I am a web developer by profession, trained in fine arts.  My specialty in web design is creating websites and website features that enhance communication, eliminate barriers to cooperation, empowering individuals to accomplish social and political-change goals.  I work with more than 1,000 organizations across the United States, teaching leaders of organizations how to use these new tools to break down barriers to change.

I also run a firm that serves over 400 businesses by building, maintaining and marketing their websites.  Trained in the art of online organizing by Moveon, I advanced to the position of volunteer national coordinator.  There I learned firsthand how to combine a focused, goal-based business frame of reference with a deep desire to encourage societal transformation.

My background is fine arts.  As an artist, I specialize in brush and ink.  The way that I have exercised my art also involves the breaking down of barriers.  First, I seek to let go of conscious control of subject and process and allow my unconscious to determine the path and content of my productions.  Second, the content itself, when successful, creates bridges between separated concepts, connections between not-obviously-related ideas.

I am not suggesting this qualifies me to be a person that shows how three different academic disciplines, separated by publishing opportunities, faculty, geographic space and academic traditions are, with no awareness, speaking the same language.  Still, consider that an artist trained to transcend barriers and communicate the experience of transcending barriers might be a useful translator when it comes to communicating how evolutionary biology, neuropsychology and anthropology are working with an identical, describable dynamic.

A theorist is a storyteller stringing together patterns of relationship and information into narrative threads that can be explained and understood as a sequence of events.  What the theorist may be forming into narratives may have little to do with sequence.  Experience is multilayered, characterized by a number of nested and non-nested hierarchical levels violated by intralevel connections, often, if not usually, in a context characterized more by simultaneity than sequence.  Observing the work of theorists in different disciplines is to understand their struggle of cramming outside-the-box, non-narrative experience into sequences of sentences that reflect how humans talk to themselves and to one another.

Artists are often trained to communicate non-narrative experience through narrative or non-narrative media.  This is one of the things that makes art nurturing.  Art provides a window into the non-narrative experience of being human.  I would argue that non-narrative experience is most of our experience.  That so many of us are so unfamiliar with our non-narrative selves suggests why our academic disciplines are so separated from one another.  We are not trained to make connections, particularly when it involves connecting to the non-narrative, simultaneous nature of existence.  Still, theorists seek to understand how things work and translate those workings into an understandable story.

As an artist/theorist, let me translate three existing stories, theories that explain how humans are humans in evolutionary biology, anthropology and neuropsychology, and show how these three stories are the same story by making up a new story that combines the three.  Confined to words and sentences, this is a challenge.  I have spent more time over the years seeking ways to translate or explain the ideas that my theory represents than I have spent time working on the theory.  Yet, that is not exactly true.  To seek ways to communicate pattern is also to experience the pattern.  Over and over again, looking for a new way to tell the story, I stumbled across new aspects of the source content.  Theory, as in art, is about experience and communication.  Separating the two is perhaps impossible.

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The study of social structure explores the polarities of female choice, with commanding, self-assured females relating to relatively cooperative males at one end arcing over to highly dominant males controlling procreation opportunities through guile and/or violence.  We observe this spectrum in our great ape cousins, with the bonobo alpha female (the alpha male is often her son) leading egalitarian, roving bands contrasted with a dominating gorilla male managing a mostly cooperative harem of females.  The same paradigm carries over to humans.  Only, the human species exhibits both polarities at once.  It’s not so obvious today because those of us in the West and the ancient East have been immersed in patrifocal, patrilineal social structure for several thousand years.  Nevertheless, how we evolved as a species and how we transform as a society have everything to do with social structure dynamics and how we travel between the two social structure polarities.

The anthropological literature describes a number of environmental variables believed to encourage a community or species’ adherence to one of the two social structures.  In this work, I seek to show how social structure can be explained by evolutionary biological processes of sexual selection and heterochronic theory in combination with neuropsychological discoveries.  Heterochronic theory describes the influence of changing rates of maturation and timing on species over time.

Just as there is an arc of behaviors consonant with matrifocal social structure on the left and patrifocal social structure on the right, there is also an arc of features associated with whether an individual or species exhibits maturational delay or maturational acceleration.  Maturational delay can manifest as neoteny or the prolongation of ancestor infant features into the adults of their descendants.  The classic example is our chimp-like progenitors having babies with big eyes, large heads relative to body size, small jaws, playful dispositions, tendencies to express affection and an inclination to be curious.  Over millions of years, those features manifested later and later in individual ontogeny until modern human adults looked and behaved a lot like our ancestors’ children.  The reverse of this process is called acceleration.  With acceleration, ancestor adult features withdrew to earlier and earlier ontogenetic stages over time until ancestor adult features appeared in the infants of their descendants.

When describing how humans evolve and transform, it is not useful to separate neoteny, acceleration and social structure.  The reason this is the case is because human maturation rates are modified by a number of different environmental variables that simultaneously change social structure in a predictable, complementary fashion.  When heterochronic theory is describing changing rates and timing of maturation, it is also describing how social structures regulate the speed of transformation and reversals of direction.  In other words, whether a human society exhibits matrifocal or patrifocal features has everything to do with which heterochronic dynamic is engaged by which sex within a social structure.

This has a lot to do with neuropsychological discoveries that a mother’s testosterone levels regulate the testosterone levels and maturation rates of her progeny.  A high-testosterone mother (inclined toward matrifocal social structure) gives birth to high-testosterone daughters and low-testosterone sons (the standard matrifocal paradigm).  A low-testosterone mother (tending toward patrifocal social structure) births low-testosterone daughters and high-testosterone (patrifocal prototypes) sons.  In addition, let us assume that the same applies to estrogen, though there has been little research on how estrogen proclivities are passed to progeny.  Let’s say that a high-estrogen mother gives birth to high-estrogen daughters and low-estrogen sons.  A low-estrogen mother births low-estrogen daughters and high-estrogen sons, mirroring in an opposite fashion the testosterone dynamic.  Hypothesizing this to be true, an extremely potent hypothesis engages.

A twin paradigm is established.  Maturation rates manifest as different social structures depending on which sex is provided choice when picking a mate.  High-testosterone, accelerating females mating with low-testosterone, neotenizing males engender matrifocal social structure with commanding females choosing among cooperating males.  This paradigm is enhanced when the females in addition exhibit high estrogen, males maintaining relatively low estrogen.  Estrogen drives sexual selection and focuses on the features of a child.  Estrogen enhances discrimination and caring.  Match a high-testosterone female with a high-estrogen female and you get a very discriminating, commanding female seeking childlike qualities in her mate.  You have the two sexes essentially evolving in two different directions, ontogenetically neotenizing and accelerating their ontogenetic stages in opposite directions.  At the same time, the two sexes are manifesting as complementary opposites.

The reverse dynamic is evident in a patrifocal social structure.  High-testosterone males, maturational-accelerated males, pick low-testosterone, maturational-delayed females exhibiting neoteny or the features of children.  If, in addition, the males are high in estrogen relative to the females, then the males will be even more dramatically inclined to sexually select those females with childlike characteristics.  Not incidentally, the low-estrogen females will be more inclined to participate in female infanticide, a hallmark of patrifocal society.  Again, you have the two sexes evolving in two different directions while neotenizing and accelerating ontogenetic stages in opposite directions, female neotenizing, males accelerating, the reverse of the matrifocal paradigm.

Evolution unfolds in a pattern of the sexes exhibiting complementary opposite hormonal constellations, with maturation rates moving in opposite directions, flipping processes when a society changes from matrifocal to patrifocal.

When observing patterns playing across several disciplines, one sees the same dynamics manifest in the observations of handedness distributions in studies conducted by neuropsychologists.  Handedness is closely associated with cerebral lateralization, which is informed by heterochronic dynamics.  Observing those at the left end of handedness distributions, the random-handed or those without a gene for being right-handed (which is the same as having a tendency to have a smaller right cerebral hemisphere), is to observe humans with matrifocal tendencies, the ancient humans, the humans before the emergence of speech, cerebral lateralization and right-handedness.  At the right end of the arc of handedness are the extreme right-handers, the patrifocal.  Most of us sit somewhere in the middle.

Humans, over generations, move left or right along this handedness arc, depending on what influences them or their parents to exhibit maturational delay (neoteny) or maturational acceleration.  There are a number of impact points, such as the mother’s womb, where testosterone and estrogen levels are impacted and maturation rates and sexual selection proclivities are repressed or enhanced, and even reversed.

We now have two complementing dynamics powering social change and evolution, pushing and pulling individuals closer and further away from ancestral infant or adult stages.

Mother’s testosterone levels > progeny maturation rate > social structure proclivity > evolutionary trajectory.

Mother’s estrogen levels > progeny ability to exercise aesthetic discrimination and caring behavior > social structure proclivity > evolutionary trajectory.

I hypothesize two feedback loops allowing multiple impact points between ontogeny and society and environment.  Mother’s testosterone level > progeny maturation rate > social structure proclivity > mother’s testosterone level.  Mother’s estrogen level > progeny ability to exercise aesthetic discrimination and caring behavior > social structure proclivity > Mother’s estrogen level.  The environment can intervene at all three levels of both loops by either influencing maturation rates and timing (via testosterone) or by influencing the intensity of mate selection criteria (via estrogen), thus modifying the trajectory of social and human evolution.

Social structure (anthropology), maturation rates and sexual selection proclivities (evolutionary biology) and neurological observations (neuropsychology) all focus on an identical process as they seek to understand human and societal evolution.  An artist trained to see connections and transcend barriers, an artist that also designs systems to encourage social change, has an advantage in looking at not-obvious-connections among different academic disciplines.  That advantage has to do with assumptions.  As a working advocate for social change, I assume we’re all connected and all the same.

The biological concept of a balanced polymorphism applies to society exhibiting a seamless gradation of individual types with an emphasis on heterozygote advantage.  Neuropsychologist Marian Annett reframed being left-handed as being random-handed and then observed a seamless arc of handedness from extreme left-handers at one end to the extreme right-handed at the other.  The left-handed had no gene for being left-handed.  They had no gene for being handed at all.  Annett hypothesized that over the course of our evolution, the gene for right-handedness emerged, which resulted in facility for speech.  Still, Annett hypothesized that the older genotype, the random-handed, retained importance.

Most people in a society are neither extreme left nor right.  Many people display a heterozygote advantage by exhibiting features of both random-handed and right-handed dispositions.  Still, as a society transforms, it drifts in the directions staked out at the extremes.  It is often those members of a society living at the poles that manifest the diseases, disorders and conditions that suggest the difficulties of living at the boundaries.  In addition, many of the most talented in a society spring from the left, the random-handed pole, the older genotype.  There are advantages to having a brain not wired for speech, a brain without the right hemisphere dramatically diminished in size with a smaller corpus callosum.

An evolutionary dynamic, a society-transforming dynamic, drives our species and our societies as they transform.  The process revolves around the modulation of testosterone and estrogen levels, which modify rates of maturation, sexually selected aesthetics and a compulsion to connect.  Testosterone regulates maturation rates, prolonging and accelerating maturation largely by raising and lowering a mother’s uterine testosterone levels.  Estrogen regulates testosterone by providing a compulsion to evaluate through sexual selection, while estrogen also engenders connection by engaging in attraction.  Annett’s balanced polymorphism noting handedness and cerebral lateralization is noting testosterone’s influence on maturation.  Heterochronic theory outlines the processes of neoteny (prolonging infant ancestor stages into the adult stages of descendants) and the processes of acceleration (withdrawing adult ancestor stages into the infant stages of descendants), which are driven by the modulation of testosterone.

Social structure is the skeletal center of a society.  Observing social structure, we observe the particular balanced polymorphism of a society.  Social structure is constructed of the testosterone/estrogen prototypes.  Those with a heterozygote advantage exhibit features that are a moderation of the extremes.

In the explanation below, t = low testosterone, T = high testosterone, e = low estrogen, E = high estrogen.

Female te mates with Male TE        Conventional Patrifocal
Female tE mates with Male Te        Warrior Patrifocal
Female Te mates with Male tE        Contemporary Matrifocal
Female TE mates with Male te         Classic Matrifocal

or

Female te mates with Male TE means low-testosterone and estrogen females, high-testosterone and estrogen male.

Female tE mates with Male Te translates into a low-testosterone, high-estrogen female being with a high-testosterone, low-estrogen male.

Female Te mates with Male tE means high-testosterone, low-estrogen female joining with a low-testosterone, high-estrogen male.

Female TE mates with Male te exhibits a high-testosterone and estrogen female marrying a low-testosterone and estrogen male.

These are the outliers.  The heterozygote advantage suggests that most people are in middle zones, and they are not exhibiting particularly high or low levels of either hormone, though there are periods in an individual’s life when he or she flirts with the extremes.  Still, we are hypothesizing that societies will tend to lean powerfully in a matrifocal or patrifocal direction, evidencing populations with tendencies to fall in two of the four quadrants.  Societies today will exhibit examples of all four quadrants.

At this point in time, I am estimating we evolved in small bands exhibiting Warrior Patrifocal and Classic Matrifocal features.  With the emergence of Asian agricultural societies, Conventional Patrifocal societies engaged.  In the last several hundred years, we’re seeing the appearance of Contemporary Matrifocal.  Societal balanced polymorphisms are moderating to accommodate changing environments.

The mother’s testosterone levels always propel the two sexes in opposite directions (maturational delayed vs. maturational accelerated).  A high-testosterone mother births high-testosterone daughters and low-testosterone sons.  The opposite is also true.  Low-testosterone mothers create low-testosterone daughters and high-testosterone sons.  The mother’s womb is the furnace where social structure is enabled, because complementary opposites are the necessary result of her productions.

