We always knew that sex governed our lives.  There is now the possibility that we can understand how exactly this is done.

In both sexes, entering puberty is characterized by a surge in testosterone that, among other things, halts most synaptic growth.  If fat levels are not high enough, puberty is delayed.  Certain levels of estrogen are required for testosterone surges to occur.

Over ten years ago I hypothesized that a mother’s uterine testosterone levels would influence the likelihood of her child exhibiting autism.  I estimated that the rate of maturation would be determined by the amount of testosterone.  A mother with high testosterone would feature maturationally delayed sons and maturationally accelerated daughters, both vulnerable to autism.

This last season I’ve been applying the pattern of how estrogen controls the timing of testosterone surges at puberty to early childhood when testosterone surges prune the right hemispheres of most normal right-handed individuals.  Might estrogen levels in these infants, toddlers and children be determining the timing of these testosterone surges?  What if estrogen levels were so low in boys that testosterone surges did not occur?  The result would be an unpruned right hemisphere, a larger brain with two cerebral lobes that are the same size.  This is a common feature of autism.

If a mother has both high testosterone and high estrogen, what I estimate to be an archetype of one of two forms of matrifocal social structure, then, according to the principles that I’ve been playing with, she would birth a low-testosterone, low-estrogen son; high-testosterone, high-estrogen daughter.

The implication is that we might predict that autism would be relatively common in cases where the rate of maturation and the timing of maturation combine to engender brains, mostly male brains, which are maturing slowly with little variation is hemispheric size.

Regarding female infants and children with high estrogen encouraging pruning still drifting in an autistic direction, click here.  That is a little more complicated.

Right now, I’m wondering if breast milk vs. infant formula might be an influence on this process.  If a mother’s body is able to modify her embryo’s maturation rate and timing based upon the various environmental influences that impact testosterone and estrogen levels, then does a mother’s milk also adjust to environmental influences in ways that her child’s ontogenetic timing is modified?

Does what a new mother eats, for instance, a high-fat diet, influence her breast milk to increase the estrogen levels in her sons and daughters?  Could a high-fat diet increase the chance of an autistic child?

High-fat diets increase testosterone and estrogen levels.

How much influence does what we eat have upon our children?

Heterochronic theory, the study of the effects of rate and timing on maturation and development, takes the work of several late nineteenth century and early twentieth century theorists and packages that work into a sort of seamless whole. Stephen J. Gould in his Ontogeny and Phylogeny went far, codifying the various theorists’ predilections so that they made an overriding sense. I say “sort of” seamless whole because the actual endocrinological underpinnings of the dynamics were never explored.

Neoteny is the best known of the six heterochronic processes. Neoteny is the process whereby features of infants, embryos or the very young are, over the course of generations, prolonged to emerge in the adults of descendants. Acceleration is the opposite, whereby features of adult ancestors appear in the infants of descendants. For example, let’s say great great grandfather had a baritone voice, emerging at puberty. His son’s deeper voice may emerge just before puberty and his great grandson might have an unusually hoarse voice as a child. That would be an acceleration of a feature. These things normally take hundreds and thousands of generations, though they can be encouraged to occur in less than half a dozen. Wolves and foxes have been neotenized in a mere 20 years, acquiring dog-like characteristics.

Endocrinology is a new science even though we have been observing the effects of the gonadal hormones since the dawn of self awareness. That there might be an elegant correlation between specific hormones and the rate and timing of maturation has not been explored outside work done by biologists, followers of Matusa mostly, on amphibians and other nonmammal species. For over ten years, I’ve been exploring the repercussions of a theory of human evolution that considers that testosterone regulates the speed of maturation. This is a profoundly epigenetic theory, a theory that estimates that testosterone regulation occurs as a direct result of environmental factors that determine testosterone levels. Epigenetic theories are those theories that explore heredity/environment interactions that result in ontogenetic and eventually evolutionary change. It was unorthodox until recently to consider that genes are programmed to take into consideration environmental effects, and that the result of modifications will not only appear in the individual but in the individual’s descendants. So, we might see why it’s taken us a while to get to a place where testosterone could be even considered as a major force in evolution.

Chris Knight in his Blood Relations outlines the profound effect that social frames of reference have upon our ability to theorize. Thomas Kuhn alludes to the impact that shared social views have upon theorists’ frame of reference. Knight describes how hobbled we are in the West by a nonfeminist perspective. Kuhn suggests a sea change of societal perspectives would be necessary for the following to make sense.

Heterochronic theory’s changing rate and timing can be elegantly assigned to the effects of testosterone changing rates and estrogen controlling timing. Both hormones are associated with a host of related hormones, and there are circumstances where male and female hormones may transition to the other but, speaking generally, there are patterns that suggest that at a very real level, individual ontogeny, social evolution and human biological evolution are unfolding according to this very specific, two-variable dance.

Our commitment to Darwin’s theory of natural selection has made it difficult to note the effects of the environment upon evolution.

Our devotion to the idea that the behaviors of males in evolution are more important than the behaviors of females has made it almost impossible to observe that behind the scenes it has been the female controlling the timing of the process.

I wish we had a better word than “heterochronic” to describe the patterns. It would have been better if we had a name like “orchestral evolution.” Then it would make more sense when we assigned the position of conductor to a woman, she that decides the timing of the production.

There are several places where estrogen may be quietly stepping in and deciding exactly how things unfold by regulating the timing of those events. That may be occurring in no small way due to estrogen controlling the timing of testosterone’s effects.

• Fat levels at puberty, influencing estrogen levels, determine the timing of pubertal testosterone surges in both sexes. Individuals may experience delayed puberty if there is not enough fat on their bodies to propel the process.

• Estrogen levels in an infant and toddler may be influencing testosterone surges that determine cerebral synapse pruning. We don’t know what determines the timing of testosterone surges that result in the diminution of the right cerebral hemisphere. If it is a similar process to what determines the timing of testosterone surges in puberty, then estrogen levels may not only be controlling cerebral lateralization but may be heavily influencing language production, conditions such as autism and numerous other human features and conditions.

• Estrogen levels in a mother’s womb may be deciding (along with testosterone) which social structure the child will be inclined to ally with. I’ve described four social structures, two matrifocal and two patrifocal. Estrogen levels are a key determinant of social structure proclivity.

• Estrogen levels may be determining both the intensity of mate selection criteria (higher levels compelling a more determined choice) and the degree of focus on the young. Estrogen not only decides which male features get passed to the next generation but determines the likelihood of progeny survival by how much attention is directed toward the young. Consider that in female infanticide it is almost always the mother that kills the infant.

• Estrogen may offer the placating option when combat is being considered. Estrogen can control whether a battle occurs or not.

Darwin’s theory of sexual selection or female choice may be but the suggestion of a vast network of relationships determined by estrogen levels. Darwin was familiar with the work of contemporaries, Neo-Lamarckians, who focused on the orthogenetic tendency of features to evolve in particular trajectories. We can see those patterns now as part of the larger pattern of Gould’s heterochronic theory paradigm. It is possible that Darwin’s theory of natural selection and his theory of sexual selection can be allied in a heterochronic theory of evolution that places testosterone as the prime mover of rates of maturation and estrogen as the queen of timing. Interestingly enough, Darwin’s third theory, pangenesis, revealed orthogenetic insights. Darwin even hypothesized “gemmules,” or particles, that would flow through the bloodstream, carrying information regarding the environment to the places in one’s body that controlled evolutionary change.

In other words, Darwin had all the puzzle pieces. But, he was exploring these ideas in a time when society embraced only the idea that might is right, environment be damned and women control little of what occurs.

