Posted on 06/20/2018 12:59:12 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Modern men's genes suggest that something peculiar happened 5,000 to 7,000 years ago: Most of the male population across Asia, Europe and Africa seems to have died off, leaving behind just one man for every 17 women.
This so-called population "bottleneck" was first proposed in 2015, and since then, researchers have been trying to figure out what could've caused it. One hypothesis held that the drop-off in the male population occurred due to ecological or climatic factors that mainly affected male offspring, while another idea suggested that the die-off happened because some males had more power in society, and thus produced more children.
Now, a new paper, published May 25 in the journal Nature Communications, offers yet another explanation: People living in patrilineal clans (consisting of males from the same descent) might have fought with each other, wiping out entire male lineages at a time.
That ratio of 17 females for every one male "struck us as being very extreme, and there must be another explanation," said senior study author Marcus Feldman, a population geneticist at Stanford University in California. According to their new explanation, the male population didn't take a nosedive, but rather the diversity of the Y chromosome decreased due to the way people lived and fought with each other. In other words, there weren't actually fewer males, just less diversity among the males.
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
suggest ...
needs more investigation apparently
‘science’ has often been ‘quick off the mark’ publically pushing things that later turn out flawed/wrong
Makes you want to go to hardware store and buy some rope.
Farmers had wives with more children and kept as many alive as possible as labor. They welcomed extra wives from hunting gatherer tribes or took them as slaves. More hands for the work.
Men in the hunter-gatherer tribes had fewer children, greater odds of dying in both war against each other and settled people, and didn’t breed with the civilized women.
The issue wasn’t that 95% of the men died. It is that the initial wave of farmers won the social war, outbreeding everyone else, integrating some of the losers’ women and children on the way.
That is aside from the fact that you have twice as many female ancestors as male ancestors, because so many men DID die in primitive societies. Our murder rate of 5 per 100,000 is seen as horrific, but primitive societies have seen murder rates as high as half a percent per year. The remaining guys have several wives ...
Tight genes cut off their circulation down there ...
Maybe they weren’t killed off at all and it was more of a case of strongmen sending their younger rivals into the wilderness to herd sheep and sow their wild oats in the wool.
Or maybe there was an LGBTQ movement 4 to 7 thousand years ago and it was all the rage for guys to boink each other aand start wearing dresses.
How about 17 Mother’s in law’s?
7700 years ago marks the MASSIVE eruption of Mt Mazuma - credited with millions of TONS of ash deposited across the northern hemisphere. Could have had an effect on population, but why men more than women? But Egypt built their pyramids soon after - surely in only 1200 years from this event 7700 years ago, they’d not have to rebuild a civilization.
I have just under 10000 relatives in my Ancestry.com., Family Tree.
Many of my earlier ancestors born before 1600, during the early 1600’s to mid 1800’s lived to 70 and beyond and often had a dozen or more children.
That went to hell about 1860 and lasted until the early 1900’s with my American Ancestors.
The apparent common denominator was the civil war with deadly kills in battle, wounds afterwards both mental and physical in the men who fought. Women born shortly before, during and after the civil war often died in their twenties or thirty’s. My dad’s grandfather was a Yank soldier and suffered from what we now call PTSD. His first wife died and his second died in their twenties/thirties. His third wife made it to her fifties.
My wife had similar findings with her family members during and post civil war.
These people were not rebels nor related to them. One can only imagine the deaths and devastation with southern families during and after the Civil War.
This reversed in the last century with most women becoming widows in their 60-80’s on my side of the family and my wife’s.
A large % of male family members died during and after the great depression. The many wars during 1900 to 2000 took a few male lives in combat or war related deaths.
Probably best to pair up with the prettiest one and head for the hills.
I suspect a sampling error.
Truth is, we only really need a few of you to keep society going.
;)
Diversity is not our strength?
Nope.
Ritual combat.
Keep the winners.
/profit
What about third parties who just take the wymyn while the other two are otherwise engaged?
Why Do Genes Suggest Most Men Died Off 7,000 Years Ago?
OR they just did not reproduce. Captured men were frequently castrated in Bible times.
Darn. Missed it. Something like that, even I could get la*d.
Lot of Africans right here in Maine have multiple wives. One older man who died recently was said to have 109 children.
Flood, Copulate, Fire, Copulate, Rinse, Repeat
Five to 7,000 years ago is when the Asian tribes swept into Europe and began the shift from matralineal to patriarchal societies. This is reflected very strongly in the Old Testament Bible. Early Jewish history had important goddesses as did the Greeks and others. Patriarchal rulers would have multiple wives and concubines, and prevent lesser males from breeding. I saw a National Geographic article some decades ago about digging out a 50 foot high Bulgarian settlement mound. Before 5,000 years ago the pottery was bright and colorful. After that time it was made more precisely, but basically colorless and without joy. Women as slaves making pottery??
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