I am hypothesizing that the mother’s estrogen levels fashion her children’s exhibition of estrogen in a similar way, though there are no studies that have been conducted that refute or support this theory.  Hypothesizing this theory to be true, we see that the paradigm complements the established testosterone dynamic, outlining how human biological evolution and social transformation are an identical, single, seamless process.

Domineering, caring, discriminating men choose cooperative women (Female te/Male TE).

Domineering men choose cooperative, caring, discriminating women (Female tE/Male Te).

Commanding women choose creative, cooperative, caring, discriminating men (Female Te/Male tE).

Commanding, caring, discriminating women choose creative, cooperative, aloof men (Female TE/Male te).

While testosterone levels inform maturation rates and directions, estrogen levels compel evaluation and expressions of connection.  Placing high estrogen levels with males compels males to focus on females exhibiting features of the young while exercising discrimination on who is chosen.  Note, both patrifocal and matrifocal societies can exhibit high E males, but the results can be radically different, as in patrifocal Asian and matrifocal Scandinavian societies.

These are the four-pole pairings from which a human balanced polymorphism is created.  Eight kinds of individuals are involved.  Again, most of us feature a combination of these prototypes–our testosterone and estrogen levels are not at the extremes–but understanding the human template allows us insight into how societies transform and our species evolves (transformation occurring at the extremes) and provides understanding of particular difficulties that plague society, such as the diseases and conditions that congregate around the social structure hormonal outliers.

Understanding handedness and its connection to testosterone and estrogen provides insight into the origins of societies and the unique way that humans have evolved.

Consider that human evolution unfolds in a fashion not dissimilar to the way an accordion player produces melody and harmony while inflating and deflating his instrument over time.  The accordion player may observe his audience and modify cadence or change the tune depending on whether folks are dancing, how fast they’re dancing or whether they are paying attention at all.  The instrumentalist’s environment informs the tune he plays and how he plays it.

Human communities are composed of many types of folks.  Not just the individuals in communities are molded by evolutionary processes, but the communities themselves behave like selected targets with those communities that exhibit a variety of useful features that encourage a thriving population surviving and procreating.  This has been called a balanced polymorphism.  A wide variety of human types can contribute to a healthy, balanced polymorphism and a healthy community.

For example, in contemporary society, we observe the artists, caregivers and athletes performing and serving while exhibiting strengths peculiar to their particular neurology, psychology and physical proclivities.  Politicians and business people do what they do best, stoking the economy and growing opportunities.  Aesthetics and usefulness combine to create a satisfying social experience and a balanced society.

It has been hypothesized by neuroscientists such as Norman Geschwind and Marian Annett that there is an arc of human beings in contemporary society that spread from extreme left-handers exhibiting specific useful features to extreme right-handers revealing a different variety of useful characteristics.  Geschwind and Annett suggest that those revealing features of both polarities are perhaps the people best suited to survive and transcend in society, but that the outliers, though negatively impacted by their somatic flirtation with the extremes, and particularly those at the extreme left end of this seamless gradation of individuals, often reveal gifts that the middle zone has less access to.  In other words, a successful, societal-balanced polymorphism encourages a useful, productive status quo often via a sacrifice by those at the extremes.

Annett places an emphasis on language use by hypothesizing that those revealing tendencies toward right-handedness display an enhanced ability to engage in speech.  It seems this occurred at least partly because most right-handed people have experienced a diminution of their right hemisphere by having had synapses pruned during early years.  The left hemisphere, that lobe most inclined to encourage speech, survived childhood unscathed.  Yet, all those at the left end of the spectrum, people often with both hemispheres close to the same size or exactly the same size because the right hemisphere was never downsized, display a variety of skills, strengths and gifts that make their contributions to society a necessary part of the societal balance.  Annett estimates that 30 percent of society fits these left-leaning neurologies, with 18.5 percent being random-handed or exhibiting no tendency toward handedness at all.  The random-handed exhibit left and right-handedness about half of the time.  Almost all of society’s left-handed come from this 18.5 percent.

I hypothesize that two hormones drive the directions that the accordion player uses to guide our evolution with tunes that vary over time.

Testosterone is evident in Annett’s work noting the influence of the random-handed on one side and the strong right-handed at the other.  This was Geschwind’s insight into the process.  Behind Annett’s balanced polymorphism are the low-testosterone males, high-testosterone females on the left with the high-testosterone males, low-testosterone females on the right.  These people are often language-challenged on the left, very language-familiar on the right.  Annett hypothesizes that at the left we have the older genotype, before the appearance of the genes that engaged to compel a diminishing in size of the right lobe, which enhances speech.  The older genotype, the random-handers, exhibit a variety of physical and mental maladies and conditions and do many things extraordinarily well, such as architecture and playing tennis (both have very high percentages of left-handers).  Testosterone controls rates of maturation.  Specifically, a mother’s uterine testosterone levels impact her children’s maturation rates and testosterone levels, a determination made while they are in the womb.  A mother with high testosterone (T) levels births high T females and low t males.  A low t mother creates low t females and high T males.  High T females, low t males are the left end of Annett’s societal-balanced polymorphism.  High T males and low t females stake out the right end of this arc.  Folks in the middle, most of us, exhibit moderations of the left/right themes.

Estrogen is the other hormone encouraging the ways that societies unfold.  Estrogen does not manage maturation rates, but it does two things informing how evolution operates and societies engage.  We live in largely a patrifocal society that has mythologized testosterone for thousands of years.  The impact of estrogen is largely hidden to our eyes, but it is performing the complementary opposite action of testosterone, propelling the balanced polymorphism of society in just that way that the accordion player needs to both expand and contract his instrument to make folks dance.

The evidence of estrogen may not emerge in the handedness appraisals that Annett conducts, with estrogen having no direct effect on maturation.  Still, estrogen compels rates of maturation, even changing those rates by making nuanced determinations.  Estrogen is the foundation of sexual selection.  Estrogen chooses between alternatives, making decisions on which of several is ideal.  Estrogen makes judgments.  The foundation of aesthetics is estrogen.  The peacock tail is a direct result of peahen predilection.  When females pick mates, they choose those males that satisfy a very particular criterion for success.  In addition, estrogen compels caring and caregiving.  Estrogen makes determinations, offers solace, communicates affection.  Estrogen connects.

Testosterone reveals a dynamic whereby the mother’s uterine testosterone levels inform the social structure features of her young.  A high T mom engenders matrifocal progeny, commanding females and cooperative males.  A low t mother contributes to a patrifocal society with dominating males and cooperative females.  There is no evidence, because there have not been any studies, to suggest that a mother’s estrogen levels inform the estrogen levels of her progeny.  Let’s presuppose this to be the case.  Let’s assume that high-estrogen (E) mother’s create high E daughters and low e sons.  Low-estrogen mothers would birth low e daughters and high E sons.  Hypothesizing this to be the case, we would conclude that the outlier or extreme left and right ends would almost always exhibit sexual partners with complementary opposite testosterone and estrogen levels, reflecting family of origin.  At the left end of Annett’s balanced polymorphism you’d have either female Te mating with male tE or female TE mating with male te.  At the right end you’d get male Te mating with female tE, or male TE mating with female te.  Our balanced polymorphism would likely reveal all eight types of individuals, all four pairings.  Still living in a patrifocal society, we’d expect to see something like the 70% drift in the direction of patrifocal prototypes (Male Te mating with female tE, or male TE mating with female te).  Yet, we’d expect to see different societies reveal varying balanced polymorphisms, depending on how social structures are emphasized.

Consider that the accordion melody that we’ve been dancing to has varied over the millennia and around the world.  Consider that Marian Annett’s hypothesized older genotype, the random-handed, is matrifocal-based, evidencing high-testosterone women and low-testosterone men.  Add some harmony by considering that for the last several hundred thousand years, perhaps millions of years, up until the emergence of the gene for right-handedness, we evolved mostly, but not solely, in these matrifocal, random-handed societies with high-testosterone women, low-testosterone men, and estrogen complementing the equation, with the women also high in estrogen, men low in estrogen.

Females were commanding.  Females were exercising choice, choosing males they thought best met their criteria for procreation.  Females chose cooperative, low-testosterone, males.

Other postings on this blog have gone into some detail describing my just-so story hypothesizing the kinds of song-and-dance-driven societies that could lead to the kind of exponential brain-size increases leading to the point that right-handedness became selected.  High-estrogen, aesthetically driven females, commanding females high in testosterone, the females that studies have supported make up the left end of Annett’s balanced polymorphism, are the complementary opposite of the males competing to satisfy the female aesthetic by being the best at what the females want them to do while achieving procreation opportunities, which would be to dance up a storm, delaying maturation, neotenizing, encouraging massive synapse production, slowly over time becoming more human until the gene to diminish the right hemisphere engaged.

I interpret Annett’s work to suggest our origins are matrifocal.  Over the course of our evolution we’d expect to see a matrifocal balanced polymorphism revealing a far larger percentage of the random-handed balanced by a smaller group of low-testosterone females picked by high-testosterone males.  In the event that the environment becomes hostile, the balance could shift, with high-testosterone males moving quickly to become highly valued, particularly if chosen by females for their commanding features.  Ancient societies can shift from matrifocal to patrifocal fairly seamlessly if a wide range of genotypes are always present.  Simply by changing uterine hormone levels, sudden shifts in evolution can occur.

Let me describe an example of how the environment can propel changes in evolution.  An increase of fat in diets in prehistoric societies might have compelled shifts in a different evolutionary, social structure direction.  Patrifocal tribes or bands, moving to a new location or experiencing a change in their environment, might have been introduced to a cornucopia of sustenance in the form of dramatic fat increases.  This increase in fat would have increased a female’s testosterone levels, increased her estrogen levels and decreased the male’s testosterone levels.  The result might have been a sudden shift in social structure, with children produced exhibiting matrifocal features in a single generation.  And, of course, if fat disappears from the diet, things shift back.

Consider the dramatic shifts occurring in our societies today.  Fat increases in diet may be contributing to a surge in a matrifocal direction.  Female choice is becoming the default in the West.  As diets change in Asia with dramatic increases in fat consumption, we may see a fall-off in female infanticide and female foeticide as patrifocal priorities disappear and high T, high E females become common.  (The conventional Asian female is very low in t and e.)  Left-handedness will likely increase as the Asian balanced polymorphism drifts left, allowing increased numbers of the genetically creative and the innovative to emerge in the wombs of women influenced by what they eat.  Formerly stable Asian culture would transform.

The accordion player makes many melodies as he expands and contracts his way across the dance floor.  Watching and listening to his audience to decide which melody next to play, he pays particularly close attention to what’s for dinner.

I’ve talked about the effect of sunlight on the pineal gland changing testosterone levels of immigrants from equatorial regions. Equatorial people with established, normal, daily 30% fluctuations in testosterone move to northern climates and experience fluctuations that last for months, thus compelling radical changes in a mother’s uterine testosterone levels. Unusually high or low mother’s uterine testosterone levels can cause unusually high or low testosterone levels in her children, translating into exaggerated maturational delay and acceleration (depending on the season of conception) that can contribute to autism.

In previous pieces, I’ve noted these effects on Jewish and American Black populations, with a skewing of populations toward the extremes of maturational delay and acceleration evidenced by a number of diseases and disorders characterized by these hormonal extremes. I would predict that both these populations would evidence higher percentages of autism and left-handedness, perhaps higher in places like Milwaukee and Minnesota than Houston and Miami. In just the way the Somalis in Minneapolis and St. Paul are exhibiting higher rates of autism, I would suggest that this Somali population would exhibit higher rates of left-handedness.

Another population influenced by these processes are the Latino immigrants from South and Central America. Studies could be conducted tracing the effects of sunlight on the pineal by noting the country of origins of Latino individuals, their proximity to the equator and how far north those individuals have traveled.

There are several issues.

First, how often do these people return to their country of origin? The more frequent their returns and the longer their stays, the less influenced they will be by the testosterone pineal effect.

Second, conceiving and bearing their children in Seattle vs. San Diego will likely influence the mother’s testosterone levels in different ways. I would predict that Seattle Latinos have higher incidence of left-handedness, autism and other symptoms related to these issues, such as allergies.

Third, there may be father effects. Recent age-of-father studies suggest older males are more likely to sire autistic children. This may be related to a father’s testosterone levels dropping with age. If the father’s testosterone levels at the time of sperm creation influence the testosterone levels and maturation rates of his children, then where the children are conceived (how far north or south) may influence the children’s maturational disposition.

Fourth, not all indigenous South and Central American populations share the same social structure tendencies. Egalitarian communities such as Mayan peoples with matrifocal tendencies exhibit male maturational delay and female maturational acceleration unlike some South American tribes with the opposite disposition. Individuals from matrifocal communities are more vulnerable to testosterone pineal effects than their patrifocal counterparts.

Fifth, if an indigenous American or Latino woman or man mates with a Black, Asian or White, the progeny may reveal features or characteristics of the last common ancestor, a not uncommon effect. This, in combination with testosterone pineal influences, may in combination further thrust children toward male maturational delay, female maturational acceleration and autism.

Sixth, it is possible that there will be multigenerational echo effects. Second-generation Latinos marrying and then conceiving children at the same time of the year as they themselves were conceived may further boost the influence of seasonal testosterone-pineal effects. Whereas the first generation may not have exhibited effects of extreme maturational delay or acceleration, a second or later generation may show those influences, particularly if other environmental testosterone-influencing variables are in play, for example, if the mother smokes.