To seriously consider that testosterone may control the rate of evolution, estrogen the timing, we might have to go back 150 years. The answer to our origins may be in the origins of evolutionary theory.

It appeared that hidden beneath the just-so story was a theory, which, if brought to light, could help make useful predictions and illuminate unrecognized relationships. From the beginning, the theory drew information from three different disciplines: anthropology, evolutionary biology and neuropsychology; yet, because these three disciplines did not share a common language, it became my goal to show that they were indeed studying an identical process. Evolutionary biology’s heterochronic theory explored the long-term effects of changing maturation rates, while anthropological explorations of human social structure examined the repercussions that one or more generation’s mate choice has on society. Researchers in the field of neuropsychology largely neglected to acknowledge the evolutionary implications of their discoveries, which could elucidate the parallels between the environment’s influence on uterine hormone levels and the distribution of handedness across a society. It became clear to me that all three subdisciplines were describing the dynamic of sexual selection and how sexual selection’s influence on maturation rates impacts human evolution. There seemed limited opportunities for the practitioners of each discipline to feel moved by potential synergies with their academic neighbors. However, in order to further understand human evolution, there seems a need to speak the basic languages of these three subdisciplines.

This work seeks to transcend the academic language barrier by emphasizing common patterns and ideas shared by all three subdisciplines.

This introduction to the Theory of Waves begins with an overview of four hypothetical, yet fundamental, social structures (two matrifocal and two patrifocal) and outlines the hormonal constellation of the individuals who comprise those four basic prototypes. There exists an elegant dynamic that compels and maintains these four balances. This dynamic, as explained below, can be maintained or propelled at three different levels of two overlapping hormonal paradigms.

Below, I discuss the impact this dynamic has on understanding ethnic variation, disease and condition etiology. For example, I reframe female infanticide as a socially engineered form of sexual selection. The hormonal constellations that arise as a result of this selection process produce a low prevalence of female breast cancer in Asian societies.

Having investigated related theories, I offer several reasons why neuropsychological studies have produced such inconsistent results. This theory, the Theory of Waves, ends by making a number of predictions that concentrate on autism. These predictions provide an opportunity for members of the academic community to prove this story wrong. It has been by matching up anomalies across disciplines and by discovering melodies using the black keys on a piano that this theory has come together.

I believe that understanding neoteny (the prolongation of ancestor infant features into the adults of descendants) is integral to understanding the process of becoming human. Central to understanding neoteny is understanding early play behavior. Experiencing this theory as it has come together over the last ten years has felt like deep play, frequently crossing the line to the reverential. Let the following concepts play across your mind like music. Email me if this theory strikes a chord with your own experiences, or if it harmonizes with your own understanding.

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In this model, or theory, which I’ve been calling the Theory of Waves, there are eight varieties of humans, four male and four female. These eight types of humans feature specific characteristics, or tendencies. Each type of human can be influenced by other types, and each is susceptible to specific features in the environment. Environmental influences can compel the progeny of these types of humans to transform into other types of humans. These environmental influences compel evolutionary currents, which can provoke a significant transformation within a single generation. More often, however, these transformations occur over the course of centuries or longer.

Similar to Watson and Crick’s double helix, a larger body is created from an assembly of component parts. In this case, societies are made up of eight types of human beings, each of whom represents one of the eight potential combinations derived from the hormonal extremes. The hormonal extremes form a structure that serves as a template for a majority of the individuals within a society. The majority of individuals within a society will exhibit some basic features associated with these hormonal extremes, yet they will exhibit these extremes to less of a degree than the eight prototype humans.

Imagine that the eight basic artist colors (purple, red, blue, yellow, orange, green, black and white) are all being blended in specific ways to paint the character of a society. Or, consider that instead of the two planets Mars and Venus, which represent the classic male/female dichotomy, there are eight planets—four female and four male—which together comprise a pantheon of eight gods and goddesses.

Female Constellations
High testosterone, high estrogen (F TE)
High testosterone, low estrogen (F Te)
Low testosterone, high estrogen (F tE)
Low testosterone, low estrogen (F te)

Male Constellations
High testosterone, high estrogen (M TE)
High testosterone, low estrogen (M Te)
Low testosterone, high estrogen (M tE)
Low testosterone, low estrogen (M te)

As in the double helix, there are natural complementary pairings. In this framework, opposite sexes are not only drawn to each other based on sexual attraction, but they are also drawn to each other based on the attraction to their complementary opposite hormonal counterparts.

Female te/Male TE
Female tE/Male Te
Female Te/Male tE
Female TE/Male te

The complementary counterparts naturally ally themselves into patrifocal and matrifocal social structures. There exist two variations within each.

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

Conventional Patrifocal: Domineering, caring and discriminating men who choose cooperative women.

Warrior Patrifocal: Domineering men who choose cooperative, caring and discriminating women.

Contemporary Matrifocal: Commanding women who choose creative, cooperative, caring and discriminating men.

Classic Matrifocal: Commanding, caring and discriminating women who choose creative and cooperative men.

These fundamental paradigms are flexile and have an ability to transform from one societal prototype into another over time. The human hormone thresholds can vary over time and can control the speed and direction of evolution. The thresholds can be influenced at three locations within two interlocking cycles, or feedback loops, as described below.

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 any of the three levels of these two loops by influencing both maturation rates and timing (via testosterone) or by influencing the intensity of mate selection criteria (via estrogen).

Level 1: A mother’s uterine hormonal levels are impacted by environmental influences, which in turn affect the child’s maturation and development. The hormonal levels of the mother influence the overall disposition of the social structure by predisposing certain tendencies of the progeny.
Level 2: The environment, through a variety of specific hormone-influencing prompts, impacts a person in society, thereby shifting social structure proclivities.
Level 3: Shifts in social structure influence mate selection criteria, which alter evolutionary trajectories.

Changes may occur at the level of the womb, individual ontogeny and/or at the level of society. The relationship among these three environmentally susceptible locations creates an interactive system, which directs evolutionary trajectory.

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Central to this model are the environmental impact points, which compel the transformation of a society and our species. In a woman’s womb, testosterone levels decide her children’s testosterone levels (Geschwind & Galaburda, 1987) and their maturation rates and social structure proclivity. Females (F) with high testosterone (T) give birth to high-testosterone (T) females and low-testosterone (t) males. F T = F T or M t. The reverse is true for low-testosterone females. Low-testosterone females give birth to low-testosterone females and high-testosterone males. F t = F t or M T. This is how societal prototypes are created and maintained and how the complementary opposite foundation of this thesis emerges.

This may be feeling rather dense. Bear with me. I will define some terms.

“Neoteny” refers to the prolonging of infant features over many generations so that eventually they appear in the adults of the descendants. For example, chimpanzee-like progenitor features, such as having a large head relative to body size, small chin, large eyes, upward stature, curiosity and affection, are all characteristics that over time manifest in the physiology and psychology of adults. Acceleration reverses the evolutionary trajectory, whereby processes featured by ancestor adults condense or withdraw over time and appear earlier in development in the characteristics of children as well as in the infants of future descendants.

Heterochronic dynamics (Gould, 1977) of evolution (i.e., neoteny and acceleration) are embedded in social structure and lead to the very specific mating of neotenous males with accelerated females in matrifocal social structures and accelerated males marrying neotenous females in patrifocal social structures. There is a direct connection between womb conditions, maturation rate directions (neoteny and acceleration) and social structure.

