Posted on 04/14/2010 8:25:34 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
...in a much expanded update of his book, Male, Female: The Evolution of Human Sex Differences, a University of Missouri researcher has compiled research that shows how Darwin's sexual selection is the best explanation of the differences between women and men including from infancy, relationships with friends, mate choices, to brain and cognition. The MU researcher also explains how the expression of these differences can vary across cultures and historical periods.
"Choosing a mate is one of the most important decisions made in one's lifetime and one of Darwin's core components of sexual selection," said David Geary, author and Curators' professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences in the MU College of Arts and Science. "Sex and reproduction complicate our lives in many ways, the most fundamental of which involve the demands of finding a mate. These choices are important because they echo through subsequent generations. The social dynamics that emerge as a result of sexual reproduction usually involve competition with members of the same sex for access to mates or control of the resources that will attract mates."
(Excerpt) Read more at eurekalert.org ...
We all "evolved" from asexually reproducing amoebae, correct?
Men will not form a pair bond with just any woman, and an intact pair bond maximizes survivability of offspring in human populations. Woman also drive sexual selection by making mate choices, sometimes outside the pair bond, while convincing her pair bond mate that he is the father (about 10% of the human population is born to someone whose daddy isn't who mommy says is the daddy).
And do you think that in hard times, in most human populations, it is the mother who allocates precious food resources? You think that fathers will stand by and let their “ugly” sons starve while their “attractive” daughters are fed? Most human cultures have preferred male children to female children, thus it is females who usually get the short end of the stick when resources are scarce as far as starvation and/or infanticide.
And if you think science is “spoon fed” to students in academia, I humbly suggest that you have no earthly idea what you are talking about.
Do you think that even a concept as well founded and basic as semi-conservative DNA replication is “spoon fed”?
"[Wise men] have tried to understand our state of being, by grasping at its stars, or its arts, or its economics. But, if there is an underlying oneness of all things, it does not matter where we begin, whether with stars, or laws of supply and demand, or frogs, or Napoleon Bonaparte. One measures a circle, beginning anywhere." -- Charles Fort
Is that a hypothesis in your pocket or are you just glad to be here? ;’)
Actually in the recent past Sunken Civ posted something about the mutation creating a white skin gene in our ancestors coming north from Africa. This enabled them to compete successfully with the light skinned Neanderthal and eventually compete them to extinction. So fair traits are not cosmetic traits cultivated by mothers. They were genetic traits that enabled women to bear more live young where there was little sunlight to promote strong bones and teeth. What you said implies the idea that mothers would have killed their children who did not have the favored traits, an unlikely scenario. With a favorable mutation like this it can spread rapidly (a thousand years is rapid in genetic terms), a short time in the scale of natural selection.
Yes, peacock tails, a great example. Guys with bigger and heavier tails were obviously stronger, and thus a better catch.
“If a mother had 6 children...”
In societies of scarcity, women seldom had 6 chidren all of a vulnerable age. Since most primative women nurse their babies for 3 or 4 years, and since this tends to delay the onset of menstruation, or else the woman is taboo to the male until the child is weaned, then women would seldom have more than 2 children who were not capable of foraging for their own food. The big problem with vitamin D is that lack of it causes a narrow pelvic girdle that makes childbirth difficult. This is even becoming a significant health problem in Africa now that woman wear body covering robes. Problem births cause fistulas (an opening between the vagina and the rectum) which is a severe medical problem in some African areas.
Children are much lighter than adults. The strongest evidence that mothers play a role in cosmetic selection is that most European children have golden blond hair up until about age 5. The evolutionary purpose has been served and the hair can then transform into something completely different. It does not appear to serve any purpose other than cosmetic. The vitamin D hypothesis has academic skeptics so I'm not alone. I think the selection process involved some combination of vitamin D, sexual selection, and maternal bonding selection, not just one thing. Maternal bonding is an important factor in human evolution that should be explored.
The Neandertal EnigmaFrayer's own reading of the record reveals a number of overlooked traits that clearly and specifically link the Neandertals to the Cro-Magnons. One such trait is the shape of the opening of the nerve canal in the lower jaw, a spot where dentists often give a pain-blocking injection. In many Neandertal, the upper portion of the opening is covered by a broad bony ridge, a curious feature also carried by a significant number of Cro-Magnons. But none of the alleged 'ancestors of us all' fossils from Africa have it, and it is extremely rare in modern people outside Europe." [pp 126-127]
by James Shreeve
in local librariesThe Scars of Evolution:"The most remarkable aspect of Todaro's discovery emerged when he examined Homo Sapiens for the 'baboon marker'. It was not there... Todaro drew one firm conclusion. 'The ancestors of man did not develop in a geographical area where they would have been in contact with the baboon. I would argue that the data we are presenting imply a non-African origin of man millions of years ago.'"
What Our Bodies Tell Us
About Human Origins
by Elaine Morgan
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