Seventh, there are many environmental effects influencing testosterone levels in males and females. A Latino mom eating an American high-fat diet, unfamiliar to her before her migration, can dramatically increase testosterone and estrogen levels, influencing her children’s uterine environment.

In the way that we observe Blacks and Jews impacted by changes in geography, we are likely to see the same variables influencing Latino populations. The fact that there is often frequent travel back to the country of origin will mitigate the testosterone-pineal effect. Other influences noted above may exaggerate them. Just as there have been dramatic increases in allergies for Blacks and Jews, watch for such symptoms appearing in Latinos. Other maladies influenced by testosterone levels are also in play, such as prostate cancer. Autism is not the only condition influenced by testosterone levels.

These are the effects that we can observe by tracing the paths of immigrants in the Americas. What of South-to-North immigrant routines in other parts of the world? We’d hypothesize immigrants from India to the U. K. To manifest these effects, there are populations of southern peoples in Scandinavia. What have those communities been experiencing?

Two biological processes impact the American Black population, resulting in increased learning disabilities, specific medical maladies and challenges not familiar to most other ethnicities and most whites of European origins. In addition to the challenges of these biological circumstances, as a result of these processes, the American Black population is also blessed with gifts that provide recognition and respect, and now the presidency.

There are three primary genetic pools in Africa. One genetic source is believed to have resulted in literally all other humans that have distributed themselves about the world since the diaspora of 50,000–80,000 years ago. The other two are far smaller, located in central and east/central Africa. All three are relatively ancient compared to the many other ethnicities across the planet.

Darwin observed, while breeding pigeons, that when two widely divergent threads or strains mate or blend, having had no genetic contact for a prolonged period of time, the progeny often reveals traits of the last common ancestor. For example, Chinese pigeons were bred in isolation from European pigeons for more than 2,000 years. When cross-bred, they revealed features of the Roc pigeon, ancestor to both derivations.

Breeders would sometimes observe a surge of archaic features that would offer robust health to strains long separated from their origins. Sometimes individuals would emerge that seemed an echo from the past, less useful for their purposes.

American Blacks in large measure are a mix of African Blacks and a variety of other European and indigenous American ethnicities. This mixture has resulted in an American population infused with the neurological and physiological repercussions of the emergence of features of ancient archetypes in the present day. At an extreme, many American Blacks have been burdened by learning disabilities as they seek to navigate written languages, while at the same time they are gifted by a facility with speech and dance.

There are negatives and plusses in this mixed genetic landscape. There may be those carrying very old prespeech genetics, carrying facility communicating in gesture and song, with neurologies demanding constant rhythm and touch. They are not born into an environment mirroring those demands. These may be some of the children that become autistic.

Profoundly complicating the implications of crossed genetics is the impact of seasons on genetics cued to equatorial light patterns. Peoples living near the equator are used to 30% testosterone fluctuations responding to diurnal (daily) light cycles. Taken from their geographic origins to a land with seasons, the pineal gland interprets winter as night, summer as day, resulting in testosterone thresholds that last months instead of hours. There are a number of implications. One area of impact is the mother’s uterine testosterone, changing according to the season, modifying the maturation rates of her children according to their season of birth. A mother’s testosterone level regulates progeny testosterone levels and maturation rates. The result is children skewing toward the maturational extremes, with higher and lower testosterone thresholds than the standard societal distribution. The result is both maturational-delayed males and maturational-accelerated females (susceptible to autism, learning disabilities and specific medical maladies) and maturational-accelerated males and maturational-delayed females (susceptible to a different variety of medical maladies and different learning disabilities).

Marian Annett hypothesized two different types of dyslexia based on two different kinds of neurologies. One set had difficulty with phonology, the other side was challenged by being able to visually represent language. I would predict that the American Black population would display both these forms of dyslexia at higher rates than other populations based upon the varying thresholds of mothers’ uterine testosterone levels. I would also predict strong opposite season-of-birth correlations.

Mixing formerly separated genetic populations and exposing equatorial populations to changing seasons are two ways to both compel challenges and offer gifts. Pushed to hormonal extremes with unconventional metabolic and maturation rates, individuals both suffer and transcend. The astonishing number of gifted black athletes and orators has much to do with impacts noted above. Barack Obama is just one example of the gifted, lanky, left-handed, brilliant communicator, the classic maturational-delayed male. Perhaps with increased funding in education, many more will be able to take advantage of the unique biological circumstances that have resulted in the Black American.

A superb 25-year study in the UK by Marian Annett ending in the 1990s seemed to prove that in that part of the UK, left-handedness was not increasing over time. It’s been a difficult issue to parse out, what with left-handedness being repressed before WW II. When conventional wisdom declared that forcing children to switch hands would encourage stuttering, schools withdrew from demanding all children use the right hand. A result has been that though it looks like the number of left-handers has been increasing over the decades, it is obvious that institutions stopping the repression of left-handers has skewed the numbers.

A similar effect is seen in Asia. Society has strongly encouraged that the left hand not be used. The rates of left-handedness in many parts of Asia are 2% and lower. It’s difficult to determine the true handedness percentages.

The same effect comes into play with autism. Though it seems there have been dramatic rises in autism over the last twenty years, many believe we just have more refined evaluation protocols with more attention being placed upon those individuals exhibiting unconventional behaviors.

The thesis presented in this work makes several predictions regarding handedness and autism, two issues that I believe go hand in hand.

It has been noted that there have been increases in autism in Silicone Valley. I would also look for higher percentages of left-handedness among that population. This population of highly skilled, abstract thinkers engaged in innovation suggests the presence of left-spectrum, low-testosterone male, high-testosterone female prototypes of matrifocal society. This would be an enclave of the future.

Among the Somali of Minnesota, where autism is increasing, I’d also estimate increased percentages of left-handers. Where light influences a mother’s testosterone levels though pineal gland misinterpretation of the seasons (the pineal gland still thinking light is following equatorial, daily 30% fluctuations, maintaining ongoing high or low thresholds for several months instead of several hours), more left-handed children will emerge. Also, more strongly right-handed children will be produced as the center of the balanced polymorphism (the seamless gradations from strong left-handers to strong right-handers) disappears. This will result in increased prostate cancer (high-testosterone males) in this population after the children become adults. Many additional maladies characterized by hormonal markers will also be higher in this population.

I have hypothesized that in Scandinavia, the population exhibits neotenous characteristics in both sexes as a result of prolonging ontogeny to allow adults to derive vitamins from dairy in combination with lightening the skin to absorb vitamin D. When both sexes exhibit neoteny, we are hypothesizing that the males have relatively high estrogen resulting in a determined male-aesthetic focus, where they choose females with features of the very young. We see in Scandinavia, unlike in neotenous, patrifocal Asia, a powerful matrifocal tendency exhibited by a society focused on partnership societal values. I predict higher percentages of left-handers in Scandinavia.

In matrifocal West Africa, one would expect to discover higher percentages of left-handers, and this is the case. One would also predict this to be the case in Polynesia based upon egalitarian social structures. There are indigenous American populations with egalitarian societies. Is there increased left-handedness in those populations or has there been too much sharing of genetics between contiguous matrilineal and patrilineal societies?

Consider that the direction that Scandinavia has gone is a trajectory being followed by other Western industrialized societies. Let me suggest that this is happening on several levels. The 1990s Swedish intervention to temporarily nationalize banks in exchange for equity is the action that the UK engaged in early this past October, followed by the other EU nations, followed by the U.S. This reversed a U. S. direction taken two weeks before. Scandinavian nations exhibit an intuition for the healing power of the commons. These intuitions emerge from the biological imperatives of neotenous neurologies. The values of egalitarian, partnership society have their roots in high-testosterone women mating with low-testosterone, high-estrogen men.

Watch for increases in left-handedness in American, white, urban populations mirroring the pathway taken by the Scandinavians. Observe high-testosterone, low-estrogen women pairing off with low-testosterone, high-estrogen men. These would be slimmer peoples, like the Scandinavians, but not necessarily blond and blue eyed. These changes take more than a single generation.

Observe Jewish and Black Americans experiencing the same effects as the Somalis in Minnesota but not so extreme, revealing increased numbers of left-handedness as these two formerly nearly equatorial populations continue to experience hormonal polarization to the extremes of society’s balanced polymorphism. Again watch for the emergence of the Scandinavian hormonal prototype with slim couples, commanding women, cooperative men. Classic matrifocal pairings will also be in evidence, high-testosterone, high-estrogen women marrying low-testosterone, low-estrogen men. These women will often be lefties, but will be large, not tall.

Studies exploring these issues have not been consistent. With left-handedness only recently being relieved of sinister implications and autism evaluation procedures still not universal across the world, we’ve a ways to go before we’re comparing apples to apples. Still, these predictions are based on evolutionary biological principles manifesting in society today.

In the neuropsychological literature, there is periodic discussion on why left-handed women, women generally, as a group that are less often left-handed than men, birth more left-handed children than left-handed men.

Long story short, the three-discipline, central thesis of this website states that a mother’s uterine testosterone levels determine her children’s testosterone levels and their maturation rates.  The sexes tend to emerge as complementary opposites.  A high-testosterone (T) woman birthing high T girls and low-testosterone (t) boys.  A low t mother births high T boys and low t girls.  A person’s testosterone levels inform that person’s maturation rate.

An individual’s testosterone levels also inform their social structure proclivity.  High T females mate with low t males in our hypothetical matrifocal society.  (We hypothesize estrogen is a vital matching variable, but because we are suggesting that estrogen plays little part in the establishment of maturation rates and proclivity toward left-handedness, I’m leaving estrogen out of this part of this discussion.) When a mother’s uterine testosterone levels radically change, or a high T mother experiences environmental prods further elevating T levels, her progeny can reflect that elevation both in their testosterone levels and in their maturation rates.

What then happens is a shift in time.

I hypothesize that we evolved over hundreds of thousands of years from mostly matrifocal societies into patrifocal societies over the last 50,000 years but particularly in the last 6,500.  As children acquire maturation rate changes through their mother’s testosterone levels that propel them to a matrifocal past, they shift back physiologically, neurologically and hormonally to a former ancestral prototype.

We perform an ontogenetic slide in the opposite direction than we’d been going.  Males with lower t ontogenetically delay instead of accelerating.  Males accelerate in a patrifocal society over time.  Females with higher T ontogenetically accelerate instead of delaying.  Females delay (acquire neotenic features) in a patrifocal society.

A mother’s changing testosterone levels can reverse a son’s or daughter’s ontogenetic and evolutionary direction.

Over the course of our matrifocal evolution, accelerating females acquired language first, practicing left-cerebral dominance first, reflected in a more common use of the right hand.  Acceleration involves the condensation or drawing of features that appeared later in the ontogeny of ancestors (i.e., during adulthood) into earlier ontogeny, transposing features of adulthood into youth.  Right-hemisphere synapse pruning, perhaps an echo of pubertal synapse pruning appearing earlier in ontogeny, resulted in the nonrandom-handed brain with two different sized hemispheres and a smaller corpus callosum at the root of language use and right-handedness.

Women got language and right-handedness first.  These, the high T, maturational accelerated, matrifocal females preceded the low t, maturational delayed, neotenous, patrifocal females popular today.

So, why do left-handed mothers give birth to more left-handed children than left-handed fathers?  Because left-handed mothers are grounded further back in time.  For a woman to be left-handed, she is not only revealing a feature more ancient than all right-handed men but older than all right-handed women that came before all right-handed men.  The emergence of male right-handedness followed female right-handedness, revealing itself only after the shift toward patriarchy.

Of the four prototypes–left-handed women, left-handed men, right-handed women and right-handed men–the left-handed woman is the oldest, most ancient human genotype on the planet.  Her children are more often left-handed because the other three don’t draw so deeply from the past.

…

Conducting Google searches for interesting word combinations (“balanced polymorphism” annett baron-cohen) I just came across a study, “Sex Differences in Left-Handedness: A Meta-Analysis of 144 Studies” by Marietta Papadatou-Pastou, Maryanne Martin, Marcus R. Munafo and Gregory V. Jones.  There were a number of interesting citations.  One passage jumped out.  In the Scandinavian countries (Sweden, Norway and Finland), there appears the following anomaly, “Overall, the present study provides a powerful test of the hypothesis of a sex difference in handedness.  We have shown using objective statistical procedures that the sex difference is robust for all the commonly used conceptions of left-handedness, with men having significantly greater odds of being left-handed than women (except, it appears, in Scandinavia).”

The study concludes that there are more male than female left-handers in the societies studied.  Not so much in Scandinavia.  This would support our emerging thesis that the Scandinavian countries are revealing a different balanced polymorphism drifting in the direction of a higher percentage of matrifocal social structure predilection individuals (high T females, low t males).  We would also predict higher incidence of left-handedness.

Two things have contributed to a rather extreme crash in self confidence.

A reader commented on one of the postings, asking for the text that notes that six weeks before birth maturation rates are set by mother’s testosterone level.  Finding the link to the citation on my research site, sexualselection.org, the link did not provide the page number in the text Cerebral Lateralization, nor was there an excerpt as there usually is.  This was uncharacteristically sloppy, particularly for such an important citation.  So, I reread Cerebral Lateralization, finishing it a couple days ago.  I find the source of the information.

I then conducted searches of perhaps a hundred pages of my notes, excerpts from text.  Then I scanned Google for the evidence.  I can find it nowhere. I remember reading it and taking notes.

Though there are a number of passages noting the relationship between a mother’s testosterone levels and the maturation rates of her children, I can find nowhere the allusion to six weeks before birth being the deciding moment.  I’ve noted this dozens of times in my work.  I can find no evidence of where I read this.

I am appalled.

