
8,000 years ago, 17 women reproduced for every one man - mxschumacher
https://psmag.com/environment/17-to-1-reproductive-success
======
Houshalter
From _The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature_ :

>In the ancient empire of the Incas, sex was a heavily regulated industry. The
sun-king Atahualpa kept fifteen hundred women in each of many “houses of
virgins” throughout his kingdom. They were selected for their beauty and were
rarely chosen after the age of eight—to ensure their virginity. But they did
not all remain virgins for long: They were the emperor’s concubines. Beneath
him, each rank of society afforded a harem of a particular legal size. Great
lords had harems of more than seven hundred women. “Principal persons” were
allowed fifty women; leaders of vassal nations, thirty; heads of provinces of
100,000 people, twenty; leaders of 1,000 people, fifteen; administrators of
500 people, twelve; governors of 100 people, eight; petty chiefs over 50 men,
seven; chiefs of 10 men, five; chiefs of 5 men, three. That left precious few
for the average male Indian whose enforced near-celibacy must have driven him
to desperate acts, a fact attested to by the severity of the penalties that
followed any cuckolding of his seniors. If a man violated one of Atahualpa’s
women, he, his wife, his children, his relatives, his servants, his fellow
villagers, and all his lamas would be put to death, the village would be
destroyed, and the site strewn with stones.

>As a result, Atahualpa and his nobles had, shall we say, a majority holding
in the paternity of the next generation. They systematically dispossessed less
privileged men of their genetic share of posterity. Many of the Inca people
were the children of powerful men.

>In the kingdom of Dahomey in West Africa, all women were at the pleasure of
the king. Thousands of them were kept in the royal harem for his use, and the
remainder he suffered to “marry” the more favored of his subjects. The result
was that Dahomean kings were very fecund, while ordinary Dahomean men were
often celibate and barren. In the city of Abomey, according to one nineteenth-
century visitor, “it would be difficult to find Dahomeans who were not
descended from royalty.” The connection between sex and power is a long one.

~~~
jessaustin
One suspects the celibacy assumption says more about we who assume rather than
the ancient societies of whom we assume. This is a kind of inter-millennial
sexism. If a single king could have relations with hundreds of women, why
can't a (presumably professional) woman have relations with hundreds of men?
In such a top-heavy situation, she would have found plenty of willing
customers! Sure, we are prejudiced against prostitution, but lots of ancient
societies weren't.

~~~
sorokod
A single woman is unlikely to have produce a statistically significant number
of children. This is not about the act of sex but about actual reproduction.

~~~
jessaustin
Haha it's late my brain stopped working for a moment there...

------
olalonde
> Another member of the research team, a biological anthropologist,
> hypothesizes that somehow, only a few men accumulated lots of wealth and
> power, leaving nothing for others.

The other hypothesis that I read was that men were seen as more disposable and
used for riskier work (e.g. hunting, war), leading to higher death rates
amongst males. There's this article that gets submitted on HN once in a while
which elaborates on this but I can't find the link right now :( (edit: here it
is
[http://www.denisdutton.com/baumeister.htm](http://www.denisdutton.com/baumeister.htm))

~~~
gaius
_I read was that men were seen as more disposable and used for riskier work
(e.g. hunting, war), leading to higher death rates amongst males._

You speak as if in the past tense, but 95% of workplace deaths are men.

------
ordu
So, the evolution of human goes.

At least if we look on this from perspective of evolutionary theory of sex[1],
which states that males are subject of natural selection and it is the main
reason behind inventing sex differences in evolution. Unsuccessful males are
cheaper to population than unsuccessful females, so there are less
unsuccessful females and more unsuccessful males. From ETS perspective this
reasearch an evidence of evolution, if there are no differences in
reproductive ability between males and females, than evolution is stalled. But
we see such a difference, than it is possible that evolution is goes. And
probablity of it is bound to likelyhood of ETS to be true.

I wander, what the selection factor is?

