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

1) Relative testosterone levels in males and females inform matrifocal vs. patrifocal societal structure. High T females choose low T males for their cooperative abilities, creating more egalitarian, matrifocal cultures. High T males choose low T females for their ability to be the complement to male authority, forming patrifocal cultures.

2) Autistic males, from families of left-handers, will have lower testosterone than the norm, and autistic females will have higher testosterone. In any study of autism, those with familial male maturation delay tendencies, families of left-handers, need to be evaluated separately from those possibly traumatized by an environmental effect.

3) Larger penis and testicle size will be associated with autistic, ambidextrous males and the familial left-handed.

4) Autistic males will exhibit more neotenous characteristics while autistic females should show less neoteny than contemporary populations.

5) If larger testicles and increased sperm production are associated with low-testosterone, promiscuous social-structure males, the two variables will be related in that higher-testosterone males will have smaller testicles or lower sperm production.

6) Left-handed males and autistics will produce more sperm.

7) A high percentage of artistic, narcissistic males and females with borderline personality disorder, particularly those from families with left-handers, will have more frequent incidence of autism in their family.

8) Narcissistic males will frequently mate with borderline personality females. The males will have lower testosterone, the females higher testosterone than the average.

9) The children of parents of widely different ethnicities, separated by tens of thousands of years of no interbreeding, should reveal characteristics of their last common progenitor and increased incidence of autism.

10) Among contemporary cultures, patrifocal societies will exhibit increased sexual dimorphism compared to matrifocal cultures.

11) Over the last six thousand years, female brain size will decrease at a smaller rate than male brain size, or even increase over the same period because the female is being selected for an exhibition of neotenous characteristics.

12) Neoteny has dental correlations, with smaller teeth being characteristic of the neotenous smaller jaw. Watching teeth grow smaller over millions of years, might researchers find that they have grown larger in males the last few tens of thousands of years as patrifocal social structure has taken hold?

13) Because a mother’s testosterone level rises with her age and because she has children across the whole arc of her reproductive years, then 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 children with maturational delay, including autism.

14) Obese mothers (overweight women exhibit increased testosterone levels), particularly those that are older, should show high incidence of autism in their children.

15) The teeth of males from older mothers should be smaller than the teeth of males of first-born, young mothers. It should be reversed for females.

16) If the low testosterone (T) males and high T females are late born, and high T males and low T 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 normally occur.

17) In a large family, the male’s teeth will erupt later and later, the females earlier and earlier.

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

18) Conditions that display maturational delay, such as autism, Asperger’s and stuttering, will appear in males with longer limbs and smaller teeth than in others in their family of origin.

19) 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.

20) If mother’s allergies influence testosterone levels, for example, hay fever causing testosterone increases, then allergies might be a factor in the cause of autism in her children. Birthdays of these autistics should cluster in certain months.

21) Female infanticide is patrifocal culture’s method for keeping only high T males in the procreation pool. In societies engaging in female infanticide, there are far fewer females than males to mate. The males considered least desirable as husbands by the fathers of the females to be married go mateless. Female infanticide is the co-option of female selection by patrifocal society to maintain a patrifocal society over time.

22) Puberty or progenesis in humans when dropped to a younger age by several years has neurological and cognitive repercussions. In addition to an increase in depression and bi-polar disorder, there is a general curtailment of the final stages of cognitive development.

23) Eating healthy (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.

24) Periods of innovation will be preceded by periods of romance, by changes in the selection criteria by which females pick their mates or by a widening of the selection criteria for the ideal male. Shifts to 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.

25) If rhythm and dance were the media 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. Comparing congenitally deaf left and right handers may reveal an unusually high number of autistics in the left handed group.

26) If neoteny is a powerful force influencing the transformation of society, then we might predict societal increases in transparency, diversity and horizontal communication as features of aboriginals and the very young are prolonged into the character of contemporary times.

27) Teleological interpretations of cultural evolution are often the observations of the dynamics of neoteny. By prolonging the features of the smallest bands into the largest societies–transparency, horizontal communication, equality–society is invested with specific features and a predictable direction.

In a highly patrifocal society, it is vital that the pool of potential wives be repressed. With few child-bearing females, only the males considered most ideal as husbands will be chosen by the fathers or families of the available woman. In a warrior society, or a very competitive, highly hierarchical society, the males that fail to perform will go mateless. Aggressive, competitive males will procreate and bring higher testosterone warriors into society.