The net result is that not only are males and females mating with their hormonal complementary opposites, but also that societies are evolving with males and females trending evolutionarily in opposite directions by continuing selection for opposite proclivities in opposite sexes. It is conceivable that in human beings there exists a dynamic that demands eventual flipping of social structures, perhaps over periods as long as hundreds of thousands of years or as short as 6,000 years (Gimbutas, 1991). This provides an opportunity for the sexes to realign. It is also possible that this “flipping” is constantly occurring within different lineages in a society, which are taking turns performing the role of the hormonal outliers, or eight prototype humans.

Whereas the influence of a mother’s testosterone levels on her progeny has been established (Geschwind & Galaburda, 1987), this model hypothesizes that the mother’s estrogen levels influence her children via an identical dynamic, which encourages and reinforces the sexually selected focus on partner choice and discrimination, as well as caring and care giving. In this case, the estrogen levels within a woman’s womb determine her children’s estrogen levels, their tendencies toward evaluation of nuance and their compulsion to care. A female (F) with high estrogen (E) gives birth to high-estrogen females and low-estrogen (e) males. F E = F E or M e. The reverse is true for low-estrogen females. F e = F e or M E. This is how estrogen-related societal prototypes are created and maintained. This dynamic also contributes to the complementary opposite foundation of this thesis.

Whether a male or female has high or low estrogen levels does not contribute to maturation rates. This makes it possible to have high or low-estrogen males and females in any social structure. Maturation rates inform heterochronic tendencies and social structure proclivities. Nevertheless, estrogen confers discrimination, an attention to detail that can exaggerate the proclivity of a social structure. In addition, estrogen focuses on the features of a child, attracting those with high estrogen toward individuals who exhibit childlike features. Assign high estrogen to a female with high testosterone and you achieve Classic Matrifocal social structure with commanding females prone to choosing cooperative males with neotenous, or child-like, characteristics. Assign high estrogen to a male and you get either a Scandinavian Contemporary Matrifocal paradigm (Eisler, 2007) with both sexes exhibiting neoteny in a matrifocal context, or you get an Asian Conventional Patrifocal paradigm with males who are focused on mating with females displaying highly neotenous features. When pairing high estrogen with high testosterone, you get an exaggerated intensity of sexual selection, not unlike Fisher’s runaway sexual selection (Fisher, 1930), which results in a powerful focus on neoteny. F TE = Matrifocal selection for neotenous males. M TE = Patrifocal selection for neotenous females.

The particular way that testosterone and estrogen align with individuals within a society compels both social structure and particular physical features of individuals. These two hormones, which influence heterochronic trajectories, also influence personality features, disease and condition proclivities, societal characteristics and even such societal mysteries as female infanticide.

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Another way to view this is by noting that at the extremes, a society displays the highest and lowest hormonal thresholds. These thresholds exist in those with bodies and minds most impacted by the battle between somatic function and behaviors, which are both required for survival. Those at the hormonal extremes are at the front lines of what a body can easily survive. When the environment changes, the extremes are put under more intense distress as the societal balanced polymorphism (the established balance of social structures within a society) is pushed in a specific direction. The majority of society, which exists in the center of this spectrum and which also has a heterozygote advantage (Annett, 2002), are compelled to drift left or right, matrifocal or patrifocal, over the course of several generations. Those at the margins are under the most intense duress.

Even in a society characterized by one of the four foundation social structures, one or more of the other social structures are integrally involved. Assimilated within a society are representative individuals, couples and subcultures, who act as social structure opposites to the established paradigm. In this way, these couples and subcultures also contribute to the balanced polymorphism. Though we in the West have been living in patrifocal social structures, matrifocal elements are integrated within the larger society and occupy the “left” end of the spectrum. American society displays a combination of all four social structures. Together, all four of these form a balance that is changing, particularly now.

There are a number of repercussions, or implications, of this basic model, and details are explored below. The etiologies for a number of physical and mental diseases and conditions are suggested by understanding the eight human prototypes as hormonal outliers that exist on a continuum within social structures and are held in balance so that they create a heterozygote advantage. Those whose hormonal constellations exist at the center are not burdened by hormonal extremes. The engine behind human evolution can be examined in detail so that one may offer a number of predictions. This work will concentrate on conditions characterized by maturational delay and acceleration, and it will focus particularly on autism. The reader will be able to infer by this example how the principles in this Theory of Waves can be applied to a number of diseases and conditions.

Neuroscientists will recognize at the core of this thesis a variation of the Geschwind and Galaburda (1987) hypothesis that connects hormones, handedness, lateralization and debilitations. Evolutionary developmental biologists familiar with nineteenth century principles of heterochrony (the study of the effects of changing maturation and development rates and timing) will find heterochronic processes (Gould, 1977) manifesting in neuropsychological studies of the endocrine system (specifically, testosterone and estrogen). These evolutionary biologists will also recognize how sexual hormones influence maturation rates and timing (Hall, Person & Muller, 2004). Anthropologists will be able to observe the impact of social structure—and the forms of sexual selection that drive social structure (such as female sexual selection and female infanticide)—on how societies transform and our species evolves. Studies of human social structures are integrally tied to both the evolutionary biological principle of heterochrony and neuropsychological processes driven by testosterone and estrogen.

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For example, I’m hypothesizing that in highly patrifocal hierarchical Asian societies, originally organized in ways that demanded large-scale cooperation in order to manage irrigation works spanning for hundreds of miles, males need to be high in testosterone relative to females, while simultaneously being low testosterone relative to other males. This would be necessary in order to better facilitate cooperation within a highly combative hierarchical and patrifocal society requiring male/male collaboration. In this hypothesis, I shift down both estrogen and testosterone levels to accommodate lower testosterone levels for males in a patrifocal society with cooperative undertones. A relatively high-estrogen Asian male is suggested by the highly aesthetic and visually discriminating Asian culture. Relatively low female estrogen level is implied by ubiquitous female infanticide. To fit this model, Asian females would have to exhibit the lowest recorded female estrogen levels. This would mean the normally low Conventional Patrifocal female estrogen would have to be shifted lower in order to accommodate Asian male patrifocal cooperation. And, indeed, studies support anomalously low female Asian estrogen levels (Diamond, 1986).

Female infanticide may be integrated into an understanding of patrifocal social structure—particularly the Conventional Patrifocal social structure of hierarchical Asian social structures, which exhibit long-term stability. When the number of females in the procreation pool is reduced, far fewer males are able to have children. A heavy emphasis is placed on the ideal male, the non-ideal males procreating far less. The result is a continuing selection of highly patrifocal traits in the male population. Because of this, left spectrum and older genotype features that accompany matrifocal social structure do not easily emerge. This would include left-handedness, an attraction to innovation and spontaneous creativity. Instead, status, hierarchy and tradition would be highly valued, as is the case with traditional Asian culture. Female infanticide is a powerful sexual selection tool providing long-term stability to Conventional Patrifocal societies. Very low incidence of autism would also be expected, as I will explain shortly.

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With individuals congregating around the eight hormonal paradigms, we’d expect that many diseases, disorders and conditions would be assigned to those located at the extremes, or outlying positions of the balanced polymorphism. For example, Asian females with very low estrogen should have low rates of breast cancer, while matrifocal societies with high estrogen should exhibit high rates of breast cancer. One would expect the same pattern with prostate cancer. We’d expect to see relatively few cases of prostate cancer in Asian patrifocal societies but high rates of prostate cancer in patrifocal societies that exhibit little cooperation. In Contemporary Matrifocal Scandinavia, one would expect very low rates of prostate cancer, yet relatively high rates of male breast cancer. Social structures compel hormonal tendencies, suggesting disease and condition etiology.

