
Clan Wars Blamed for Ancient Collapse of the Male Chromosome - ilamont
https://www.history.com/news/ancient-clan-wars-male-chromosome-collapse
======
dubhrosa
Why is the war hypothesis considered more likely than say a widespread, long
lived contagious disease that had significantly higher mortality in males than
females? If there was a period of widespread warfare for sustained periods,
it's hard to see how "clans" would continue to engage in warfare beyond say
50% loss of the fighting forces. Wouldn't some women have joined the clan
fighting forces also if it was an existential struggle? Why wouldn't clans
have submitted to their conquerors and joined forces against common enemies -
which was the pattern in many historical accounts of widespread warfare.

~~~
DamnYuppie
Well to be honest I believe you underestimate humanity. There are way too many
instances of clans who would fight till nearly both parties were eradicated.
Regardless of that I am not convinced that is the root cause.

I feel this whole theory misses some key elements of our ancestors. First the
idea that each male was able to reproduce at the same rate or had the same
opportunity to breed as each other; this is not how nature really works! For
most mammals only a few males get to bread each year with ALL the females in a
herd. The alpha male will do the overwhelming majority of the breading for X
number of years until displaced, i.e. dies of natural causes or is violently
displaced. Our ancestors were most likely not very different. This, in my
opinion, could be one of the reasons women in a group will synchronize their
menstrual cycles, as it would help to ensure the male could bread everyone in
a short time period and not worry about competitors sneaking in as much.

Also the idea that there were equal number of men and women needs to be looked
at. Again, in nature, there is generally way more females then males. A
healthy and diverse herd is considered to be around 70% female and 30% male.

~~~
paidleaf
> I feel this whole theory misses some key elements of our ancestors. First
> the idea that each male was able to reproduce at the same rate or had the
> same opportunity to breed as each other;

The article is talking about Y chromosomes, not the rate of successful
breeding of each male. In patrilineal clans, all males share the same Y
chromosome since they are all related. It doesn't matter which males within
the clan breed when you are analyzing Y chromosomes.

As long as a single male within the clan breeds, the Y chromosome will be
passed on.

The question is why many Y chromosomes disappeared from the gene pool. Why the
diversity in Y chromosomes declined so drastically.

> The alpha male will do the overwhelming majority of the breading for X
> number of years until displaced, i.e. dies of natural causes or is violently
> displaced.

Once again, that doesn't matter in Y chromosomal diversity analysis. It
doesn't matter whether you or your brother was "alpha". It doesn't matter
which one of you fathered most of the descendents since both you and your
brother carry the same Y chromosome.

The question is, if you were living thousands of years ago, why you, your
brother, your paternal related male cousins, etc didn't breed. IE, why your
clan's Y chromosomal legacy didn't make it while your mother, sister, female
cousin's, etc mDNA ( mitochondrial DNA ) did make it. Why did your female
genetic legacy make it while your male genetic legacy did not?

It's pretty clear that warfare played a role. There is no disease that wipes
out only the males and none that wipes out 100% of the male population. Even
if disease wiped out 99% of the males in your clan, the 1% remaining can breed
with all the females and replenish the clan and your Y chromosome would live
on.

------
wcoenen
Redirects to history.nl for me, with no article to be found.

(I'm not even in the Netherlands, and my browser doesn't ask for Dutch via
Accept-Language.)

~~~
shawn
For everyone having trouble accessing the article, here's a paste:
[https://pastebin.com/raw/S229NyJW](https://pastebin.com/raw/S229NyJW)

Actually, it's interesting reading an article with just text and nothing else.
It kind of makes me want a text-based browser mode that works on modern sites.