In addition, we plugged in Google’s Analytics into my research sites to provide more detailed statistics than the stats we’ve been using.  Whereas I’ve been watching blog traffic move above 300 a day with almost 40% coming directly to the site, the new stats show maybe 80 a day with 5-10 people coming directly to the site, the rest through other sites (often my own) or via search engines.  Evidently the blogging software completely confused our stats software.

I am deeply chagrinned.

Not only do I feel like an idiot, I feel like an invisible idiot.  A combination of allergies running amok, aneurysm, economy and the election seem to be pushing me into narcissistic mood swings of self congratulation and recrimination.

I’m starting to collect information to support the four-pole, eight-person prototype theory of evolution by looking for diseases and conditions that cluster around the eight prototypes.  I’ll find papers that support it and papers that don’t.  Finding a number of papers that support it doesn’t mean the theory is proven.  It just means it has possibilities.  One paper will thrill me with its being perfect.  Another will depress me when it goes awry.  I’ve been here before.

What I need is a model that makes exact predictions.  Everything here has to do with probabilities.  At best, the theory will estimate the probability that a person with certain hormonal proclivities fitting a certain social structure paradigm will contract specific diseases or conditions a certain percent of the time.

If by some fluke this model is useful, I’m having trouble seeing why an academic would take a leap of faith to embrace it.

A peculiarity of this blog format presentation of evolutionary theory is the exhibition of the process I go through as the theory forms.  Not only do I leave a trail of the mental processes leading to an insight or conclusion (often the insight comes as I write, with my having no ideas where a particular day’s entry is leading), but I describe events in my personal life along with feelings that inform my life and this work.

I’m starting to believe this is not accidental.  I mean not accidental in the sense that my unconscious, the author of this work, seeks a deeper communication than just the thesis of this work.  The way that science is conducted now offers proofs, peer-reviewed commons (journals) and difficult-to-achieve authorizations to conduct research (advanced degrees).  What I have is process.  I seek to show the sources that a theory springs from, offering insight as to the process that leads to theory.

This presupposes that what I’m creating offers some usefulness.  Otherwise this is a unique adventure having to do solely with art, not science.

In the event that the principles that have emerged in this website do serve, then the nonscientific aspects of this production may offer a sort of road map to designing theory.

I know of no study that describes the process of theory formation.  Neuro-Linguistic Programming offers tools for breaking down the thought sequence, the strategy for achieving goals.  Perhaps, if this work is useful, the evidence I leave of how the theory came together will provide a routine, one of many, depending on the theorist, for theory formation.

Last night was one of those nights when I could not easily fall asleep.  I’m conducting an experiment.  I’m feeling compelled to sleep on my back to see if over six months my left-side, 12-13 mm quasi-fusiform carotid artery cerebral aneurysm diminishes in size.  I’ve slept on my right side my whole life.  It’s not likely, based on what the surgeons have suggested, that sleeping on my back can have an effect.  Still, I feel like there is something I can do to make a difference.  The night I came to this conclusion was the night that the four-pole thesis began to form.

So I sleep light instead of my customary deep.  Mortality feels not particularly far away.  Often my mind starts wrestling with the principles discussed in this blog.  On nights like last night, I move the concepts around a 4-D space, looking for new relationships.  A couple things came to mind last night.

In the four-pole hypothesis….

F te/M TE        Conventional Patrifocal
F tE/M Te        Warrior Patrifocal
F Te/M tE        Contemporary Matrifocal
F TE/M te        Classic Matrifocal

….  I’d anticipate that representatives of all four pairings, all eight individual prototypes, would be represented in most societies.  Very few societies would skew toward the matrifocal in our times, but perhaps, based on handedness studies, West African societies such as the Noruba would skew left.  Balanced polymorphisms would vary from society to society; most people would not exhibit extreme representatives of the eight prototypes, but those that did would likely make up a far higher percentage of the disease, condition, disorder population than the folks tending toward the middle of the curve.

Geschwind and Galaburda (1987) suggested that the anomalously dominant cerebral hemisphere community would exhibit both increases in maladies (such as asthma) and increases in mental and physiological gifts (such as mathematics and athletic skills).  With our four-pole hypothesis, we might come to the same conclusion, particularly because it is the same model with the addition of estrogen, including perspectives derived from anthropology (social structure) and evolutionary biology (heterochronic theory).

Additional insights come into play.

We would hypothesize that the eight hormonal constellations exhibited by the eight individual prototypes in the four-pole hypothesis are staking out eight disease, disorder and condition regions.  These being the hormonal constellation boundaries of social structure, we’d expect that here would emerge any number of clashes between hormone-driven somatic structure and the places where physical structure ceases to perform.  This is where the rubber meets the road in evolution.  This is where the limits of what a body can hormonally endure is exposed to conditions unfriendly to seamless functioning, the extremes of the balanced polymorphism.  And, as Geschwind, Annett and their colleagues have hypothesized, here we’ll also find examples of the gifted.

Consider that a disease, condition or disorder may appear in more than one of the eight prototype humans.  Annett noted that there are two kinds of dyslexia, evidencing two different kinds of verbal difficulty.  One was associated with anomalous dominance.  The other was associated with extreme right-handers.  It is possible that with this eight-prototype theory, other conditions will be discovered to have more than one etiology.  Autism was provided as an example in the last entry.

This is the stuff I was playing with in my head last night.  Unable to sleep, I was seeking to understand “dis-ease.”

Why are specific diseases, disorders and conditions emerging with specific populations at this specific time?  Can the principles that we have recently focused on involving estrogen and social structure lead to clearer answers than those we’ve received until now?

The foundation of this theory I’m calling my “Theory of Waves,” formerly called Shift Theory, is built from social theorist Riane Eisler’s focus on matristic society, Marxist anthropologist Chris Knight’s human evolution theory based on female choice, evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller’s theorizing on sexual selection, Charles Darwin’s work on sexual selection (and Lamarckian selection), Stephen J.  Gould’s addressing heterochronic theory and neoteny, Norman Geschwind’s Cerebral Lateralization conjectures and Marian Annett’s research on random-handedness.  Simon Baron-Cohen’s recent personal encouragement that this theory is significant has provided me the confidence to begin contacting researchers and academics as I seek support and criticism of the Theory of Waves.  I am an amateur theorist with no institutional support.  The concepts herein have not been exposed to peer review.  I am not a scientist.

I view this creation as a work of art.  I pay attention to what seems interesting.  I let myself be guided by what draws me.  I am constantly sifting through patterns, feeling more or less attracted to different connections or paradigms that emerge.  I focus on those patterns that feel compelling.  In the way that I used to design comic panels and strips, I compare and contrast relationships or patterns, looking for the nonobvious, deep connection.

I crave usefulness for the theory.  I crave recognition for contribution.

In the way that I formerly created art, I create theory.  I let my unconscious tell me where to go, what to pay attention to and how to mate elements with each other in ways that what has been created can be understood.

I am unable to conduct experiments, studies or surveys.  The beauty of a theory is far easier for me to pursue than its usefulness.  Beauty and usefulness are the yin and yang, warp and woof, estrogen and testosterone of my world.  Many of the men and women that inspire me are clearly scientists that revere the beauty of the world they seek to know.  I am not a scientist.  As an artist, I seek to uncover connection and seek to share these connections that suggest a whole.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve explored the estrogen/testosterone connections between biological evolution, social evolution and ontogeny.  I see evolutionary biology, anthropology and neuropsychology and medicine connected by the play between estrogen and testosterone that can be represented in a model with predictive (useful) features.  I fear that what seems so beautiful to me–an elegant theory with numerous implications tying together many formerly unrelated patterns–will not be useful.  As an artist, I have little to lose.  Why would I dance a path where music is not playing?  This is too much fun not to pursue.

Neuropsychologist Norman Geschwind evoked the possibility that many human diseases and conditions were tied to lateralization propensities, ethnic backgrounds and hormonal thresholds.

“It is likely that, on the average, populations will differ in brain development, structure, and metabolism and therefore in lateralization patterns.  Some brain diseases show marked ethnic variation; for example, Tay-Sachs disease and dystonia musculorum deformans occur predominantly in some Jewish populations.  In northern Europe there is generally a higher frequency of twinning and of neural tube defects than in southern Europe and the Orient.  Since twinning is associated with lefthandedness in whites, one might speculate that lefthandedness was less common in southern Europe and Japan and that therefore dyslexia and other learning disorders might be less frequent.  There is a high rate of lefthandedness and of twinning in the parents of children with neural tube defects (Fraser, Czeizel, and Hanson 1982; Lemarec et al. 1978).  The line of reasoning suggests that West Africa would have a very high rate of lefthandedness, learning disorders, and possibly neural tube defects, since this area has by far the highest reported twinning rates.  There is evidence compatible with at least parts of this hypothesis.  Stuttering is very common among schoolchildren in West Africa, rates often being three times those found in the United States (Goodall and Brobby 1982).  Blacks in the United States, mostly of West African origin, have higher stuttering rates than Caucasians.  The hypothesis advanced to explain the West African data was the high prevalence of sickle-cell disease.  An alternative interpretation is that in West Africa there is a high frequency of anomalous dominance and therefore of learning disorders, lefthandedness, and the other attendant talents and disabilities.  The very few studies of handedness in Africa have shown very low apparent rates of lefthandedness, but it is not clear whether powerful cultural biases might be present.  The discussion of ethnic differences in handedness thus rests at present on mere fragments of information.  It should be pointed out, however, that the distinctions so far presented are not between the conventional Caucasian, Black, and Oriental groups.  Thus, the blond-haired, blue-eyed, and fair-skinned northern Europeans might resemble West African Blacks, whereas the Japanese might bear close resemblances to southern European Caucasians….” (Geschwind and Galaburda, Cerebral Lateralization, pp. 145-146)

Norman Geschwind hypothesized a connection between ethnicity, lateralization tendencies, diseases and testosterone.  Some of the follow-up studies showed little robust support for this conjecture.  Other studies did suggest connection, but few clear, larger patterns emerged.  For example, asthma was noted as closely connected to random-handedness.  I would suggest integrating the themes that this website has been exploring, specifically an estrogen/testosterone sexual selection/social structure heterochronic explanation for the patterns that Geschwind observed.

We are looking for associations among diseases, disorders and conditions and the…

F te/M TE        Conventional Patrifocal
F tE/M Te        Warrior Patrifocal
F Te/M tE        Contemporary Matrifocal
F TE/M te         Classic Matrifocal

…paradigm of a four-pole, balanced polymorphism that will change from society to society based upon social structure and sexual selection proclivities.  Estrogen and testosterone will be emphasized to different degrees in the varying somatic environment of its citizens.

Two three-step feedback loops allow adjustments of these estrogen and testosterone levels.  Mother’s testosterone level > progeny maturation rate > social structure proclivity > mother’s testosterone level.  Mother’s estrogen level > progeny ability to exercise aesthetic discrimination and caring behavior > social structure proclivity > Mother’s estrogen level.  There are numerous impact points changing hormone levels in the individual and the society over time.  This profoundly complicates our seeking studies with clean results, particularly because of the societal upheavals characteristic of this time of transition.  Annett’s suggestion that we can only achieve probabilistic answers to our questions applies to the proposed four-pole, two-hormone solution at the root of this hypothesis.

Our questions have to do with why specific diseases, disorders and conditions are emerging with specific populations at this specific time.

Let’s start exploring.

I’m starting to muddle through the implications of the four-pole hypothesis of four prototype pairings, with eight prototype human beings, four in each sex. (Proceed to the essays “Estrogen Ascendant” and “Estrogen Play” for more background on the concepts addressed in this essay.)

F te/M TE Conventional Patrifocal
F tE/M Te Warrior Patrifocal
F Te/M tE Contemporary Matrifocal
F TE/M te Classic Matrifocal

F te/M TE means low-testosterone & estrogen female, high-testosterone & estrogen male. Domineering, caring, discriminating men choosing cooperative women.

F tE/M Te means low-testosterone, high-estrogen female, high-testosterone, low-estrogen male. Domineering men choosing cooperative, caring, discriminating women.

F Te/M tE means high-testosterone, low-estrogen female, low-testosterone, high-estrogen male. Commanding women choosing creative, cooperative, caring, discriminating men.

F TE/M te means high-testosterone & estrogen female, low-testosterone & estrogen male. Commanding, caring, discriminating women choosing creative, cooperative, aloof men.

We have noted that Marian Annett observed a balanced polymorphism of gradations between random-handed and strong right-handed individuals within a society. We might conclude that just as there is a hypothesized random-handed prototype human and a strong right-handed prototype human, with some people fitting those exact prototypes, most folks in our four-pole hypothesis will appear along the mixed characteristics curve in between the extremes. We might also conclude that Annett’s charts are plotting our a four-pole hypothesis with her handedness evaluations parsing out the matrifocal/patrifocal split, but Annett is unable to break out our hypothetical estrogen influence in the process, with estrogen not evidencing itself in maturation-rate influenced features.

Nevertheless, we now have two complementing dynamics acting as the engine behind social change and evolution, pushing and pulling individuals closer and farther away from these four-poles over a period of generations.

Mother’s testosterone levels > progeny maturation rate > social structure proclivity > evolutionary trajectory.

Mother’s estrogen levels > progeny ability to exercise aesthetic discrimination and caring behavior > social structure proclivity > evolutionary trajectory.

I hypothesize two feedback loops. Mother’s testosterone level > progeny maturation rate > social structure proclivity > mother’s testosterone level. Mother’s estrogen level > progeny ability to exercise aesthetic discrimination and caring behavior > social structure proclivity > Mother’s estrogen level. The environment can intervene at all three levels of both loops by either influencing maturation rates and timing (via testosterone) or by influencing the intensity of mate selection criteria (via estrogen), thus modifying the trajectory of social and human evolution.