For conditions like autism, Asperger’s, stuttering and phonetic dyslexia, we’d expect to see the four matrifocal categories trending toward these conditions, with a possible emphasis on M te and F TE if Classic Matrifocal is how we primarily evolved (see below). Autism, Asperger’s, stuttering and phonetic dyslexia are often accompanied by male maturational delay, which is a marker of matrifocal societies. Matrifocal societies feature low-testosterone males and high-testosterone females.

There is the possibility that certain mental conditions will trend toward these same hormonal extremes. I would estimate that borderline personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder and obsessive compulsive disorder, based upon their association with families exhibiting left-handers and maturational delay, will fit the same matrifocal profiles, again with a likely Classic Matrifocal emphasis.

Diseases and conditions may have multiple etiologies depending on the particular symptoms they are associated with. For example, Marian Annett and colleagues noted two types of dyslexia. She observed phonetic dyslexia trending toward the extreme left end of the balanced polymorphism and visual dyslexia trending toward the extreme right (Annett, Eglinton & Smythe, 1996).

Schizophrenia may display two radically different etiologies, which would appear in both patrifocal and matrifocal cultures. These two different etiologies would be based upon the hypothesis that hemispheric differentiation and corpus callosum size vary according to two extremes (Coger & Serafetinides, 1990). One etiology is reinforced by facility with language (Crow, 1995; Crow, Done & Sacker, 1996) and is accompanied by a surge in patrifocal social structures, while the other displays a familial and social structure identical to the familial and social structure of autism, characterized by matrifocal origins.

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I am hypothesizing a five-step evolutionary continuum that begins with natural selection but then moves to sexual selection. In this continuum, animals focus on particular patterns when they choose a mate. Step three begins with crossing a bridge over to human sexual selection, where adept practitioners of novel pattern creation are selected as procreation partners by mates with sensitivity to these nuances (Miller, 2000). The fourth step is taken when novelty itself becomes desirable outside the partner selection process, and society is thus compelled to embrace in its productions countless nuances of the new. In the fifth stage, awareness of the creation process itself becomes a target experience.

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 and culture (selecting for novel pattern outside of mate selection)
5) awareness of the selection or creative process

Integrated into the sequence established above is the longer-term dynamic of humans, who evolved from random-handed non-speech users (Annett, 2002) with two equally large cerebral hemispheres and a wide corpus callosum (Witelson, 1991).

I hypothesize that step 3 of this sequence is compelled by long-term male maturational delay and reinforced by sexual selection in a matrifocal context, where child-like features attract more focus (Gould, 1977). Classic Matrifocal was likely our social structure at this stage (Knight, 1991). Stage 4 suggests a shift toward patrifocal social structure as well as a decrease in brain size (Wiercinski, 1979), culminating in the Warrior Patrifocal. This sequence suggests that Classic Matrifocal and Warrior Matrifocal preceded Contemporary Matrifocal as well as Conventional Patrifocal, with the possible emergence of Contemporary and Conventional in the last 5,000 years.

Deep societal change can occur quickly when there is a change in hormonal constellations. Sudden shifts can occur 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 who is quick to fight. Formerly highly valued aesthetic-oriented males may then find themselves outside the pool of highly valued potential mates. In mere generations, physiological, hormonal and neuropsychological transformations can occur.

Migrating populations exposed to changes in sunlight (Geschwind and Galburda, 1987) show radical fluctuations in social structure, which impacts evolution over time. Sunlight impacts the pineal gland, which directly influences the testosterone levels within the individuals of a population (Geschwind and Galburda, 1987). A variety of specific diseases and conditions acquired by the eight prototype hormonal outliers will emerge among these migrating peoples, including autism. In addition, changing diet can exaggerate hormonal changes.

A radical change in diet, such as an increase in high quality fats and nutrients, could raise a female’s estrogen and testosterone levels and lower a male’s testosterone levels (Ahluwalia, Jackson, Jones, Williams, Mamidanna & Rajguru, 1981). These changes in hormonal levels would compel a shift in social structure toward the direction of female choice. Females would then seek mates that were cooperators rather than warriors. Sudden dietary changes that drastically reduce access to high fat foods could compel a hormonal shift toward a patrifocal social structure. These hormonal shifts would be further accentuated if combative situations emerged. This is the variation of the Kuzawa (2007) thesis, which proposes that uterine environments can influence adult physiology. My Theory of Waves thesis suggests that the parent’s hormonal shifts can adjust a progeny’s hormonal constellations and shift a society’s hormonal spectrum in a particular direction, depending on environmental pressures. Such hormonal shifts thus result in modifications of social structure.

Eight environmental variables influence testosterone, including light (Geschwind & Galaburda, 1987), diet (Schmidt, Wijga, Von Zur Muhlen, Brabant & Wagner, 1997), body fat (Ross, Bernstein, Judd, Hanisch, Pike & Henderson, 1986; Glass, Swerdloff, Bray, Dahms & Atkinson, 1977), alcohol and drugs (Castilla-Garcia, Santolaria-Fernandez, Gonzalez-Reimers, Bastita-Lopez, Gonzalez-Garcia, Jorge-Hernandez & Hernandez-Nieto, 1987; Ahluwalia, Clark, Westney, Smith, James, & Rajguru, 1992), tobacco (MacMahon, Trichopoulos, Cole & Brown, 1982; Barrett-Connor & Khaw, 1987), touch, physical activity (MacConnie, Barkan, Lampman, Schork, & Beitins, 1986; Morville, Pesquies, Guezennec, Serrurier & Guignard, 1979) and stress (James, 1986). Estrogen has been far less studied, but diet has been repeatedly shown to dramatically influence estrogen levels (Ahluwalia, et al., 1981).

We can view evolution as both a dynamic and static process that is driven by social structure, environmental influences, maturation rate modifications and hormonal changes. The evolutionary developmental biological view, or the heterochronic perspective, offers a dynamic frame. Annett’s (2002) modern UK society is characterized by a balanced polymorphism, which exhibits an evenly balanced static spectrum view of left and right-handed individuals. On the far left side of this spectrum exist the extreme left-handed, as well as the random-handed, and on the far right side of this spectrum exist the extreme right-handed. Most people in a society exist somewhere in the middle. This spectrum of individuals is aligned along a gradated curve and offers a static snapshot of our society in the process of transition. The older anomalously dominant (both cerebral hemispheres close to the same size) matrifocal prototype is stationed at the left side and balances those with cerebral asymmetry designed for speech facility, the patrifocal prototype, on the right. Annett’s Right Shift Theory (Annett, 1985) argues that cerebral asymmetry with language proclivity offers a heterozygote advantage that allows the moderate right-handed to occupy the center of society. This Theory of Waves integrates social structure, maturation rates and a long-term evolutionary arc into Annett’s static snapshot in time.

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Four major barriers prevent the easy appraisal of the natural hormonal levels that characterize the eight human prototypes.

Assays that fail to measure the variations of handedness with the degree of sensitivity established by Annett’s peg tests obstruct new insight and obscure potentially valuable observation. Annett’s work concluded that humans evolved as a random-handed species, which transitioned to right-handed when brains became lateralized for speech. Her peg tests measure degrees of right and random-handedness and are integral for establishing a locus related to social structure, disease/condition proclivity and maturation rate propensity. It is essential that different studies, particularly studies across cultures, compare apples to apples and use Annett’s protocols when measuring handedness.

It would be useful if Annett’s techniques were required to measure handedness around the world, quickly. Dietary changes within patrifocal societies may be skewing results dramatically. Aboriginal societies with a matrifocal foundation have almost completely disappeared. There are very few tools available to measure variations in societal balanced polymorphisms. Annett’s peg tests seem to measure the effects of testosterone and some indirect effects of estrogen fairly well.