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geodakyan%27s_evolutionary_the...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geodakyan%27s_evolutionary_theory_of_sex)

~~~
candiodari
The rules in societies like these would have been akin to the rules in
islam/sharia. A woman is only allowed one partner, only men are allowed
multiple partners (men may never even as much as see some of their
women/concubines, and you'd be surprised how common that is), and getting
caught (or even suspected in most cases) with another results in extra-painful
execution.

These societal rules are self-propagating because men can't break them since
they're denied access to women by physical obstacles (walk around in a middle
eastern muslim village and you'll understand why, although it's sort of
visible in many movies).

Women can't break this since if any woman or group of women tries to they get
gang raped in the street.

In case you're wondering families will not divide inheritance but will choose
(or even adopt) a favorite son who'll continue the business. That doesn't
necessarily mean the rest get kicked into the street (happens, though).

There is a ton of "illegal" sex in these societies though because there are
masses of women who are technically the property (that's what it boils down
to, may be called married, but even in muslim societies where it technically
is marriage they don't bother saying a woman is married, they just say she's
"this guy's") of a man, but haven't so much as seen the guy for years, so if
almost any man can get close to them it probably isn't too hard to convince
them to have intercourse.

Walking around in these villages, one thing becomes very obvious : this is not
the way to go about creating a peaceful society.

~~~
ordu
ETS speaks nothing about societies or their rules. ETS was invented by
studying animals and plants and it stick to genotype and phenotype
distributions while explaining role of sex in evolution.

And I do not like the idea to speculate about societies and how to build them
properly starting from some evolutionary reaserch. It is different levels of
abstraction. It is complex to do it right, while stretching your mind over
several levels. It needs a broad knowledge, high intelligence and a lot of
time spent in thinking and discussing matters with others highly intelligent
and broadly educated.

Look, between evolution theory and sociology there are physiology,
neuroscience and psychology. There are a lot of progress lately in psysiology
and neuroscience, but psychology almost 150 years struggling to become an
empirical science. There are some progress, but it is not convincing. Also I'm
not sure that psysiology and neuroscience progress is sufficient to talk about
brigde between theory of evolution and sociology. There are tremendous amounts
of work for scientists ahead, which must be done before we can start to reason
about society from evolutionary perspective.

------
spcomp
Well, they are making the assumption that one woman "mated" with one man only.

If you drop that assumption, and take "sperm competition"
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sperm_competition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sperm_competition))
into account, other scenario's than "wealth-and-power" are possible.

Such as: groups of hunter gatherers had frequent orgies, but due to "sperm
competition", a few of the man fathered all children.

------
interfixus
> _it would be one of the first instances that scientists have found of
> culture affecting human evolution_

In that case, scientists must have been very much not looking indeed. Someone
give me a coherent explanation, please, of how cultural patterns could
possibly ever avoid affecting the composition of the next generation.

~~~
dwaltrip
They probably meant chronologically.

------
billions
Perhaps the economic leverage of agriculture was lucrative enough to increase
dominance by the owner's male lineage. I.E. providing food to starving women
from your dad's crop could get you laid more than the hunter gatherer next
door.

~~~
PakG1
I recall reading an economic study on polygamous societies in the Middle East
that concluded the same thing about why women would be ok with it. Financial
security.

Edit: I find it annoying that I'm getting downvoted for just saying I once
read an article that studied similar phenomena. To be clear, I think polygamy
is a horrible thing, especially in countries where women have far from equal
rights. That doesn't mean that the circumstances that make it systemic
shouldn't be studied.

Edit 2: I realize that I didn't particularly contribute anything enlightening
to the conversation with this comment either. In that case, downvote away. :)

~~~
jacobolus
Polygamy shows up routinely in peasant societies when there is a severe
shortage of men, for example after a war, or when economic hardship causes
many young men to leave looking for work, or when severe poverty makes a large
proportion of young men unable to afford a family.

The young women left behind have few good choices for husbands, and so are
forced to choose (or have the choice made for them by their parents) between
becoming spinsters (i.e. not marrying and living alone or with their parents
into adulthood), or becoming an older man’s second wife (or third, etc.). This
causes all kinds of resentment between the multiple wives and often leads to
abusive relationships, but is still arguably a better outcome for some of the
young women than being stuck unmarried in a context where supporting yourself
as a single person is extremely challenging.

------
sk55
A plausible theory as to why this can happen.

Apparently, millions of people (10% in a large region and 0.5% globally) are
direct descendants of Genghis Khan, one of the worlds greatest conquerors -
and also one of the most prolific breeders[1].

“Lots of men have lots of sons, by chance. But what normally doesn’t happen is
the sons have a high probability of having lots of sons themselves. You have
to have a reinforcing effect[1]”. You need to have a prolific breeder spread
out over a large geographic area whose sons are also more likely to have many
kids.

Maybe 8,000 years ago something similar happened.

[1][https://www.nature.com/news/genghis-khan-s-genetic-legacy-
ha...](https://www.nature.com/news/genghis-khan-s-genetic-legacy-has-
competition-1.16767)

------
BadassFractal
Is it fair to say that in these societies, most women got to pass on their
genes, whereas most men except for select few didn't? Thus men were the ones
to be selected from on a genetic level?

------
ericfrenkiel
I would posit this was a "winner take all" outcome compounded by economics
_and_ biology. High infant mortality, as well as the high risk of death from
even a simple infection or injury, would be enough to reduce the number of
males in a population, to concentrate means into the hands of a few. Then, the
progeny of these hardened or simply lucky few would be better insulated from
disease or injury than other males, perpetuating the cycle.