How would the influence of estrogen be evaluated if indeed Annett’s tests are successfully discovering the degree that testosterone influences maturation rates, evidencing itself in extremes of anomalous dominance vs. strong right-handedness?

Consider the emerging consensus that the mother’s testosterone level has influence on the likelihood of autism in her children. It is the estimation of this site’s thesis that matrifocal social structure’s high-testosterone mothers are the evolutionary force behind the increase in autism. High-testosterone mothers create low-testosterone males, high-testosterone females. We are hypothesizing that this, in combination with other testosterone-influencing variables, often leads to autism. Consider that there are two kinds of high-testosterone mothers: high estrogen and low estrogen. This would be our Classic Matrifocal (high E) and Contemporary Matrifocal (low e) prototypes. Are there four types of autism groups based upon a mother with these two different high-testosterone hormonal constellations?

Male tE
Male te
Female Te
Female TE

How would we evaluate the groups? Stress increases testosterone levels, making the direct measuring of testosterone a difficult way to form a conclusion. Autistic children often live in highly stressed environments, to say nothing of the existential dissonance they no doubt experience because they are often unable to integrate with society. Are there different enough infant hormone thresholds of these four hormone prototypes that very early evaluations would form a clue?

If genetic, not trauma-based, autism has these four etiological foundations, then how do we best evaluate if this is the case?

And, if we evolved primarily via one of the two matrifocal social structures, F TE/M te (Classic Matrifocal), then autistic children should primarily exhibit Female TE and Male te.

I’ve noted a couple times over the months that there is a five-step evolution continuum that begins with natural selection and then moves to step two where sexual selection focuses on a specific pattern when one (usually the female) chooses a mate.  Step three begins with human sexual selection, where adept practitioners of novel pattern creation (dance, song and later language) are selected as partners (usually by females with sensitivity to these subtle differences).  The fourth step is taken when novelty itself becomes desirable outside the partner-selection process, and society is compelled to embrace in its productions the infinite nuances of the new and less familiar.  In the fifth stage, awareness of evolution’s stages, attended by an awareness of the awareness that accompanies evolution, provides an identification with the five-stage creation continuum.

1)    natural selection
2)    sexual selection (selecting for pattern when seeking a mate)
3)    human sexual selection (selection for novel pattern when seeking a mate)
4)    art & culture (selecting for novel pattern outside of mate selection)
5)    awareness of the selection or creative process

It is a convention in our society to observe the effects of testosterone, concluding that it is the will of men that makes culture grand.  Economics, war and sports use one another as metaphors to describe their processes and accomplishments, speaking in the domination/competition/copulation lingo of the male hormone.

Consider that estrogen is at the root of what makes human beings unique.

In the five-step human evolution noted above, estrogen is the primary player.  Granted, in the heterochronic push and pull of neoteny and acceleration as they dance their way across the eons, testosterone informs maturation rates and evolutionary trajectories.  Yet, it is estrogen that compels discrimination.  It is estrogen that makes subtle evaluations.  It is estrogen that informs the judgments and forms the conclusions as to the nuanced natures and behaviors of a mate.

We are intensely sexual beings.  We have sexualized our environment by viewing our world through the filter of our cultures, cultures created by the forces of sexual selection.  Sexual selection is at the foundation of culture and art.  At the center of sexual selection is estrogen.

It began with female choice.  In countless species the female, exercising the demands of estrogen, chooses a mate based upon subtle variations on a theme.  In humans we are hypothesizing that men competed to achieve the opportunity to mate.  Estrogen, driving our evolution, picked males evidencing facility with dance and song.  Eventually, estrogen picked males evidencing facility with time.  The males that were able to line up sounds in ways that evoked a past and future, while bridging gesture into sound and then to speech, were picked by women to be harbingers of culture.

Estrogen molded testosterone to create.

Enormous numbers of studies have been conducted exploring the effects of testosterone on perception, functionality, skills, health and maturation.  Estrogen, not so much.  I am coming to the conclusion that the relationship between testosterone and estrogen, the relative thresholds within a person and between a mated pair, lies at the center of how we evolved, how our societies unfold and how healthy an individual is.  Our perception has been profoundly skewed by the blind spot that we have for the power of aesthetics and caring to inform not only evolution, but society.  Choice is what makes humans beings unique.  Estrogen is about choice.  (And, about caring.  Caring will be discussed in other essays.)

I suspect that evaluating individual male and female estrogen levels will reveal an enormous amount about the dynamic of aesthetics in society, particularly when observed in combination with testosterone thresholds.  We’ve tended to look at estrogen as the “caring” hormone, what attracts us to embrace and console.  Consider that we’ve been seeing only half the picture, feeling only a piece of the puzzle.  Combining caring and aesthetics and observing their relationship with sexuality and dominance, we may come to the conclusion that caring and aesthetics lie at the very foundation of culture.  Sexual Selection gone wild is who we are.

If testosterone is about changing rates in maturation informing species transformations over time, estrogen is about changing testosterone and observing/appreciating/caring for that journey of transformation.

Sexual selection and estrogen are what make us human.

For the last two nights while I’ve been dreaming, my mind has been wrestling with an integration of testosterone and estrogen in the model that’s come together the last three weeks. Dreams, metaphors and thoughts combine to synthesize the variables and data. This morning I awoke aware that there’s been a piece that is seeking understanding.

Marian Annett has pioneered new understandings of handedness, generating a host of clues as to how humans evolved and order themselves in society. Annett hypothesizes that one might be random-handed or right-handed, with a continuum of tendencies revealing that it’s not as easy as being one or the other. With our tentative model of evolution and society formation, repeating an earlier posting…..

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We are playing with the concept of four prototype pairings, with eight prototype human beings, four in each sex. We are estimating that because the mother, at six weeks before birth, sets her children’s testosterone levels based upon her own testosterone levels (mother with high testosterone T creates low t males and high T females while a mother with low t creates low t females and high T males) that estrogen will run a similar dynamic. The result will be natural mated pairings resulting in across-sex matchings of testosterone and estrogen that will be complementary opposites. We are hypothesizing that there will be exceptions, but they will not be the convention in that society.

F te/M TE Conventional Patrifocal
F tE/M Te Warrior Patrifocal
F Te/M tE Contemporary Matrifocal
F TE/M te Classic Matrifocal

F te/M TE means low-testosterone & estrogen females, high-testosterone & estrogen male. Domineering, caring, discriminating men choosing cooperative women.

F tE/M Te means low-testosterone, high-estrogen female, high-testosterone, low-estrogen male. Domineering men choosing cooperative, caring, discriminating women.

F Te/M tE means high-testosterone, low-estrogen female, low-testosterone, high-estrogen male. Commanding women choosing creative, cooperative, caring, discriminating men.

F TE/M te means high-testosterone & estrogen female, low-testosterone & estrogen male. Commanding, caring, discriminating women choosing creative, cooperative, aloof men.

We now have two complementing dynamics acting as the engine behind social change and evolution.

Mother’s testosterone levels > progeny maturation rate > social structure proclivity > evolutionary trajectory.

Mother’s estrogen levels > progeny ability to exercise aesthetic discrimination and caring behavior > social structure proclivity > evolutionary trajectory.

I hypothesize two feedback loops. Mother’s testosterone level > progeny maturation rate > social structure proclivity > mother’s testosterone level. Mother’s estrogen level > progeny ability to exercise aesthetic discrimination and caring behavior > social structure proclivity > Mother’s estrogen level. The environment can intervene at all three levels of both loops by either influencing maturation rates and timing (via testosterone) or by influencing the intensity of mate selection criteria (via estrogen), thus modifying the trajectory of social and human evolution.

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What’s been disturbing my sleep is that there is perhaps more nested pairings. Marian Annett has discovered this seamless gradation from extreme left-handers to extreme right-handers, what she describes as a balanced polymorphism. The majority of people in a society is a mix of the two extremes, though there is a leaning or shift in the right-handed direction.

Using the Annett model to parse out the relationship between the four societal hormonal prototypes leaves me wondering as to the exact connection among the four models. I would expect that all four pairings, all eight types of individuals appear in any society. Are there two that are ascendant, reflecting directly the polarity suggested by Annett’s work? Are all four involved? If so, how?

From my theory’s point of view (the Theory of Waves), the random-handed individuals represent the older genotype and could be either the Contemporary Matrifocal or the Classic Matrifocal. I’ve surmised that we evolved as Classic Matrifocal, but perhaps the Contemporary Matrifocal is not only a recent development (hypothetically in Scandinavia) but has always formed a percentage of ancient matrifocal societies. The question is, if the matrifocal genotype composes the left end of Annett’s balanced polymorphism, how much do these two matrifocal prototypes contribute to Annett’s model, and in what percentage? If so, how does that percentage change in different societies?

The same issue is in play for the right side of the gradated spectrum of random-handed to right-handed individuals, the newer patrifocal genotype. We have two patrifocal hormonal pairings, Conventional Patrifocal and Warrior Patrifocal. At the same time that we are exploring the relationship between the left and right sides of the societal polarities, what is the relationship between the two kinds of patrifocal hormonal social structures?

We know that the relative rates and timing of maturation and hemispheric differentiation are influenced by mother’s uterine testosterone levels, an individual’s testosterone levels and the timing of testosterone surges. It’s far less clear how estrogen levels or timing impact hemispheric differentiation and handedness. It seems Annett’s model reveals relationships between testosterone, hemispheric differentiation, handedness and social structure. What might Annett’s model reveal about our four hormonal polarities?

Though we can assume that patrifocal, right-handed, left-lobe language users are the convention in every society revealing the right shift in Annett’s observations of handedness, are there any conclusions we might draw from the information we have gathered concerning which of the four hormonal prototype pairings are evident in our societies, how they might change from society to society and if only two, three, or all four can be revealed in a predictable relationship?

This is not unlike noting that a printer using cyan, magenta, yellow and black creates the impression of seamless visuals with an infinite number of colors. Only four colors exist inside the printer. The difference here is that a relatively small number of people will actually fit into one of the four hormonal pairing prototypes. Most of us represent within our neurology some compromise position between extremes. Nevertheless, our explanatory model, taking into consideration the balanced polymorphism which seems to be at the foundation of what we are discussing, offers fairly profound cross-disciplinary implications with predictive power.

Life is characterized by gradation. Newtonian physics and politics are characterized by clear lines and a segregation of principles. Understanding evolution and the impact of evolution on society entails being able to grasp subtleties, brain hemispheres and corpus callosums with gradated differences in relative size as well as hormonal thresholds across the spectrums and tiny differences in handedness.

“…it is difficult to test theories about handedness because all predictions have to be expressed in terms of probabilities. There are no simple rules such as “all right-handers are…” or “no left-handers are…” because there are no distinct types….the theory requires us to think in terms of distributions, whereas all other theories in the literature continue to think of types. The foundation of the analysis is a continuous, unimodal distribution of relative asymmetry.” (Marian Annett, Handedness and Brain Asymmetry, p. 71)

My dreams last night sought to sort out the subtleties in the relationship among four hypothetical hormonal pairings of human prototypes and the arch of features evident in society, spreading from matrifocal on the left to patrifocal on the right. To parse out these subtleties, some kind of appraisal apparatus would have to be set up, something like Marian Annett’s peg tests, which evaluate degrees of handedness. We’d be evaluating degree of hormonal allegiance to the four options belonging to each sex. It might be easier to appraise the pairings by observing or conducting surveys with couples. Which of the four couple prototypes are you closest to? How about your parents or the people you know?

Are there patterns that you observe?

“Musical composers, instrumentalists, and painters were compared with nonmusicians from a student and from a nonstudent population on testosterone levels in saliva. This steroid served as a marker for physiological androgyny. The ANOVA showed a significant group by sex interaction. Male composers attained significantly lower mean testosterone values than male instrumentalists and male nonmusicians; female composers had significantly higher mean testosterone values than female instrumentalists and female nonmusicians. Painters of both sexes did not differ significantly from controls. Spatial ability was assessed in the five groups. Significant differences on spatial test performance were not reflected in differences on salivary testosterone. Our results showed that musical composers of both sexes were physiologically highly androgynous. Creative musical behavior was associated with testosterone levels that minimized sex differences.” (Hassler M (1991) Testosterone and artistic talents. Int J Neurosci 56 (1-4): 25)

Surveying papers that either directly relate to my studies or tangentially connect to what I play with, I come across paragraphs that jump out as supporting my ideas or that flail me with a totally dissonant perspective. I track both, though I store the latter with less enthusiasm. Some of the contradicting studies show in their study techniques a rather lax attention to detail. Some slap me upside the head with an inconsistency or paradox, a direct contradiction to my theory. Some of those anomalies have led to doorways opening out to landscapes deepening the reach of my theorizing.

In the above excerpt we have an example of a study result that supports the expectation of my evolutionary theory. Theorizing that we evolved via a sexually selected dance-and-rhythm driven matrifocal society with high-testosterone females and low-testosterone males, it makes perfect sense that the most musically sensitive, the composers, would be high-testosterone women and low-testosterone men.

“In an auditory or musical memory task, subjects made pitch recognition judgments when the tones to be compared were separated by a sequence of interpolated tones. The left-handed subjects performed significantly better than the right-handed and also had a significantly higher variance. Further analysis showed that the superior performance was attributed largely to the left-handed subjects with mixed hand preference.” (Deutsch, D. (1978) Pitch memory: An advantage for the left handed. Science 199: pp. 559-560)

The Deutsch study also supports our evolutionary etiology of left-handedness (random-handedness) in a music-driven society that later transitioned to conventional right-handedness.

