LadyEllen
Posts: 10931
Joined: 6/30/2006
From: Stourport-England
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For what its worth, this discussion over reproductive possibilities for early humans does seem, from certain quarters at least, to be lacking somewhat. The idea that Ogg, being the brawny male he is, should then naturally be the male with whom the females should wish to mate, or that the Ogg, being the brawny male he is, should have exclusive access to the females willing or not, is incorrect I feel. And the idea that Ogg, being the brawny male he is, should be able to survive should he chase other males away is also incorrect; however brawny Ogg might be, he's still no match alone against a predator and not very successful as a lone hunter - he needs the other males in the group.
Lets be clear. We might suppose that Ogg will be the father of the group's offspring and so his brainier but less brawny companions' brain size and function should die off, not being passed down to the next generation. But in the absence of much awareness of how offspring are produced, all that the group can say with certainty, is who the mother of the offspring is. What is also certain is that female orgasm isnt just a nice-to-have feature, but an aid to ensuring that semen reaches an egg - hence females are far more likely to conceive with a partner they have selected and who because of his greater brain function has greater empathy for her pleasure too, than the large but stupid and brutish Ogg.
Why would the females select the relatively weaker but brainier males of the group over Ogg in the first place? At first sight, in a primitive environment, Ogg is the ideal partner - big, strong and able to defend the female and her offspring well. But only as long as weapons arent in use and a group of weaker but brainier males arent able to cooperate. With these developments, Ogg's prior advantages are lost - he can be killed by a smaller male and especially by a group of smaller males. And these smaller males who cooperate are not only better able to defend the female and her offspring than Ogg but they can also provide far more meat from hunting. And because of their greater brain function, theyre also better carers because they have greater empathy than Ogg.
But all of this misses the one important factor I noted as lacking. The discussion so far has centred around the idea of the male being the one who develops the larger brain and language. What is far more likely perhaps, and at the least just as likely, is that the enhanced brain function/ language process began in female humans, and even more likely was developed in and by females. To this day females reign supreme in terms of interpersonal skills and communication, perhaps as a function of their social environment, which has not changed a lot since earliest times right up to the very recent past. And it is from females that every child learns language and the basics of the culturally accumulated knowledge.
In this scenario, it matters not how big Ogg is, for any offspring he has will inherit the greater brain function of his mate and absorb the language and knowledge which his mate imparts. The offspring will also inherit some of Ogg's traits and in a generation or so, we will have the full range of modern man in both male and female. The males smaller than Ogg but smarter, the females preserving and developing the smarts from generation to generation.
Why should language originate in females rather than males? well, lets not kid ourselves that females prefer a means of communication which doesnt include the sort of violence for which males are supposedly adept - there is no reason to suppose that females need words to get basic points across such as "I'm the alpha round here" and so on. But what distinguishes the female from the male is that she carries the offspring necessary to the continued survival of the group - more basic physical means of communication between females in such a situation is not conducive to the survival of the group through its offspring. And more importantly, in such a group its likely that the females will be caring not only for their own offspring but for the offspring of the other females in the group, which means that each is vulnerable to the other in relation to her offspring, again reducing the value of more basic forms of communication. It becomes a far better alternative to try to communicate with one another by means which do not involve physical action, and which provide means for the cooperative lifestyle which shared child rearing requires. A group of females developing such skills would doubtless be far more successful in raising offspring compared to other less developed groups. And within a short time the whole would be transferred as much to the male offspring as to the female offspring, though the female offspring would be the ones who subsequently developed it further as they became the next generation of mothers.
So there you go. Ogg is an irrelevance, because its the females who won the day.
E
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In a test against the leading brand, 9 out of 10 participants couldnt tell the difference. Dumbasses.
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RE: The Human Race 2 - 
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