The eight environmental variables noted above profoundly impact the hormone levels of males and females in a variety of contexts. To effectively measure the natural hormonal thresholds in ontogeny at any point, one must have an understanding of how that person’s hormonal levels are being influenced and altered by external variables. Adult hormone levels are dramatically impacted by a variety of factors. Existing studies show wild variation in results because these studies ignore influential variables. One study that measured testosterone levels neglected to take into consideration the time of day that levels were tested. In addition, the effects of stress cannot be underestimated. For example, measuring the testosterone levels of an autistic child in an institutional setting does little to provide an idea of that child’s base hormonal threshold, particularly if that child is on a standard institutional diet. Diet has been shown to have an effect on the symptoms of autism (Hjiej, Doyen, Couprie, Kaye & Contejean, 2008).

Some diseases and conditions appear at both ends of the left/right spectrum and occupy multiple poles of both matrifocal and patrifocal social structure. Annett approached dyslexia etiologies from a new perspective and established a protocol, which discovered that handedness congregated at both the extreme left and right ends of the spectrum. Diseases and conditions with more than one etiology often confound studies and frustrate attempts to discover patterns in social structure, handedness, hormonal constellations and ethnicity. It may seem that a disease such as schizophrenia, or a condition such as obsessive-compulsive disorder, does not always associate with a specific social structure or prototype predilection when more than one etiology is potentially in play.

Lastly, the season in which an individual is born affects the maturational delay and acceleration of that individual. Season of birth can thus help polarize a society’s social structure to either end of the spectrum. The effects of pineal-influenced testosterone levels may not merely be influencing those who live in migrating populations but also those who live in relative climatic extremes. When individuals within a society congregate at the hormonal extremes, vacating the balanced polymorphistic middle where those with the heterozygote advantage reside, it becomes nearly impossible to form conclusions about a society normally based on a seamless arc, or balance. In other words, climate and migration patterns influence the variables we’ve been noting.

These four conditions that inhibit high quality information regarding hormone levels—inconsistent handedness studies, untracked environmental variables, multiple pole disease/condition etiologies and season of birth effects—are primary reasons that the Geschwind/Galaburda hypothesis drew mixed support.

…

Norman Geschwind and his colleagues suggested that a number of diseases and conditions tend to align with specific handedness and cerebral lateralization tendencies. Geschwind believed that the random-handed (often left-handers) and the anomalously dominant, both of whom exhibit cerebral hemispheres near the same size, were evolutionary derivations. I agree with Annett (2002) that the random-handed and anomalously dominant are our evolutionary forebears, but I’ve added that these ancestral genotypes are matrifocal in origin.

Approaching Geschwind and Galaburda’s (1987) thesis with a heterochronic/social structure perspective gives one the ability to hypothesize the etiologies of a host of diseases and conditions as well as suggest a relationship between handedness, hormonal associations, social structure, lateralization, ethnicity and environmental variables.

These are some of the diseases and conditions noted in the literature (mostly from Geschwind and Galaburda, 1987) that offer correlations with some of the variables addressed in this model: alcoholism, Alzheimer’s disease, anxiety, asthma, ataxia telangiectasia, atopic syndrome, attention deficit disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, autism, benign intracranial hypertension, bi-polar disorder, borderline personality disorder, breast cancer, congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), cluster headaches, celiac disease, conduct disorder, congenital heart disease, dementia, depression, diabetes, Down’s syndrome, dyslexia, dystrophia myotonica, endometriosis, epilepsy, gastrointestinal issues, harelip, heart disease, Huntington’s disease, immune disorders, hyperkinetic syndrome, Kartagener syndrome, Klinefelter syndrome, Klippel-Feil syndrome, lupus erythematosus, migraine headaches, mital valve prolapse, narcissistic personality disorder, obesity, obsessive compulsive disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, osteoporosis, ovarian cysts, Parkinson’s disease, phobias, pilonidal sinus, polycystic ovary syndrome, prostate cancer, schizophrenia, scoliosis, spina bifida, stuttering, temporal lobe epilepsy, thyroid disorders, torticollis, Tourette’s syndrome, Turner syndrome and twinning. Cross reference these variables with handedness, social structure, maturation rates, ethnicity, family of origin, cerebral dominance and hormonal levels. All of these conditions offer opportunities to observe the relationships of these conditions and diseases to the eight human prototypes.

…

The predictions below focus specifically on issues of relative maturation rates with an emphasis on autism and related conditions.

1) Autistic males, from families of left-handers, will have lower testosterone than the norm, and autistic females will have higher testosterone. The mothers will have high testosterone (Baron-Cohen, Lutchmaya & Knickmeyer, 2004) and quite possibly high estrogen. If we evolved primarily from high F TE, M te, then autistic males will have low estrogen, and autistic females will have high estrogen. (In any study of autism, those with familial male maturation delay tendencies, or families of left-handers, need to be evaluated separately from those possibly traumatized by an environmental effect.)

2) Larger penis and testicle size will be associated with autistic, ambidextrous males and the familial left-handed. Left-handed males and autistics will produce more sperm. (This is based on the large testicle matrifocal bonobo sexual egalitarian paradigm vs. the small testicles patrifocal gorilla harem paradigm.) If larger testicles and increased sperm production are associated with low-testosterone, promiscuous social-structure males, then the two variables will be related in the sense that higher-testosterone males will have smaller testicles or lower sperm production.

3) Autistic males will exhibit more neotenous characteristics, while autistic females should show less neoteny than their contemporaries.

4) The children of parents of widely different ethnicities, separated by tens of thousands of years from common ancestry, will reveal characteristics of their last common progenitor and increased incidence of autism and left-handedness. (Maturational delay progenitor feature emergences will be far more common in matrifocal social structure families.)

5) Neoteny has dental correlations, with smaller teeth being characteristic of the neotenous smaller jaw. Learning that teeth have grown smaller over millions of years, researchers will find that they have actually grown larger in males over the last few tens of thousands of years as patrifocal social structure has taken hold. Ontologically, the teeth of males from older mothers should be smaller than the teeth of males of first-born, young mothers. The reverse should be true for females. In a large family, the male’s teeth will erupt later and later, the female’s earlier and earlier.

6) Because a mother’s testosterone level rises with her age and because she has children across the whole arc of her reproductive years, we might observe a display of personality and physiological features in her children that would roughly reproduce human evolution over a span of eons. An older mother should more frequently have male children with maturational delay, female children with accelerated maturation and increased prevalence of autism in both sexes. Autistic children born to young mothers will more likely come with less frequency from families of left-handers, trauma being a likely cause.

7) Obese mothers (overweight women exhibit increased testosterone and estrogen levels), particularly those who are older, should show high incidence of autism in their children, particularly in migrating populations moving from equatorial regions to northern climates. Equatorial peoples transplanted to northern climates will display higher percentages of maturational-delayed male children, and maturational-accelerated females, including autistics, with the births congregating in certain seasons.

8) If the low-testosterone males and high-testosterone females are late born, and high-testosterone males and low-testosterone females are the oldest children in a family or the first born, then first-borns will mate with first-borns and late-borns will mate with late-borns a higher percentage of the time than would occur by chance.

9) Hypothesizing that social structure has political correlates, it would be likely that in a politically conservative family, if liberals were to emerge, it would be among the youngest sons and daughters. One would also expect a higher incidence of divorce or serial monogamy with youngest children (reflecting matrifocal values).