Perfect pitch in autism is evident to a degree far higher than would be expected. (http://www.translatingautism.com/2008/03/autism-and-perfect-pitch.html) This also supports my hypothesis that autism has its origins in matrifocal societies driven by music and sexual selection.

As an artist and a theorist, I hope that the ideas I observe emerge with a display of both beauty and usefulness.  The artist seeks beauty.  The theorist seeks usefulness.  This two-week journey out onto a theorizing limb makes estrogen (along with testosterone) central to evolution, using a dynamic evidently already established (according to my theory) by testosterone.  It’s a guess.  It’s a guess based upon a solution that resolves anomalies but a guess not even close to being proven.

The artists plays.  I’ll continue to play with these concepts and get a feel for whether these ideas are useful.

Almost six weeks ago, Simon Baron-Cohen responded to an email that I had sent to him.  Professor Baron-Cohen noted in his response that this website’s ideas concerning autism were “fascinating”, “deep and important.”  Simon Baron-Cohen is perhaps the world’s foremost authority on autism etiology.  This was an unexpected and deeply rewarding response.  Receiving permission to quote him, I began emailing autism researchers.  Over the last month, I’ve contacted over 200 autism experts and academics specializing in related conditions or specialties.

I’m receiving email responses by researchers, academics and professionals.  The quote by Simon Baron-Cohen has been integral to folks taking the time to read my work.  After the theorizing journey of the last two weeks, I’m viewing my theory based on testosterone that is being examined by professionals as pretty conservative.  Nevertheless, most academics that responded (perhaps 20 of 200) have showed interest, had positive things to say, but did not behave like there was anything that they were reading that they thought might be useful to them.

Over this same six-week period, I’ve been diagnosed with a not particularly easy to operate on quasi-fusiform brain aneurysm.  I’m exploring interventions.  The economy is performing its inelegant dive, outcome unknown.  I’m not sure which of the two is more anxiety-producing.

The brain surgeon mentioned that one intervention involves inserting a tiny tube into a major brain artery to see if they can redirect the impact of blood thudding against the artery that is bulging outward.  From what he said, this is a relatively new intervention.  So, for the last ten nights, I’ve been sleeping on my back.  I’ve not been sleeping on my right side as I’ve been doing my whole life, to see if perhaps sleeping on my side is related to the aneurysm.  I’m trying to get the blood to stop thudding on that bulging spot, the spot where the blood coursing up my neck slams into the perpendicular artery in my brain.  I don’t fit the profile of people that get aneurysms.  They don’t know the cause in my case.  I don’t sleep deeply.  I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about my brain.  And evolutionary theory.  I think at least half of last night I had dreams that were seeking an integration of testosterone and estrogen in tables of data where the two had not been formerly introduced.

So, I’m feeling vulnerable.  I’m feeling physically vulnerable.  I’m feeling vulnerable to the criticisms of professionals evaluating the autism theory based upon my alternative theory of human and social evolution.  I don’t have money invested so I don’t feel financially vulnerable, but I feel that we, as humans, are particularly vulnerable right now during this era of transformation, and I’m feeling particularly human right now.  I’m feeling scared for the human race.

As an artist and a theorist, I hope that the ideas I observe emerge with a display of both beauty and usefulness.  If a theory is not beautiful, it does not attract me.  What I feel attracted to decides what I pay attention to.  Today, I’m not feeling attracted.  I’m feeling scared.

We are playing with the concept of four prototype pairings, with eight prototype human beings. We are estimating that because the mother, at six weeks before birth, sets her children’s testosterone levels based upon her own testosterone levels (mother with high testosterone T creates a low t male and a high T female while a mother with low t creates a low t female and a high T male) that estrogen will run a similar dynamic. The result will be natural mated pairings resulting in across-sex matchings of testosterone and estrogen that will be complementary opposites. We are hypothesizing that there will be exceptions, but they will not be the convention in that society.

F te/M TE Conventional Patrifocal
F tE/M Te Warrior Patrifocal
F Te/M tE Contemporary Matrifocal
F TE/M te Classic Matrifocal

F te/M TE means low-testosterone & estrogen females, high-testosterone & estrogen male. Domineering, caring, discriminating men choosing cooperative women.

F tE/M Te means low-testosterone, high-estrogen female, high-testosterone, low-estrogen male. Domineering men choosing cooperative, caring, discriminating women.

F Te/M tE means high-testosterone, low-estrogen female, low-testosterone, high-estrogen male. Commanding women choosing creative, cooperative, caring, discriminating men.

F TE/M te means high-testosterone & estrogen female, low-testosterone & estrogen male. Commanding, caring, discriminating women choosing creative, cooperative, aloof men.

We now have two complementing dynamics acting as the engine behind social change and evolution.

Mother’s testosterone levels > progeny maturation rate > social structure proclivity > evolutionary trajectory.

Mother’s estrogen levels > progeny ability to exercise aesthetic discrimination and caring behavior > social structure proclivity > evolutionary trajectory.

I hypothesize two feedback loops. Mother’s testosterone level > progeny maturation rate > social structure proclivity > mother’s testosterone level. Mother’s estrogen level > progeny ability to exercise aesthetic discrimination and caring behavior > social structure proclivity > Mother’s estrogen level. The environment can intervene at all three levels of both loops by either influencing maturation rates and timing (via testosterone) or by influencing the intensity of mate selection criteria (via estrogen), thus modifying the trajectory of social and human evolution.

We have here a kind of Silly Putty model of human social and biological transformation. There are numerous impact points that can result in change, many forces that can mold humans. I’ve been calling this the Theory of Waves, noting the impact of neoteny and acceleration on human biological and social evolution. That was when I was observing only the effects of testosterone. The name still holds, except now we are hypothetically observing the effects of estrogen coursing through this system, compelling the waxing and waning of sexual selection, focus on aesthetics and caregiving, and perhaps the aesthetic architecture supporting culture.

In an earlier piece (Minnesota Somali Autism: Geography and Light), I hypothesized that because diurnal light cycles affect the pineal gland (see Geschwind and Galaburda, 1987), equatorial peoples that migrate to northern climates would experience an increase in autism. This change would occur because the pineal gland would interpret long winters and summers as an equatorial night or day, and thus it would act differently when regulating very high or low thresholds of testosterone in the mother’s womb.

Supporting this conjecture are studies that suggest the conclusion that both Black and Jewish populations, transplanted from their African or near-Africa origins, reveal both extreme maturational delay and acceleration in their male populations. These effects would result from seasonal variations in testosterone in their mother’s wombs. Indeed, studies reveal seasonal effects in the conditions that accompany extreme maturational delay and acceleration and diseases such as prostate cancer that are accompanied by unusually high testosterone levels.

There is also the possibility of multigenerational reverberation effects. Second-generation women with exaggerated hormonal levels with accompanying maturational delay or acceleration manifesting in very high or low testosterone levels in the womb may experience their womb conditions amplified if, at the sixth week before birth, the season is again one characterized by either extreme dark or light, thus mirroring their own birth conditions.

Another potential impact is the possibility that males pass on to their progeny their body’s maturation rate proclivity based upon their mother’s uterine environment. This information would be picked up during their lifetime, early in ontogeny. It’s also possible to hypothesize that the testosterone-influencing light environment during sperm creation impacts the maturation rate of his children. If either of these conjectures holds true, then the issues to be explored by evolutionary developmental biologists examining the steering mechanism of the engine of social and human evolution become exponentially more flexible.

Unexamined are the potential effects of the dynamics we are discussing on a population of humans leaving Africa between 50,000 and 60,000 years ago. Testosterone and hypothetically estrogen both come into play. The emergence of signs of culture in Europe may be directly related to the same effects observed to occur on populations of Blacks and Jews noted above, with a proliferation of unique hormonal types branching out from an equatorial hormonal constellation convention.

I would hypothesize Classic Matrifocal (F TE/M te) populations moving from Africa into Europe. As malleable as human populations evidently are, we might conclude that any of the four prototypes wandered out or that single populations morphed from one type to another over time. It’s possible that different populations occasionally intermixed. Regardless, a tendency toward abstract speech communication, evidenced by males with a new split brain and a smaller corpus callosum, impacted by the changes of light and modified womb testosterone levels, could have been propelled far deeper and faster in the direction of language proficiency when becoming accelerated in maturation.

Mirroring these changes in males leading to spoken language and an ability to manipulate time (see earlier essays noting my hypothesis that females had already evolved these abilities), females may also have been influenced by their environment, perhaps by increases in fats and nutrients, which result in higher testosterone and estrogen levels. Enhanced estrogen may have made them far more discriminating in the males that they chose for mates. (Venus figurines may be portraying the high-testosterone, high-estrogen, overweight woman.) Split-brain males may have been becoming far more adept at producing cultural artifacts, taking advantage of their newfound ability to speak articulately and control time, with the most adept males being chosen as mates.

The sudden emergence of culture may have been influenced by changes in light that affect testosterone levels that guide maturation rates. Estrogen levels may have also been influenced by the new environment, which was compelling a more refined female aesthetic. They would have been culling out those males who were affected positively by the changes in light.

These are deeply hypothetical conjectures, but they give you an idea of how to play with the Rubik’s Cube, Silly Putty platform of ideas that comes when you notice how malleable we are. The effect becomes all the more noticeable when we appreciate how testosterone (maturation rate) and estrogen (caregiving and sexual selection proclivity) influence transformation.

Geschwind and Galaburda in their 1987 Cerebral Lateralization noted a number of patterns across studies that seemed to support a relationship between lateralization, handedness and a number of diseases and conditions. Follow-up studies often led to results that were ambiguous. Still, the work of Simon Baron-Cohen and his colleagues have come to conclusions that have suggested connections that Geschwind and Galaburda alluded to. Specifically, mother’s testosterone levels inform conditions characterized by male maturational delay. Marian Annett continues to pioneer an understanding of a paradigm characterized by random-handedness balanced by conventional handedness that she calls Right Shift Theory.

In other essays on this website (i.e., Evolutionary Theory, Neuropsychology and Autism), I have described the integral connection between heterochronic theory and the neuropsychological patterns observed by Geschwind and Galaburda, developed by Annett and Baron-Cohen. Heterochronic theory describes how species evolve when influenced by changes in the rate of timing of maturation and development. Neoteny is one of six heterochronic patterns, the prolongation or lifting of infant or embryonic features from ancient ancestors into the features of adult descendants, resulting in the slowing down of maturation, with features of early ontogeny appearing later in ontogeny over generations. One does not just mature slower. Features of the infant manifest in the adult. Acceleration is the reverse of neoteny, with the features of adult ancestors appearing in the infant or embryonic features of descendants.

Darwin discovered sexual selection. He did not intuit the close connection between sexual selection and social structure in human evolution though he observed a relationship between the two. It seems that Victorian prejudices prevented him from seriously considering that human evolution was heavily influenced by female sexual selection or matristic, female-centered societies. Ironically, Wallace shared few of Darwin’s prejudices that women and aboriginals were lower than white Western academics, yet Wallace rejected sexual selection. If Wallace had embraced the theory, perhaps he’d have had the insights that several of his contemporaries experienced, that female sexual selection may have been integral to human evolution. Wallace chose instead to believe that divine intervention was responsible for language, society and culture.

Among those Western intellectuals that considered that the human female may have been central to how we evolved were Marx and Engels. Anthropologist Chris Knight, in his Blood Relations, observes how this has resulted in the fracturing of Western theorizing of human evolution.

For 150 years these three disciplines, neuropsychology, evolutionary biology and anthropology, have evolved in separate directions, occasionally exchanging idea memes but mostly conducting their work in separate journals describing seemingly unrelated theories with different descriptive nomenclatures.

I’ve suggested that by observing the influence of social structure on the heterochronic patterns of neoteny and acceleration, various neurological, physiological, psychological and hormonal patterns emerge in descendants over time. Anthropology, evolutionary biology and neuropsychology are three names for whether the patterns are observed in a society at a particular time, in society over time or in an individual within that society. These three disciplines are parsing out the scale and timing of experience. Engineering has one language to describe the almost 100-year evolution of the auto, general auto design and the products of specific auto manufacturers. It would be useful if we had a single language for human beings.

A potentially useful language is the language that lovers speak, the evocations of testosterone and estrogen. A mother’s testosterone levels at six weeks before birth decide the testosterone levels and maturation rates of her children. A high-testosterone mother births high-testosterone daughters and low-testosterone sons. A low-testosterone mother gives birth to low-testosterone daughters and high-testosterone sons. The environment influences those testosterone levels, adjusting the testosterone levels in her children. If the mother mates with a male from a genetic line long separated from hers (i.e., an American Indian mating with a Jew), the progeny may display hormonal constellations or maturational trajectories that are ancient. If a very high-testosterone woman is attracted to a very low-testosterone man, the children’s maturation may be vulnerable to environmental influences exaggerating the mother’s testosterone levels even further.

The mother’s womb is the place where the scale and timing of experience converge. A society’s social structure is informed by the testosterone levels and maturation speed that her children emerge with. High-testosterone (T) females mating with low-testosterone (t) males form matrifocal, matristic or partnership societies. Low t females pairing with high T males create patrifocal, patristic or male domination societies.

Social structure changes over time. Evolution reflects those changes. These changes manifest in specific features of individuals within those societies, including dispositions for particular diseases, conditions and disorders informed by their particular hormonal tendencies driven by social structure.