The abortion battle is not over whether killing babies is moral. The abortion battle determines the social structure of society. If females can kill an unborn infant, then future mate selection also reverts to female choice. Females can choose to abort and they can choose their husband according to criteria that support her personal point of view.

Female infanticide is practiced widely in China and India. Targeted female abortion has become a problem with the new technologies. Until the last century there is evidence to suggest that Europeans widely practiced female infanticide. I know of no studies in the United States that track the percentages of males and females born to Right Wing and Left Wing families. With the availability of sex-determining technologies in the first trimester, there is a good chance that even today in the United States it could be observed that social conservative Republicans give birth to more males than members of the Green Party. Every generation that lacks Right Wing control over a woman’s ability to bear children is another generation in which the Right Wing observes the dissolution of male dominance of the society at large. The more females that can choose a mate, the more nonideal males (from a patrifocal male point of view) become fathers.

Among those fathers now easily finding mates are those maturational delayed, noncombative pattern manipulators and creative types. “Wimps”, “nerds” and sensitive males are marrying in greater numbers than in the past. They are giving birth to maturational delayed sons and maturational accelerated daughters, thus introducing to society greater numbers of the autistic (characterized by extreme male maturational delay) than have ever appeared before. Not only has an increase in abortions contributed to a plummeting in crime, abortion has resulted in an increase in autistics as women choose males that would have less problem with her having an abortion. These are nonpatrifocal, relatively female-centric males.

In just the way that Darwin observed humans breeding pigeons, pruning features not desired in an evolutionary thread, humans prune themselves by killing embryos and babies in order to guide society in the direction of matrifocal or patrifocal points of view. There may be few differences between Republicans and Democrats in foreign policy (or domestic policy, in many cases) but there are major differences when it comes to death. How life is trimmed, when the young are killed, has everything to do with how aggressive the future society will be. As long as Democrats struggle to preserve abortion, providing choice for woman whenever possible, the future will be far less aggressive than the past.

(Click here to review now female foeticide effects these issues.)

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.

Neoteny is physically represented in specific facial features. A matrifocal social structure encourages the selection of males exhibiting neotenous characteristics, which would include smaller jaw, bigger eyes and possibly a more lanky build. The male would be altogether more gracile than robust. Females would tend to be less neotenous than their patrifocal counterparts, with a more square jaw and stocky presence.

In a patrifocal social structure, macho men are choosing demure women for their neotenous tendencies. Western female beauty frames are engaged. The woman has smaller jaws, seemingly bigger eyes, a more petite frame and features of the young. Blonde hair and blue eyes are often characteristics of infants that fade with time. As a neotenous feature, blue-eyed blondes are classic patrifocal female beauty markers. But for hair and eye color, Asian females exhibit many of the features of a beautiful patriarchal woman. The classic handsome patrifocal man has a square jaw and robust build, which are non-neotenous characteristics.

Media expose us to actor examples of these two paradigms, often staging stories that provide the facial/body types the opportunity to represent the orientations of these two social structures.

Facial symmetry has emerged as a variable that suggests where beauty reposes. It has also been hypothesized that facial asymmetry reflects cerebral asymmetry. For example, extreme right-handedness may reflect a left hemisphere more exaggerated and larger than is normal relative to the right hemisphere. This exaggeration may also be reflected in two sides of the face diverging more in look than a less extremely right-handed person. For women, where the two brain hemispheres exhibit less difference in size than a right-handed male, there would be less facial asymmetry. Normally, women would exhibit less facial asymmetry than men and so seem more beautiful.

In a patrifocal society, the characteristics of male extreme right-handedness–hierarchical orientation, status consciousness, male control of female procreation–are more engaged. Perhaps male facial asymmetry is a marker for a desirable mate in patrifocal social structure.

In a matrifocal social structure, where the features of left-handedness are positive characteristics in the males–males perform, males cooperate, females control their own procreation–both male hemispheres are closer together in size with an exhibition of relative male facial symmetry.

Autistic males, the extreme representatives of matrifocal social structure males, males that are often left-handed, are often noted as particularly beautiful as children. This appearance may have a lot to do with the autistic brain featuring two hemispheres that are the same size, the right side never having been pruned by testosterone surges in early childhood. Same-sized hemispheres produce facial symmetry, which is a marker for beauty if you are a matrifocal female seeking a mate (or a patrifocal male searching for a patrifocal female).