~~~
nerdponx
The "reader mode" in Safari and Firefox is pretty good.

~~~
vanderZwan
Now if only we could _directly_ open articles in text mode, and save ourselves
the pain of loading (or at least rendering) all the crap first. Like a right-
click menu option next to the "Open in new tab/window/private tab" options

~~~
nerdponx
As far as I can tell, the Firefox reader mode algorithm needs the entire page
loaded in order to figure out what part of the page is actual content. It's
necessary because nowadays you can't tell from the HTML alone.

~~~
vanderZwan
I guess that makes sense, but even then: loading is not the same as rendering
to screen. I don't know which of the two is the bigger drain on resources in
mobile, but it can still help.

------
mazsa
Original:
[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-04375-6](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-04375-6)

------
kentosi
I'm not an expert in this domain, but something seems a little off to me. Are
we saying that all male populations around the planet 5000 to 7000 years ago
were engaged in serious clan wars, or are we just focused on the Asian and/or
African continents?

What about populations in Australia, the Pacific Islands and other places?

~~~
bilbo0s
I'd suggest reading the Nature article linked in the top comment by hn user
mazsa.

Alternatively, you can follow the links and read the actual papers outlining
the data.

But in answer to your question, the actual data says none of those things. The
data says ONLY that male populations DECREASED long long ago. And they
decreased throughout the world. Europe, MidEast, Asia, Africa, Americas.
(Though the numbers indicate that whatever happened, more of it happened in
Europe and MidEast regions than anywhere else. Consistent with data that
hunter-gatherers proximate to agriculturalists fared particularly poorly in
this regard.)

The reasons presented to explain this decline are just hypotheses. But they,
(clan wars), are plausible to me. (Given my lay understanding of history.
Which means exactly nothing. As in most science, it's the data that's
meaningful here, and that's what you should pay attention to.)

------
stonewhite
While I do think this is an interesting argument, I fear that this may somehow
be spinned into the toxic masculinity narrative.

edit: I'm getting downvoted for adding to an argument with an unpopular
opinion?

It would be more educative of people responding to me to tell how I'm wrong,
instead of just downvoting.

~~~
bthrm
Anybody who uses that narrative as a point against men is stupid. Men were
made to fight. We would be cavemen still if it weren’t for the competitiveness
of males.

~~~
pjc50
Raising "made to" in a discussion of evolution is missing the point. We are
who we are because we survived the filters, but that doesn't imply any
particular purpose or intent let alone that we have to stay this way.

------
vivekd
I admit don't fully understand Y-chromosome lineage, but from a layman's
perspective this doesn't seem to fit.

Imagine 5 - 7000 years ago humans first started experimenting with animal
husbandry, and sedentary lifestyles in meaningful numbers. This would expose
humans to new diseases that would wipe out large portions of the population,
similar to what happened in North America when white settlers first arrived.

Imagine that certain genetic traits, found primarily in the y-chromosome makes
people more susceptible to these diseases. Or even that genetic traits found
on the x-chromosome, helped people fight off these diseases. Wouldn't that
create a similar bottleneck to what the scientists found now?

Also, since this study uses Y-chromosome DNA, isn't it possible that there was
a similar bottleneck of the female population that we simply haven't been able
to detect through DNA analysis?

Granted there were a lot of depictions of warfare in this time period, but I
don't see how that makes it different from any other period in human history.

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jSully24
I thought this was a parody on the impact of video games to our current
population.

I was wrong.

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debacle
Those Y shaped chromosomes in the splash art made my eye twitch. For anyone
curious, your Y chromosome is not Y shaped.

~~~
hashkb
And the helix in the background...

At least the cave painting of the battle proves the research is valid.

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fifnir
Great, I get redirected to
"[https://canalhistoria.es/"](https://canalhistoria.es/") instead of the
article.

Smart devs who can read IPs strike again...

------
mkirklions
tl;dr, over the course of 1,000 years clans fought themselves over resources
and only a few families/males survived.

As a result, a male may have hundreds of children.

This is somewhat similar to the Genghis Kahn situation where millions of
people has his DNA.

Btw, I didnt think this was a surprise.

------
enlightenedfool
"5,000 to 7,000 years ago wasn’t the best time to be a male". Not now either.
In a different way.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrhHkQhglig](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrhHkQhglig).
Of course, no one cares. Once we build a sperm in lab, we can get rid of men
for good.

~~~
PrimHelios
Go back to /r/blackpill. Hackernews isn't the place for this kind of thing.