Estrogen has been studied far less than testosterone. Not unlike observing a baseball game by watching only what occurs at first base and right field, understanding the impact of estrogen in this dynamic, intuiting the rules of the game but being only able to observe part of the game, is a challenge. Nevertheless, like Geschwind and Galaburda in 1987, I’d like to make some tentative hypotheses and see if some of the patterns that they observed twenty years ago make more sense from this new point of view. I’d like to see how many of the rules of baseball we can infer by watching a fraction of the game.

Let’s imagine that not only testosterone levels are set at a particular time in the woman’s womb. Let’s estimate that estrogen levels in the mother decide the estrogen levels in her children, operating with a similar dynamic. This is a big leap, but the implications in social structure (anthropology) and evolution (evolutionary biology) are perhaps useful.

Imagine that a mother with high estrogen (E) gives birth to a low (e) estrogen son and a high E daughter. A low e mother gives birth to a low e daughter and a high E son. Estrogen confers caring and caregiving, along with a tendency to make aesthetic evaluations or judgments, as in sexual selection. Estrogen compels caring and a biological aesthetic.

Consider that just as testosterone propels maturational trajectories, resulting in changes in evolution, societies and the features of individuals, changes in estrogen result in similar profound modifications in evolution, society and individual characteristics. These changes are more difficult to see when everyone’s eyes in a patrifocal society are on the ball clearing a fence in left field. Still, there are 18 players in the game. It’s not all about the batter and the pitcher.

Perhaps it was the catcher that told the pitcher to throw a fast ball.

It may not be obvious that estrogen is calling signals in biological and societal evolution, but the possibility might make many patterns clear.

Consider the following…..

F te/M TE Conventional Patrifocal
F tE/M Te Warrior Patrifocal
F Te/M tE Contemporary Matrifocal
F TE/M te Classic Matrifocal

F te/M TE means low-testosterone & estrogen females, high-testosterone & estrogen male.

F tE/M Te means low-testosterone, high-estrogen female, high-testosterone, low-estrogen male.

F Te/M tE means high-testosterone, low-estrogen female, low-testosterone, high-estrogen male.

F TE/M te means high-testosterone & estrogen female, low-testosterone & estrogen male.

These are the outliers. The work of Marian Annett and her Right Shift Theory suggest that perhaps most people are in middle zones, not exhibiting particularly high or low levels of either hormone. Still, we are hypothesizing that societies will tend to lean powerfully in a matrifocal or patrifocal direction, evidencing populations with tendencies to fall into one or two of the four quadrants. All societies will exhibit examples of all four quadrants. I am hypothesizing that one or two of the four will be emphasized.

Because the mother’s testosterone levels always propel the two sexes in opposite directions (maturational delayed vs. maturational accelerated), we are hypothesizing that mother’s estrogen levels fashion her children’s exhibition of estrogen in opposite directions.

Domineering, caring, discriminating men choose cooperative women (F te/M TE).

Domineering men choose cooperative, caring, discriminating women (F tE/M Te).

Commanding women choose creative, cooperative, caring, discriminating men (F Te/M tE).

Commanding, caring, discriminating women choose creative, cooperative, aloof men (F TE/M te).

Marian Annett’s hypothesis of a balanced polymorphism or a society evidencing a seamless gradation between two outlier or extreme populations seems a reasonable way to view the patterns we are hypothesizing here. We would hypothesize that different societies will evidence varying balanced polymorphisms depending on their social structure proclivities. Specific hormonal constellations will become reinforced by womb conditions.

Deep changes in a society can occur quickly when there is a change in hormonal constellations. There can be sudden shifts from matrifocal to patrifocal or patrifocal to matrifocal. For example, if a matrifocal society is highly stressed over time by patrifocal incursions, the ideal male mate may shift from one displaying cooperative tendencies to a male quick to fight. Formerly highly valued aesthetic-oriented males may find themselves outside the pool of highly valued potential partners. In mere generations, physiological, hormonal and neuropsychological transformations may occur.

Nomadic populations exposed to changes in light (light influencing the pineal gland, which moderates testosterone levels) may experience radical fluctuations in a society’s social structure, impacting evolution over time.

Radical changes in diet manifesting in large amounts of high quality fats and nutrients might raise a female’s estrogen and testosterone levels, compelling a shift in social structure in the direction of female choice, with females choosing cooperators over warriors.

Hypothesizing both estrogen and testosterone as players in the transformation of species, societies and individuals, we might be able to infer rules in the game of life too subtle when we choose to only notice the behaviors of males. Details describing the power of women go unremarked when viewed from the elevated position of disciplines that do not play ball with one another. Consider that when we are able to see the whole playing field and are able to view all players, we notice that half of them are females and that the catcher, with mask withdrawn, is a woman.

It takes at least two to play a game. It’s time we recognize that the females are always players.

(Thanks to Riane Eisler’s The Real Wealth of Nations for inspiring the conclusions that I came to in this piece.)

Consider that the father’s sperm, each ejaculation, represents the somatic conditions in the male’s body at the time of sperm creation.  Consider that each sperm carries with it information that tells the child how high or how low the child’s testosterone or estrogen levels will be based on the father’s levels of testosterone and estrogen.

I tried playing with this conjecture as an assumption ten years ago when the theory’s pieces first came together.  I’ve let it languish because I’ve noted no studies that have considered this possibility.  There is no supporting evidence.  It would be easy enough, with funding, to set up long-term studies.  The problem is that we’re discussing Lamarckian principles.  Sociobiology or evolutionary psychology may be on the wane but mentioning Lamarck in a proposal will still likely draw derision.

Over the last few days we’ve hypothesized an estrogen dynamic similar to what we’ve observed with testosterone.  At six weeks before birth, the mother’s testosterone levels determine the testosterone levels and maturation speed of her progeny.  Estimating that estrogen levels may be determined in a similar fashion, with caregiving and aesthetic-choice tendencies influenced by those levels, we’ve unimpacted several implications having to do with human evolution, societal creation and medical diseases and conditions.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll seek to develop this thesis.  I just want to mention this other aspect or possibility that has bounced around in the back of my mind a long time.  I want to note that the father’s testosterone and estrogen levels, as they have changed over the course of his life and exist at the moment of sperm creation, may also be influencing the maturation rates, caring capacities and aesthetic thresholds of his sons and daughters.  This might be a relatively minor effect in relation to the power of uterine hormonal thresholds but perhaps worth pursuing.

I often assume symmetry when sifting through patterns, seeking an understanding of how human beings evolve.  An aesthetic underlies how I estimate we came to be.  Intuiting symmetry, I’ve felt that estrogen was integral to evolution.  Intuiting symmetry, I suspect that changes in the life of the father influence the character of his sons and daughters.

Somebody said that when all you have is a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail.  As an artist, the whole world looks to me like a work of art.  I assume we were designed artfully.  Symmetry suggests artistic sensibilities.  By “symmetry,” I don’t mean evenness or arrangements suggesting even distribution.  By “symmetry,” I mean an integrated, across-levels, nested signaling of awareness.

I intuit that fathers have a contribution to make because it feels right.

I started writing these essays on January 1, 2008.  I had perhaps twenty pieces that I’d written over a period of years.  I did not know if I had enough to say to write each day.  I didn’t know if there were enough things that would hold my interest.  As winter warmed, I was able to write each day, and I concluded that finding things to hold my interest was not a problem.  There was a delay putting up the site as my firm’s staff member that specialized in Wordpress had to get other projects put to bed.  Finally, on April 1, the website posted.  I began with the essay I wrote on the first of January.

The 200th essay is posting tomorrow, except that today is October 9, 2008.  By the time you read this, it will be mid-January, and this one I’m writing now will be close to the 300th essay posted. [As it happened, this is essay 300.]  So, I am always about 100 days ahead of what’s being posted.  Not incidentally, this allows me the time to send them all to an editor to be reviewed.

This delay makes for a number of unique effects.

I restrain myself from using seasonal metaphors because the season won’t reflect the season that the reader will be in.  Also, I don’t talk about the election because it will be over.

Very odd reverberation effects emerge.  In one piece, I talked about that day’s (April) market plummeting almost 400 points.  When that piece posted 14 weeks later, the market posted its worst loss (almost 400 points) since the day I wrote the piece.  I’ve occasionally written about the coming economic meltdown, usually in the context of the dissolution of the myth of Social Darwinism, what we call free markets.  I now find pieces appearing about the coming major crash, and the crash is happening by the time the piece is posted (Remember, for me, it’s October 9th.  What’s in the news today is the first post-bailout discussion of nationalizing America’s banks.)

There are unexpected benefits of this peculiar situation.  The 100-day cushion allows me to not write on any given day (about one or two days a month I don’t write) and the posting rhythm is not interrupted.  I find I can develop an idea over several days with no sense that someone is looking over my shoulder or fear that a multiple-day theme will reach a dead end and leave readers confused or frustrated.  I feel no compulsion to publish everything I write.

Everything I do write gets reviewed several times in the process.  By the time it posts, I feel confident in the work.

Perhaps, most interesting of all, I’ve noted a 100-day echo effect bouncing off the posting of a piece.  Before writing, I post that day’s piece.  Sometimes, something inside me has either changed or there has been a deepening in my understanding in those 100 days.  I often find myself writing on the subject I wrote about 100 days ago but with additional perspective or an enhanced understanding.  Sometimes I see connections not obvious a mere season ago.

I’m finding this expressive format deeply satisfying.  In odd ways I find myself in conversation with myself, a season older.  Strangely, there is enough difference in the two me’s that the conversation often stirs me.

As a narcissist, the medium seems to mate well with my condition.

It seems I’ve found an art form I adore.

Two interlocking models or paradigms describe how humans evolve.

In the first explanatory paradigm we are now looking at a modification of our model.  We now have two complementing dynamics.

Mother’s testosterone levels > progeny maturation rate > social structure proclivity > evolutionary trajectory.

Mother’s estrogen levels > progeny ability to exercise aesthetic discrimination and caring behavior > social structure proclivity > evolutionary trajectory.

I hypothesize two feedback loops.  Mother’s testosterone level > progeny maturation rate > social structure proclivity > mother’s testosterone level.  Mother’s estrogen level > progeny ability to exercise aesthetic discrimination and caring behavior > social structure proclivity > Mother’s estrogen level.  The environment can intervene at all three levels of both loops by influencing maturation rates and timing (via testosterone) or by influencing mate selection criteria (via estrogen), thus modifying the trajectory of human evolution.

The second explanatory paradigm involves a five-step continuum beginning with natural selection and then moving to sexual selection, with animals focusing on particular patterns when they choose a mate.  Step three begins with a bridging over to human sexual selection, where adept practitioners of novel pattern creation are selected as procreation partners by mates with sensitivity to these nuances.  This is where the first explanatory paradigm is engaged.  The fourth step is taken when novelty itself becomes desirable outside the partner selection process, and society is compelled to embrace in its productions the infinite nuances of the new.  In the fifth stage, awareness of the creation process itself becomes a target experience.

The fifth stage offers a looping around to stage one, what we think of as competitive evolution, accompanied by awareness.

1)    natural selection
2)    sexual selection (selecting for pattern when seeking a mate)
3)    human sexual selection (selection for novel pattern when seeking a mate)
4)    art (selecting for novel pattern outside of mate selection)
5)    awareness of the selection or creative process

We know that a person’s testosterone levels are set by mother’s testosterone levels six weeks before birth.  I’m not aware of any studies that support or don’t support our conjecture that a person’s estrogen levels are set by the mother’s estrogen levels in utero.  I started this thread almost two weeks ago, saying I was going out on a limb.  I didn’t expect to be climbing out this far.  Neither did I expect to find so many evocative possibilities.

Folks, this is open-source theorizing.  Post in comments your knowledge of studies that suggest that this is a fertile path (see previous entry: Tentative Conclusion to the Estrogen Discussion) or that the fruits that I am describing are imaginary.

Ten days ago we waded into what little information we have on estrogen to estimate if we know enough to inform an understanding on the influence of estrogen on human evolution and current societal formations. Eight days ago we came up with the following matrix of relationships…

Patri Female low T, low e Male high T, high e Asian
Patri Female low T, low e Male high T, low e
Hybrid Female low T, low e Male low T, high e Scandinavian?
Hybrid Female low T, low e Male low T, low e Scandinavian?

Patri Female low T, high e Male high T, high e
Patri Female low T, high e Male high T, low e
Hybrid Female low T, high e Male low T, high e Scandinavian?
Hybrid Female low T, high e Male low T, low e Scandinavian?

Hybrid Female high T, low e Male high T, high e
Hybrid Female high T, low e Male high T, low e
Matri Female high T, low e Male low T, high e
Matri Female high T, low e Male low T, low e

Hybrid Female high T, high e Male high T, high e
Hybrid Female high T, high e Male high T, low e
Matri Female high T, high e Male low T, high e
Matri Female high T, high e Male low T, low e African/ Polynesian

Let’s amend that chart to reveal what we’ve concluded might be useful in our ruminations of the last few days. Let’s delete, to see what happens, all pairings that are not complementary in that a female/male matching can’t have both high T, high E, low t, or low e. That would set up the following four tentative testosterone and estrogen matrix of relationships, with the addition of the classic patrifocal hormonal constellation, thresholds shifted down, to create the Asian archetype.

Patri Female low t, low e Male high T, high E Asian (shift down)
Patri Female low t, low e Male high T, high E Classic Patrifocal
Patri Female low t, high E Male high T, low e Warrior Patrifocal
Matri Female high T, low e Male low t, high E Scandinavian
Matri Female high T, high E Male low t, low e Classic Matrifocal

I don’t know if this is any more realistic than the 16-node breakdown. It seems reasonable to tentatively hypothesize that estrogen/testosterone across-sex pairings have to be opposites. If the mother’s estrogen and testosterone levels are setting her progeny’s levels, with girls opposite from boys, this would suggest the four-node solution.