10) Conditions that display maturational delay, such as autism, Asperger’s and stuttering, will appear more often in males with longer limbs and smaller teeth than in others in their family of origin. This would suggest that the youngest males would also be the tallest. (Longer limbs and smaller teeth are neotenous features.)

11) Eating healthfully (the caveman diet) brings puberty later and provides a longer time for the brain to grow. Putting autistic children on such a late-puberty-enhancing diet may enhance their ability to connect. When puberty or progenesis in humans is dropped to a younger age by several years, it has neurological and cognitive repercussions. In addition to a possible increase in depression and bi-polar disorder, there is the potential for a general curtailment of the final stages of cognitive development.

12) Societal periods of innovation will be preceded by periods of romance, revealing changes in the selection criteria by which females pick their mates or by a widening of the selection criteria for the ideal male. Shifts toward increases in the variety of acceptable features in the procreation population will result in increases in cultural and technical variation. For example, if female infanticide is a tool used for patrifocal cultural stability, decreases in female infanticide over time within a culture will correlate with increases in societal and economic variation. These changes will result in matrifocal societal surges, increases in left-handedness and increases in autism.

13) If rhythm and dance were the aesthetics driving human evolution through rituals of sexual selection, then the sound and feeling of nonstop rhythm may be necessary to encourage the development of an autistic child. Rhythmic environmental triggers may be essential to the healthy growth of maturational-delayed children. By implication, comparing congenitally deaf left and right-handers may reveal an unusually high number of autistics in the left-handed group.

…

I am hypothesizing that evolution is driven by this hormonal ebbing and flowing, or waxing and waning. 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. These two currents are inextricably intertwined, yet they follow established patterns, not unlike the double helix. Changes in hormone levels, influenced by the environment, impact ontogeny while we are in the womb, when we are children and after we’ve become grown-ups.

I call this the Theory of Waves to suggest the surge of features that travel ontogenetically back and forth from conception to adulthood and adulthood to conception over generations, with the direction of features often opposite between the sexes. Darwin proposed three different theories of evolution. This model in some ways integrates his three models (natural selection, sexual selection and Lamarckian selection, or pangenesis) and seeks to show patterns common to evolutionary biology (heterochronic theory), anthropology (social structure) and neuropsychology (sexual hormone endocrinology and Annett’s balanced polymorphism), all three of which describe ways that human beings may have evolved and may still be evolving.

Clearly, an adjustment (Matsuda, 1987) of Watson and Crick’s (1953) Central Dogma is occurring in several places in this thesis. Let me urge the reader to approach this work playfully while still rummaging for something useful in these conjectures. Most of all, perhaps, this thesis is suggesting that neoteny is central to being human. I believe that by playing with evolution we may discover who we are.

References:

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Annett, M., Eglinton, E. & Smythe, P. (1996). Types of dyslexia and the shift to dextrality. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, and Allied Disciplines, 37(2), 167-80.

Annett, M. (2002). Handedness and brain asymmetry. New York: Taylor & Francis Inc.

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The introduction to this piece was modified on 3/8/09

For more details regarding this theory, visit http://www.neoteny.org/?cat=28

For more details regarding this theory and autism, visit http://www.neoteny.org/?cat=29

Sitting on the beach, with an eye always on the ocean, you see a wave, run out into the water, position yourself and let it carry you toward your goal. Rarely are waves so big that you can see them from far away. Usually, you need to linger at least waist deep in the surf.

We are in a unique situation, what with the slow-motion toppling of our hierarchical society, to be observing a tidal wave of change approach the beach. The usual activist interventions don’t apply. To catch this wave requires an understanding of the change in societal currents, the shift from patrifocal to matrifocal paradigms and the profound effect that communication technologies are having upon this changing seascape.

It’s as if the moon had not risen for 6,000 years and only now has appeared above the clouds. Currents have shifted, currents making it far easier to catch a wave. Whereas until recently the actions of the Left have had only limited effect on the well organized and highly monetized Right, shifts in currents are providing opportunities for the Left to start riding the big one and to make its vision known.

For the Left to be able to articulate a vision for society that society can embrace, in contrast to the vision articulated by the Right, the Left needs to speak the language of youth. Youth talk tech. For youth, it’s not even tech, it’s just their lives. Text-messaging is life. IMing is life. Social networking and twitter is life. These youth tools are collapsing a 6,000-year-old scaffolding erected to keep power in the hands of the few. A tidal wave of change approaches, characterized by surges in transparency, diversity and horizontal communication carried forward on a current of moon-propelled matrifocal social structure. Our very biology is changing as the macho male and docile female are overwhelmed by the changing seascape that is our time.

Right now, the correct tools are tech tools integrated with messages to take specific actions. The Obama campaign integrated new tech with community organizing to create the hybrid that will be an organizing paradigm for years to come. What will change will be that the organizing impetus will emerge from regular users, using the technologies to accomplish specific goals. Remove the charismatic leader from the equation and you have countless waves of change competing, creating unique actions, forming brief ad hoc social networking alliances, achieving very specific goals.

It’s time the Left started using Obama’s youth tools. In terms of process, the Left has become conservative. The Obama Democrats, by using powerful democratizing youth tools, has become the Left.

In a way similar to how Gorbachev was the transition to the break-up of the Soviet Union, Obama will be the transitional leader making possible the arrival of the new wave, the wave of highly integrated citizen involvement, organized anarchy, horizontal society, a global community of peers.

The Left has got its feet wet. It’s time to swim.

Humans have evolved as a result of neoteny. Neoteny is one of several heterochronic processes. Neoteny is that process by which the features of infants appear over time in the adults of descendants. Physical, behavioral and neurological features “prolong” over generations, manifesting later and later in ontogeny until specific characteristics of embryos, babies and toddlers emerge as full-blown adult characteristics.

Books discussing neoteny in detail, such as Gould’s Ontogeny and Phylogeny, concentrate on the physical features that transform when impacted by neoteny. Wesley Montague explored some of the emotional repercussions of bridging the child to the adult. Specifically, Montague noted the profound effect of carrying creativity and curiosity into the adult of our species, with the resulting societal repercussions.

Two additional features of the very young have been somehow absent from discussions of the influence of neoteny on the human species. Perhaps this absence is because it is mostly males writing on the subject. Maybe it is because these two features are obfuscated by the way we humans view ourselves in contemporary society. Nevertheless, observing closely the behavior and experience of babies, extrapolating these observations to a tentative hypothesis of the behavior and experience of our chimp-like ancestors, we might conclude that contemporary humans and contemporary human society may have no small amount to do with the dynamic of heart-felt affection and dependency.

In other words, the affection experienced by the young for other humans in their life is an integral experience, usually ignored as a governing principle, yet it is an experience having massive impact upon our society. The young feel affection and they experience a compulsion to connect, what we call dependency. Being small is to experience a nonstop attraction to other humans, animals, things and situations while at the same time experiencing the constant buffeting that comes with exposure to the barriers that prevent a reciprocation of that attraction. Human babies and toddlers are extremely dependent relative to the young of other species. As this dependency paradigm manifests in the adult of our species, the relative importance of affection and connection will grow as adults acquire these aspects of the infant.

The massive, multiscale interconnection of contemporary society, with exponential increases in connection characterized by at first email, then the web, then texting and now social networking, are manifestations of infant dependency proclivities prolonging into older states of ontogeny, driving society into a whole.

We are in the midst of as profound an acceleration of our society and our species as can be imagined. Differentiating between societal and biological evolution in humans is no longer possible.

We can understand the neotenous engine behind our biological evolution and observe the manifestations of neoteny in society as earlier and earlier stages of an individual’s ontogeny emerge in adults. We observe biology’s transformations manifest in culture, almost before our eyes. We are left reeling.