~~~
simonh
Why do you think infant mortality would affect men but not women?

~~~
ericfrenkiel
It's a well known fact in human biology. Just a couple links on the reasons
why:

"Researchers uncover several reasons why boys are 'weaker sex'"

[https://www.upi.com/Researchers-uncover-several-reasons-
why-...](https://www.upi.com/Researchers-uncover-several-reasons-why-boys-are-
weaker-sex/69121384750835/)

"Why is infant mortality higher in boys than in girls? A new hypothesis based
on preconception environment and evidence from a large sample of twins."

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/23151996/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/23151996/)

~~~
simonh
>It's long been known slightly more boys are born because fewer survive...

Ok, but this accounts for a few percentage ponts difference, not 17 to 1.

~~~
ericfrenkiel
Right; economics probably exaggerates what is already a biological reality.

------
Animats
Horses have breeding statistics like that, with a herd stallion. Did humans go
from herd mode to something else 8,000 years ago?

~~~
sgt101
One thing to note is that the last ice age finished about 12k years ago, and
human reoccupation of very large tracts of asia, north america and europe
could not have been over night. Large areas (for example the UK north of
London) were under ice sheets, but much larger areas would have been tundra
and frozen dessert [1]

Additionally there would have been huge inundation of the coastal areas that
were previously human occupied.

The creation of new opportunities and the chaos of the disruption of old
settled communities may simply have meant that there was a multi-generational
selection for successful adventurous cowards!

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Glacial_Maximum#/media/Fi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Glacial_Maximum#/media/File:Last_glacial_vegetation_map.png)

------
ddmma
Curious but in some arab countries this still applies, so they kept this
ancient fact. Also this research conclude many male deepdown fantasies.

------
alok-g
>> By analyzing diversity in these parts, scientists are able to deduce the
numbers of female and male ancestors a population has.

Can anyone explain more on this? Specifically how is the time axis worked out
from a study of present-day volunteers?

~~~
barrkel
I'm not an expert, but the idea is that mutation rates indicate age. If a
bunch of people have a particular pattern, but they're all a little bit
different to the same degree of difference, you can figure out how old that
pattern is.

Presumably the changing bits must be in junk DNA otherwise mutation rates
would be affected by selection pressure.

------
warrenm
Sounds like those "one man", "17 women" scenarios were some kind of utopia for
men with harems

Makes you wonder about the other 16 guys, though

~~~
dragonwriter
It doesn't mean that it was one man and seventeen women reproducing at the
time, it means that male parentage at that time was a much stronger factor in
whether descendants from the line survived to the modern day than female
parentage.

~~~
dmix
That would still make one wonder about the other 16 guys and why the survival
rate of their seed was so diminished vs the 'alpha male' in the group.

The unequal structure of society that naturally comes about from capitalism,
an unevenness that has become even more prominent in modern mixed-economies
where heavy state intervention in the economy is combined with market
ideology, seems to have been far more extreme and socially destructive back in
the stone age when we were all 'living off the land' and not exploiting
resources to support a consumer centric culture...

So much of the "naturalist fallacy" and "appeal to nature" is based on a
misunderstanding or idealized view of nature.

[https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Naturalistic_fallacy](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Naturalistic_fallacy)

[https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Appeal_to_nature](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Appeal_to_nature)

~~~
simonh
The Stone Age, even the Bronze Age wasn't a capitalist society. Wealth and
power were derived from military might and traditional roles, not ownership
through capital investment by private enterprise.

~~~
dmix
If that's what you got from my comment then you must have misread it.