The Female tE, male Te pairing seems to patrifocal society what the Scandinavian societies are to matrifocal society, an intensification of the paradigm. This seems to be the classic dominator warrior with no aesthetic sense, no caregiving tendencies and not choosey in the features that he looks for in a mate. The female seems docile, cooperative, caring and caregiving, with an aesthetic orientation. Perhaps over the course of hominid evolution all four of these polarities engage.

What are some of the implications of this paradigm?

Jared Diamond and Marvin Harris have explored hypothetical environmental influences on human social evolution. Juxtaposing those variables with the four-pole matrix proposed here may suggest specific evolutionary trajectories. Ethnic physical features may be predictable, particularly when seen against this hormonal hypothesis. Geoffrey Miller’s work focuses on the power of sexual selection or aesthetic compulsion to create features in physiology and society. Aesthetic choice in combination with hormonal constellation proclivities may go a long way toward informing an understanding of societal evolution since the African Diaspora.

What seems most powerful in the implications of this hypothesis is an enhanced understanding of diseases, disorders and conditions characterized by hormonal markers or tendencies. Studies suggest Asian women get breast cancer far less often than Westerners because they have unusually low estrogen levels, consonant with our hypothesis of the Asian shift down in hormonal thresholds to accommodate a neotenized, patrifocal society. If elevated and diminished hormone levels are markers for specific kinds of social structures, then we would expect to see specific diseases correlate with specific societies. For example, we might expect to see Scandinavian males get breast cancer more often than would be expected.

For another example, I hypothesized that equatorial peoples moving to northern climates will exhibit season-of-birth variations in testosterone levels, resulting in higher rates of autism. Recent news stories supported that prediction by calling attention to Somalis in Minnesota exhibiting exaggerated rates of autism. That would be low-testosterone males, high-testosterone females. I would predict you’d also get a higher percentage of prostate cancer when the exaggerated higher testosterone males reach adulthood, higher rates caused by those same light-influencing, pineal gland-impacting testosterone levels in the uterine environment. (See Minnesota Somali Autism: Geography and Light for an explanation of how radical changes in light compel the extremes of both male and female maturational delay and acceleration, high and low testosterone for both sexes.)

Taking things one step further, if indeed estrogen levels are set for life while a person is in the womb, then those diseases with high or low estrogen level markers may be directly related to impacts of the environment on the mother’s estrogen levels and environmental impacts later in ontogeny. (Chris Kuzawa explores how changes in the fetal environment influence adult disease.) Environmental impacts in combination with the natural high or low estrogen levels of that particular social structure constellation might lead directly to an etiological understanding for numerous diseases.

There is another implication. This work now hypothesizes that human evolution was driven by the female TE, male te constellation. That is a change from the high-testosterone female, low-testosterone male archetype this work has been presenting until the last few days. We now surmise, with the addition of estrogen, that the evolving male was low estrogen. If low-estrogen males were the prototype male during much of our evolution, and we hypothesize autistic males to feature a genotype from this period, then low e would be a feature of the autistic male. This would suggest that the autistic’s mother has elevated E in addition to T, and the elevated E is contributing to autism in contemporary society.

Ten years ago, I wrestled with an impact of estrogen on this theory as a possibility. Testosterone alone seemed not robust enough to form a theory to explain the origin of many cancers, though studies I read suggested hormone patterns. Exploring both testosterone and estrogen in combination with this modified theory of human biological and social evolution, modified to take into consideration estrogen as integral to the thesis, opens up the model to explaining far more than conditions characterized by maturational delay or acceleration.

We’ve established in earlier entries the following evolutionary paradigm:  Mother’s testosterone levels > progeny maturation rate > social structure proclivity > evolutionary trajectory.

Now, let’s consider a complementary addition.

Continuing yesterday’s discussion, let’s assume Scandinavian female Te, male tE where…..

T = high testosterone
t = low testosterone
E = high estrogen
e = low estrogen

If it is the case that in Scandinavia both sexes evolved the biological, neurological and societal features of neoteny over 5,000 years, then it would seem anomalous according to a foundation hypothesis of this blog and the Theory of Waves.  I am estimating that over the course of human evolution we tended toward matrifocal social structure (females TE, males te) or patrifocal social structure (females te, males TE).

We’ve discussed how Asian patrifocal cultures manifest neoteny in both sexes by encouraging female te and male TE by shifting all hormonal thresholds downward, allowing cooperation within a patrifocal context.  You’d also get a highly aesthetic society with male high E embedding refined discrimination, a matrifocal female attribute, with the male.

It seems possible that low female estrogen might be a powerful determinant of neoteny in females.  This might be the case biologically, though I know of no studies to support this.  High estrogen in males seems to encourage a powerful aesthetic in society, as in Asia and Scandinavia.  Perhaps a combination of the two encourages surges of two-sexed neoteny that transcends social structure to a degree.

In a female sexual-selection-driven matrifocal society, hypothetically a high T female also exhibits high E, tying together a willingness to exercise authority along with caregiving and aesthetic discrimination.  Shifting the high E to the male, lowering it in the females, creates a new balance, shifting to discrimination in the male, a male seeming to focus on specific cooperative, neotenous features in the female.

Male estrogen is never as high as female estrogen, so runaway sexual selection for specific neotenous features I suspect is not engaged, but evidently if male testosterone is lowered, as in the Asian and Scandinavian paradigms, then the influence of estrogen is enhanced, leading to an intense focus by males on female features and a society with a more pervasive aesthetic focus.

So, a pattern is emerging.  Lowering estrogen in the female and raising it in the male encourages strong female neoteny as males become highly discriminating in the mates they choose.  Keeping male testosterone low, as we are hypothesizing in Scandinavian societies, also encourages neoteny in the males.  So, the Scandinavian paradigm now makes sense, I think, with females Te, males tE.  This is not classic matrifocal but a novel hybrid that encourages neoteny in both sexes.  Asian societies also achieve neoteny in both sexes, seemingly also driven by high estrogen in males, compelling males to choose neotenous features in females, but with a general threshold shift downward, allowing neoteny in both sexes in a patrifocal context.

Still, not to belabor the point, we know that testosterone determines maturational delay and acceleration when a child’s maturation rate and social-structure proclivity is set in the sixth week before birth.  If estrogen is involved in a similar dynamic, we’d have an elegant engine behind evolution.  Based upon the conjectures above, an E mother would create an E daughter and e son.  An e mother would birth an e daughter and E son.  And, as with testosterone, we’d expect environmental factors to influence these thresholds before and after birth.

I would hypothesize, with no evidence other than what we observe in our tentative ethnic hormonal constellations, the following:  Mother’s estrogen levels > progeny ability to exercise aesthetic discrimination > social structure proclivity > evolutionary trajectory.

If Scandinavians are highly neotenous based upon mutual sexual selection (Miller, 2000), with both sexes choosing mates exhibiting those blue-eyed, blond-haired, pale skin markers of a person able to thrive off dairy and sunlight (Harris, 1989), then one would also expect to see larger brains (Tobias, 1970) and a cooperative, care-based society (Eisler, 2007).  Long arms and legs can also go with a low-testosterone neotenous constellation.

Asian societies, specifically Chinese peoples, also exhibit neoteny (Montagu, 1989), with perhaps both sexes choosing small-sized mates to manage limited nourishment sources.  Female estrogen levels are low (Diamond, 1986) and left-handedness is low (Dawson, 1974), with the males’ testes size almost half of a Scandinavian population adjusted for size (Diamond, 1986).  These are all patrifocal markers.

Chinese populations mature far faster and reach puberty sooner (Eveleth & Tanner, 1976) than Northwest Europe populations, an acceleration consonant with a patrifocal frame, yet they exhibit neotenous or maturational-delayed features such as relatively larger brains and flat-faced, diminutive features.

I am hypothesizing that Asian populations that require large-scale, multilevel cooperation encourage the societal cooperation bonuses that come with neoteny, while small size and fast maturation are demanded by intense agrarian population concentrations.  In this highly patrifocal context requiring cooperative, neotenous characteristics, you get a dramatic drop in hormone levels, resulting in te females and TE males, shifted down to allow for cooperation between competing forces within a male-domination societal foundation. (To follow the series of pieces leading to this contribution, click here.)

Whereas in Scandinavia, with both males and females choosing neotenous features in each other based upon an ideal mate exhibiting the nutrient-absorbing markers of blond hair, blue eyes and light skin, their populations evolved in highly neotenous societal directions, culminating in today’s most cooperation-based industrialized societies, exhibiting what Eisler ( 2007) notes as extremely care-based cultures.

There is pattern here.  But I can’t quite tease out the effects of estrogen in Scandinavia, particularly with the female, or if there is a hormone-threshold shift as evidence suggests there is in Asia.  Are there folks following my ruminations over the last week that have a feeling for what I’m trying to get at?

Scandinavians and Asians are social structure archetypes, beautiful examples of derivations from the classic social structure norms.  The Asian paradigm is settling down to make sense after years of my being confused, though there are aspects that still befuddle me.  One can add estrogen to the equation while noting across-culture hormone thresholds make a difference.  There is a riddle in the Scandinavians ripe for picking.  The riddle is:  What is the hormonal constellation of the Scandinavian woman?  Males are likely low testosterone, low to high estrogen.  Females could be high testosterone, but they would seem less likely to exhibit the highly neotenous features.  Can the female be high in testosterone with all markers suggesting neoteny?  If so, what estrogen level most encourages this to work?  Are female Scandinavians Te?

If so, you have the opposite paradigm to the Asian female.  In Asia, you achieve a patrifocal culture lowering hormone thresholds, speeding up growth and lowering puberty while at the same time investing a host of neotenous characteristics to act as glue.  In Scandinavia, you have an emerging matrifocal culture, prolonged ontogenetic growth, later puberty and evidence of neoteny in both sexes, not just in the males, as is the case in classic matrifocal culture with hormonal constellations not seeming to easily support neoteny in both sexes.  The easy prediction is female tE, male tE.  But somehow I’m just not seeing that as the case.  Right now, it’s looking like Scandinavian female Te, male tE.

See http://www.humanevolution.net/a/asianoriental.html for excerpts noted in the citations above.

Last night was a weird night.  I was not exactly sleeping.  My mind was deep into the pattern-trolling mode.  A part of me feels a certainty that estrogen and testosterone/estrogen constellations in mate selection (see “Estrogen Conjecture Inspired by Asian Neotenous Patrifocal Society”) lead to a deepened understanding of human evolution and the particular physiological/neuropsychological/hormonal/psychological features of the human ethnic spectrum.

At these preinspiration sessions I find myself operating with several presuppositions.  The presuppositions suggest that this process is far more artistic than scientific.  It’s more than an “as if” frame where I make a hypothesis and then follow where the existing data lead.  I’m assuming several things.  One, I assume that I can know the answer.  Two, I assume my unconscious already has the answer.  Three, I assume my unconscious is connected to the larger consciousness.  Four, I assume the solutions are available to me in a form I am schooled to assimilate and not a form beyond my education, such as genetics or higher mathematics.

That is a lot of presuppositions.  What this boils down to is that, feeling blessed, I can allow myself to experience, identify and communicate the patterns just beyond the barriers of the everyday.

Reeling around my mind last night are mated couples that I know and their evident testosterone/estrogen social structure constellations.  I’m now playing with the idea that there are transitional sexual selection constellations that are bridges to a future matrifocal/patrifocal synthesis.  For example, if TE female mates with te male (big T stands for high testosterone, little t low testosterone, big E high estrogen, little e low estrogen) in a matrifocal context, and te female mates with TE male in a patrifocal context, and a Scandinavian constellation represents an example of a synthesis of the two, then what possible transition pairings am I observing?  And, what examples of the Scandinavian synthesis do I observe in the American population?  And, for that matter, what is the Scandinavian testosterone/estrogen paradigm?

The Scandinavian constellation seems to be integral to understanding this paradigm.

The Asian paradigm has the female te mating with male TE with the hormonal thresholds all lowered to below the standard levels to engender an environment that nurtures patrifocal priorities, which include dominating males in a highly controlled hierarchical environment requiring large-scale cooperation and female infanticide.  It’s not clear to me if there is a connection between low estrogen levels, the dark hair and eyes and low incidence of left-handedness.  It feels like there might be.

With the Scandinavian constellation, male and female exhibiting matrifocal neoteny, presumably low t in both, resulting in the lanky, blond-hair and blue-eyed prototype, I’m hypothesizing low e in both, though I’m not exactly sure why.  It could be high E in both.  Or maybe one sex has high E and the other low e.  Or, what if the females are still high T?  But what if, as in the hypothetical Asian constellation where the whole hormonal threshold shifted down, in Scandinavia there has been a shift up?

In other words, you have females te and males te, but both at higher thresholds than is the norm.  But then the female in Asian and Scandinavian cultures would both be te, which seems unlikely.  So, let’s go back to Scandinavian female tE, male tE.  Perhaps there’s an embedded polymorphism with integrated populations of te/tE, tE/te, tE/tE and te/te matings with estrogen fluctuating all over the map.

In an Asian culture the shift down gets me a highly hierarchical patrifocal culture that compels cooperation and reinforces female infanticide.  What does a Scandinavian shift up accomplish?  It’s feeling hard to know this without understanding how exactly estrogen influences evolution.  We’ve observed the evolution-influencing testosterone dynamic.  The estrogen piece feels to me like a missing center.