Art and the ancients

Dienekes points me to this article, Aurignacian ethno-linguistic geography of Europe revealed by personal ornaments. In case you don't know, the Aurignacians were the first modern humans in Europe and flourished between 35-20,000 years BP. It isn't surprising that cultural diversity was a feature of our species at this point, the famous "Great Leap Forward" had come and gone, but this story reminds me of a book I read a few years ago, The Ancestress Hypothesis. In many ways the author's argument is a focused response to the ideas promoted by Geoffrey Miller in The Mating Mind. While Miller argues that human evolution was driven forward (in particular the constant increase in brain size up until about 200,000 years BP) by competition between males in the context of a polygynous loose-pair-bonded lifestyle, the author of The Ancestress Hypothesis argues for a gynocentric and monogamous species where female lineages were strengthened through marriage. And how do matriarchs delineate lineages? They do it through art, and in particular body paint. The reality I suspect is somewhere in the middle, the genetic evidence and the history of sexual dimorphism suggests that we are neither obligate monogamists (like gibbons) or polygynists (like gorillas). To be human is to choose.

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That human sperm are equipped with a variety of weapons for use against competing sperm suggests neither polygyny nor monogamy. It suggests, rather, something more like what cats do. DNA analyses of paternity in London apartment blocks (in which remarkably many children were of neighbors' husbands) indicates that any recent monogamous overlay runs not deep.

Of course even among gorillas the females often mate on the sly with the "losers", and the silverback may even wink at such behavior to help forestall challenges, so the practical definition of polygyny is in doubt. (Or is that among chimpanzees? I forget.)

Norman Lewis reports a village in inland India where women marry prepubescent boys, and bear the boy's father's children until the boys are ready to step up to their own responsibilities. Probably it's better to say that customs and mores vary than to invoke individual choice.

By Nathan Myers (not verified) on 21 Mar 2006 #permalink

DNA analyses of paternity in London apartment blocks (in which remarkably many children were of neighbors' husbands) indicates that any recent monogamous overlay runs not deep.

this is not typical. a recent survey (you can google it) shows less than 5% paternity "misassignment," and around 1% for high SES females.

in any case, there is an orthogonal 'sperm competition' vector illustrated by chimps, they have enormous testicles and females will often engage in copulations with multiple males during their fertile period. tiny-testicled gorillas don't do this, and i gibbons aren't this promiscuous. humans more so.

I wonder if the chimps with the most competitive sperm or semen are also the brainiest?
I think that researchers should pattern analyze/simulate all mating behavior rituals or tendencies among chimps to see if anything interesting emerges in the analysis. For all we know, it could be that the *brainiest* chimps are inseminating with the most competitive sperm/viscous semen. We need to find out whether there are(or have been) any trends toward increasing complexity among 'chimp culture', indicating the gradual evolution of a greater intelligence. There is currently no evidence that i know of that would rule out a possibility of chimp-IQ evolution. After all, they are primates, and very social ones, too, so it wouldn't be a shock if they are currently evolving more intelligence. Eventually, they may even be the new humans. We know that they are already very intelligent animals. The question is whether they'll ever evolve a hominid-like intelligence.

razib says:


this is not typical. a recent survey (you can google it) shows less than 5% paternity "misassignment," and around 1% for high SES females.

You know, there are an aweful lot of low and medium SES females out there, and almost all of them want to get pregnant.

Then there is the something like 30% of paternity tests in the US that come back saying the putative father is not the father ...

How do you square these figures away?

Also, I would imagine that the number of offspring produced by high SES females is actually much smaller than the number produced by the rest.

Moreover, prior to the agricultural revolution, I suspect that there might have been even more cases of extra-pair matings ...

Finally, if these matrilines were an important part of human evolution, how come we don't see them in hunter-gatherer societies, and how come we don't see more female artists?

By Richard Sharpe (not verified) on 22 Mar 2006 #permalink

Then there is the something like 30% of paternity tests in the US that come back saying the putative father is not the father ...

conditional probabilities. the typical man doesn't demand a paternity test :) and note that positives are still a minority among men who suspect!

consider this, bryan sykes, the oxford geneticist, found out that 50% of the sykes' in britain were directly related to him via a patriline about 800 years old. assume 25 year generation time that implies a 98% paternity fidelity (the other 50% of sykes' are randomly sampled from the british haplotype sample space, so that implies 'introgression,' either via adoption or the mailman). that's not atypical in many regions/cultures.

I'm not sure that gynocentrism and monogamy go together. I think monogamy is something that *men* demand in return for the fruits of their labor. Married men are like slaves to their wife and kids, and they know it.

If you want to consider a gynocentric society, no need to look to anthropology. Look to urban culture in the USA, where men are "playas" who cannot be depended on to play the role of a father (or even provide semi-adequate child support), and women tow the line as matriarchs, mothers, and grandmothers (often working multiple jobs to support their families).

NuSapiens says:


tow the line

That's toe the line.

Please don't ask me to bare with you!

By Richard Sharpe (not verified) on 23 Mar 2006 #permalink

It is nice to be cited, but I really don't argue that we were designed to be monogamous. More fathers would actually give fragile human offspring more males who could be their protectors rather than a threat.

As far as grandmothers being dominant, what we have to ask is what her influence is and how it is demonstrated. A mothers/grandmothers influence may be more subtle than a male's influence, but it is still there and it may be more profound, in the sense of influencing generations of descendants.

By Kathryn Coe (not verified) on 10 Jun 2008 #permalink