to raise a family with, and which are the drunks. They party with the
latter in high school, but when its time to settle down, only the
stupid airheads marry the drunks. We'd all do lots better to supply
these future welfare queens with better sperm donation. It'd pay to pay
them to raise kids. Their maternal instincts are still perfectly
adequate, even more so if given progeny that were of better character
and more talented.

19th century records provide abundant examples of successful,
honorable, talented men who were not raised by their mothers, but some
ignorant slave or servant girl, who they regard with great affection
later on in life.

Lastly, "matchmakers" used to be relied on, who knew the community and
the bloodlines. They had better results. The girls mite not have been
that happy with the choices, but I dont see that they are all that
happy today with the choices they made either. That institution of
midwife/matchmaker had very different criteria that what we perceive
now as stud muffins.



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