We are also left feeling. Affection and dependency are in our societal future and our ontological past. Neoteny is not particularly discriminating in what infant features are carried forward to adulthood. Love is inevitable. So is vulnerability. The future could not be brighter.

One of the patterns that a commitment to natural selection masks is that evolution can happen extremely quickly, in a single lifetime. Darwin was aware of single-generational change and struggled for an explanatory principle. He called his theory pangenesis. According to pangenesis, the body manufactures gemmules that can carry information informing the body of environmental change, which the body responds to, modifying progeny in response.

We call them hormones.

We live in a post-Mendelian age. When a cloned sheep emerges from the mother with fur exhibiting different patterns from her other self, we might take notice. This effect is not what was predicted. With the complete genome mapped and realizing that things aren’t exactly as easy as Mendel suggested, we might consider alternative paradigms.

A mother with high testosterone produces males with low testosterone and females with high testosterone. The child’s maturation speed is determined six weeks before birth based on the mother’s testosterone level. Imagine that the fetus reaches that point, six weeks before birth, and the individual’s lifelong maturation rate is set. Now imagine that it is not only the speed that the individual will mature in his or her own life that is calculated, but his or her position in evolutionary time. What is determined by the mother’s testosterone level is the child’s position in the evolutionary arc of our species over the last several tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of years.

This trend means, as Frederick Engels and several nineteenth century proto-anthropologists suggested, a return to matriarchal social structures: low testosterone males and high testosterone females.

Ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny. Stages of our ontogeny inform and reproduce the final stages of our social structure evolution.

Autism manifests that recent stage in our unfolding where split-brain modern consciousness emerges and language use bridges over from gesture to speech. The females were often the leaders of these bands. They wielded authority and were first to be adept with words. Their brains made the transition first from two lobes of the same size with a wide corpus callosum to brains with a smaller right lobe with less robust cerebral connective tissues. Split brains made them better leaders. They could toy with time. Males continued to be selected for their cooperative, artistic, neotenic tendencies to be dependent upon and comply with the directions of the band.

With the story we are telling, we’d expect our male and female autistics, our travelers to the past, to evidence complementary opposite features.

I would predict that autistic males (those from families of left-handers, families evidencing maturational delay, not the autism born of trauma) will evidence neotenous characteristics such as smaller jaws, big heads and a post-puberty lanky build (unless provided diets that would hasten the onset of puberty). The literature already suggests that autistic males have larger brains with two lobes the same size. The males, of course, should have lower testosterone relative to the autistic female and relative to the standard, nonautistic right-handed male.

The autistic female is relatively rare compared to the autistic male, because you have to go further back in evolutionary time to find females having difficulty with words, with brains not yet split. I would predict that the autistic female would show little neoteny as compared to a nonautistic female. The autistic female should evidence a larger jaw, stockier build and a more domineering disposition when compared to her contemporary sisters. She should reveal higher testosterone levels relative to the standard, right-handed nonautistic female.

This model predicts complementary opposite characteristics of male and female autistics that mirror the matriarchal social structure that is their society of origin. When we understand that social evolution, biological evolution and ontological transformation are all about different time scales of the identical process, we can better interpret what we are observing in the now.

At present, with the Right in America having so successfully brought things backward eighty years or more, what with the dramatic increase of stratification and corporate control, it seems like the Left is seeking to go backward to the 1970s when there was some obvious forward movement. Right backward. Left forward. However far back the Right succeeds in pushing back conventions, the Left keeps seeking to place its weight on the teeter-totter in a way that changes the center of gravity, forcing the center to move in the Left’s direction, forward in time.

This competition is a might confusing because our societal convention has time marching from left to right as we read from left to right. With this metaphor, imagine the Right Wing on the left side of the teeter-totter and the Left Wing on the right. With this switch in orientation, time flows in the direction of our political nomenclature.

Arguments over strategy and tactics, where on the teeter-totter we should push, has a lot to do with resource control, age, demographics, proximity to power, talents and friends. For the young radical with few resources, the best place to push down is on those locations on the board farthest from the center. When all you have is your person, few connections to the center and no resources that can be threatened, leverage that weight to the farthest point possible. There is where a young person will have the most effect.

Contrast that radical with an older activist who has connections to politicians, connections that provide occasional conversations with a representative and the opportunity to be present at events where elected officials can be approached. For that activist, pushing down near the center, nearer the fulcrum, seems intuitive. These activists seek to leverage their access to power to engage in conversation, which is an opportunity unavailable to youth. The older activist could move farther out from the center, where their weight could have more of an effect, but then they could lose their connection to elected officials and the potential influence that connection affords.

Where activists choose to put their weight has to do with where they feel comfortable on this moving platform, their personality, their access to wealth and their access to free time. Each seeks a place that provides leverage with the variables that accompany his or her station in life. Clearly, if every moderate/progressive moved toward their leverage-left extreme, the center would lean quickly in the direction of where the weight is.

That is not what is happening today. Instead, a vast number of people are inching their way in the Left’s direction, moving the center in the direction of change. There is an understanding that the corporate elite so successfully threw their weight to the extreme edge of the right side of the teeter-totter that the gilded age arrived with no announcement or suggestion that things had changed. Controlling media has that benefit. It’s now slowly becoming clear to the status quo that the war, the redistribution of wealth and the de-democratization of society are closely related.

Forces greasing the teeter-totter platform compelling this slide in the direction of change are the web and communications technology. We are witnessing society on a subtle yet pervasive slide in a left direction as individuals experience themselves empowered by the transparent, communication-enhancing, diversity-inducing features of the web. Weight makes a difference when exerting change. So does friction. By making it effortless to slide to the left, technology is encouraging change.

The greased board is inclining in the left direction.

The steeper the incline, the faster the center will slide.

Tracing the path of societal ideas is compromised by an interpretation protocol that traces only the productions, not the origins, of the mind. We don’t think of biology or genetics as informing a discussion of the evolution of ideas. Exploring the connection between physical and mental when seeking an understanding of culture is not an intuitive choice. It has a lot to do with our not consciously knowing how we evolve biologically and societally. We are left watching the marble, guessing at what might have influenced its path.

No single variable influences our evolution more powerfully than changes in the rate and timing of maturation. Neoteny, or the prolongation of infant features into the adult of descendants by the slowing down of maturation, is the single most influential factor in our divergence from chimpanzee-like progenitors. Variations in a mother’s testosterone levels while her child is in the womb adjust maturation rates, modifying the personality, physical features, strengths and interests of her child. For example, high testosterone levels in combination with other factors can lead to autism. An extremely powerful determinant of testosterone levels is the degree and duration of exposure to light.

Daily testosterone levels are influenced by diurnal light variations. In Africa and the Middle East, equatorial light patterns throughout the year are relatively constant and do not impact daily testosterone levels to variations of more than 30%. Those variations stay within a constant yearly range.

Africans made slaves and carried to America were forced to labor in the American South, a South subject to very different light cycles than their society of origin. With early 20th century migration to Northern cities, additional latitudinal differences came into play. Light varied seasonally and testosterone levels fluctuated wildly relative to the latitude of origin.

The Jewish Diaspora drew Semitic peoples away from regions near the middle of the earth to Europe, where light varies more radically, seasonally, the farther North one goes.

The pineal gland interprets summer as daytime and winter as nighttime, based upon a multimillion-year equatorial calibration in Africa. Africans in America, as well as Semitics in Europe and now in America, find themselves exposed to radically different light levels from their societies of origin. The result is fundamental change in maturation rates in both the directions of neoteny and acceleration because mothers’ testosterone levels are moving either up or down, depending on the season. Also influenced by the season would be when the mother’s parents were born, because they would be subject to the same light impact. Over generations, if relations are born in the same season, you can get multigenerational exaggerations of the pineal-influencing testosterone effects.

In African and Jewish cultures, you get far wider variations of personality, physical features, strengths and interests than you would get in a culture not impacted in this way. I hypothesize you’d also get more cases of conditions characterized by maturational delay (autism, Asperger’s, stuttering, OCD) and maturational acceleration (aggression disorders). Jews have had a huge influence on American culture in the arts and sciences. Blacks have had a huge influence on American culture in the arts and athletics. I would suggest this influence is directly related to both cultures having origins in or near Africa, near the equator, and having moved or been forced to move away. I predict that comparisons of African Americans and equatorial Africans living in their society of origin, and American Jews compared with multigenerational Israeli Jews, will exhibit notable differences in exhibition of conditions characterized by maturational delay.

Recently it was discovered that Somalis relocating to Minnesota are having children with autism a far higher percentage of the time than is normal. The change in light is an explanation. This being the case, the birthdays of these children exhibiting autism should be congregating in certain times of the year. (For other variables that cause autism, click here, here and here.)

Tracing a moving marble through the hallways of our minds is not as easy as noting the effect of a single variable. Still, the history of culture involves a lot more than the tracing of ideas. It also requires following the bouncing ball as it travels from continent to continent, guiding us to note the influence of light. How we evolve socially and biologically is integrally tied to the ideas we have, our creative proclivities and our inhibiting conditions. Noting light’s influence on this process, we might say that no small amount of who and what we are comes from above.

Monkeying with our regulatory system evidently helped make us what we are. By engaging in neoteny, or the prolonging of infant states into the adults of descendants, we have evolved ourselves large brains, small jaws, a proclivity to wonder, a compulsion to play and an inclination to be dependent. Altering regulatory systems can have profound positive effects if creativity is your goal.

With the economy quivering on a brink, there has been no small amount of talk about the effects of the last generation’s adjustments in the regulatory system of the American economy. Much discussed is how much freedom large corporations are allowed and if transparency and accountability are necessary if large corporations prefer they not have to be so constrained. Social Darwinism has a new name. Free markets have allowed those with the most power and the greatest wealth the opportunity to write the laws and manage the agencies that were designed to monitor and regulate how America conducts its business.

Regulatory legislation over the last thirty years provided the older, established, more powerful corporations within American industry the advantages that they requested to make them more “competitive.” With fewer constraints, less government oversight, fewer inhibitions to growth, less accountability to labor, consumers or the environment, corporations found it easier to make money. Free markets meant an opportunity to be less impacted by those factors in their environment that informed their growth and their existence. Evolutionarily, corporations lobbied for and received a less free market, one with far fewer interconnections with contiguous areas in their environment. As in Social Darwinism, business wanted and received special treatment, legislation targeted to inhibit the effects of competing influences, such as labor, environment, safety, consumer rights and taxes, so that there would be an infrastructure that the corporations could freely use.

Opaque to the interconnected, interdependent nature of evolution, “free markets” behave as if entitled to freely destroy the ties that bind them to a healthy society if it results in their short-term gain.

Inevitably, disconnected from their environment, they wither.

Regulation is not only central to our biological evolution; regulation deeply informs how our society evolves. Deregulation is another name for regulating from the top down. It’s time to regulate from the bottom up. Adjusting regulation to unfold features existing at the bottom to appear at the top is what is called neoteny. This way is how human beings evolved. This way is how society evolves.

Regulate to encourage growth at the level of the individual, the family and small business. Offer resources to the lowest level of authority, and creative surges will result. Free college education, free health care and free child care are deregulating in a direction that puts power in the hands of the formerly powerless, powerless because government regulation preferred to provide corporations no constraints and allow them to be separated from their environment.

Social Darwinism and free markets are not natural. They are philosophies that support disconnecting business from their environment to achieve short-term business gain.

Free services such as health care, education and child care all combine to encourage interconnection and interdependence by providing healthful forms of interaction. By encouraging the lowest level of societal authority, we invest in the area where we are most creative, our children, at the level where we can have real impact, the individual.

We evolved from a chimpanzee-like progenitor by encouraging the features of the youngest to manifest in adults by picking mating partners that were young at heart. We evolve as a society by manifesting the characteristics of the individual in our institutions, by encouraging businesses that respect individuals. Re-regulating business to care for the individual is our evolutionary imperative. We do so by regulating business to have a heart.

On the other side sits AIDS, symbol of patrifocal, socially conservative Republicanism, demanding that sex stop now and that contraception and abortion be banned.

The pill vs. the virus, joy vs. fear, matri vs. patri is the battle of social structures, the oldest human civil war of all, where the female newborns are the disappeared.

Often, when a new lion king takes over an established pride with kittens not obviously his own, he kills them. It has been estimated that this action is a naturally selected tendency since cats evidencing this behavior are more likely to pass it on to male progeny that retain the trait. Humans are horrified observing this conduct. Yet, female infanticide is widely practiced today in cultures seeking to retain vanishing male dominance in societies where ancient hierarchies are threatened.

Societies retain ideals of the perfect mate. Those ideals can vary radically from culture to culture, even varying from country to country in the West. Perfect mate ideals vary to the extreme in matrifocal and patrifocal societies. Strong, focused, controlling women hook up with cooperative, creative, non-combative men in matrifocal societies. Cooperative and responsive women mate with aggressive, hierarchical, controlling males in patrifocal societies. A host of positive and negative adjectives cluster around these four poles, morphing from culture to culture, with hybrids not uncommon. For example, many cultures value a strong, aggressive woman that will cooperate with a man’s demands.

Societies can transform from one extreme of social structure to the other, or seek to radically emphasize a patrifocal focus by controlling the number of girls that reach procreation age. Female infanticide is engaged in to prevent males that do not achieve the cultural ideal from mating and siring children with features not respected by that society.

In a warrior society, young girls are killed, usually by the mother, to prevent cowards from finding wives. Among the South American Yamamano, where female infanticide is extreme and a warrior can have several wives, many males go mateless, particularly those that show little talent for the fight. Female/male ratios approach 100:140 at puberty in many tribes.

In a highly classist society where family of origin is the most important trait, males from families with the fewest resources will find the girls all taken. In India, many females are aborted.

In intensely hierarchical societies such as China, where allegiance to position is highly valued, killing the girls, usually before they’re born, can prevent streaks of independence from appearing in a society that would damage ancient social scaffoldings. Independent behaving males would not be chosen as a mate.

Loosening up societal ideals of the perfect mate provides opportunities for far more variation in the look and behavior of that culture. Over thousands of years, a society can oscillate in social structure according to the number of girls it chooses to kill. It is no mistake that some of the world’s longest living, most stable societies are those that practice female infanticide. It is also no mistake that some of the most violent tribal cultures make the girls disappear.

Contraception empowers women as the ideal mate moves away from being the male in control. The Right Wing in our society holds up AIDS as support for their position that sex is dangerous and best left to contexts where the male makes the choices.

The vast creativities unleashed in the United States have had no small amount to do with there being far fewer constraints on the ideal mate than in other societies in the world. The barriers of fashionable traits in human beings began falling with the influx of widely varying tastes among immigrants. With staid, hierarchical societies like China and India now embracing ideals that encourage creative independence, watch for surges of creativity where baby girls will all soon be allowed to live.

(Click here to review how female infoeticide effects these issues.)