Convention suggests it’s a mystery what attracts us to our mates. Behind mystery is pattern. Pattern reveals connections that make our origins clear. Observe media for how the entertainment structure represents beauty and the social structure archetypes that beauty portrays. Because these representations of beauty are all unconscious–beauty is determined by how beauty “feels”–media is almost oracular in the quality of its constructions. Oracular in that media interpretations of beauty are true, subtle and far deeper than what they seem.

Not unlike the experience of traveling to little-visited, far-flung corners of the earth and finding surprisingly similar myths describing origins of local culture; we find ourselves filled with a similar wonder upon traveling to little-visited academic sub-disciplines. Just as two far-apart aboriginal cultures might have no contact with each other, the heterochronic practitioners of evolutionary biology have little traffic with the neuropsychological theorists who may be located less than a hundred yards away in another building on the same campus. Strangely, we find these different scientists discussing identical processes in different terminologies with almost no published awareness that they have much in common.

How might two different scientific disciplines be discussing the same natural dynamic and not know it, like two aboriginal societies fearing menstrual blood half a world apart, unaware of another culture with the same belief?

The followers of heterochronic theory, tucked within the discipline of evolutionary biology, follow the influence of the relative rate and timing of development and maturation on species transformation. These theorists believe they have discovered a shortcut in the process by which Darwin’s selective processes, natural selection and sexual selection, cajole and curtail the way species transform and go through metamorphosis. The concept is elegant. Instead of waiting for chance mutations or unusual random variations, the selective processes act to retain specific useful features characterized by changes in maturation. A simple variation in, for example, the speed with which an individual can reach maturity, could mean that this faster-growing individual could defend himself or herself against a threat to which another, slower-developing individual might yield to. By passing on this ability to grow faster, this individual’s progeny would also have an increased chance to survive.

This example is one of several ways of manipulating the development and maturation process. Growing smaller is an advantage in many situations, as is growing slower. For example, spending more time at a specific maturational stage, the stage when brain size increase is the most rapid, might result in a far larger brain when that individual reaches adulthood; for example by having a more prolonged early infancy, some species might attain a larger brain size. All that changed may have been the rate of maturation at a specific age for a specific or extended period of time.

Stephen J. Gould suggests that the prolongation of the stages of infant growth into adulthood, since our divergence from chimpanzee-like ancestors five million years ago, would result in many features we identify as human. Human adults look like chimpanzee infants; in this case, a human’s ancestral infant stage prolongs its features into its descendant’s adulthood. An awareness of the rates and timing of maturation leads to an understanding of how humans evolved.

So how do rate and timing changes in hominid evolution relate to the studies of neuropsychologists?

Evolution is not just a record of the processes of the past leading to the present. Evolution is the process by which life unfolds in the here and now. The biggest block to understanding the connection between these two disciplines is the belief by many evolutionary theorists that the genes you pass on to your progeny cannot be revised once you have been conceived. The confusion has to do with the belief that our genes are randomly dealt according to a randomly created sperm impregnating an egg randomly created by the female’s parents. Overlooked is that long, long ago, embryos and animals were genetically programmed, naturally selected, to respond to changes in their environment, passing on these adaptations to their progeny in a form that their progeny could use to revise the rate and timing of their development and maturation to conform with what their parent’s bodies had learned.

Changes in diet influence the onset of puberty. The onset of puberty has been dropping for 100 years, with teens now starting their changes three to four years earlier. It has been suggested that increased high fat diets, non-meat fats, carbohydrates, hormone-infused meats or even plain protein trigger earlier puberty, which generates a change in the body’s environment that gets communicated to the next generation genetically when eggs and sperm are produced. Eggs and sperm are produced from the body’s hormonal constellation at the time of egg and sperm creation; for the woman, her eggs are created when she herself is an embryo; for the man, sperm creation is within days of ejaculation. The parent’s body knows hormonally that there has been an increase in specific elements of the diet. The message is passed on through genes that were naturally selected to be able to discriminate hormonal changes. It is an important message. It is a message that, over the course of several generations, can mean a huge difference in the number of descendants walking the globe. Early puberty means early procreation. A message that higher dietary reserves exist accelerates puberty, increasing the potential for more offspring to take advantage of the increased resources. Puberty has been dropping for 100 years as each generation has passed to the next the information that those resources still exist.

This is evolution in the here and now–individuals making it possible for their progeny to flourish in a changing environment. They are creating progeny prepared for the specific world they are entering. We pass on the information that directs our children into appropriate maturation rates based on how our hormonal systems fluctuate with the environment we live in. It is our hormonal systems that guide the creation of the egg, the sperm and the uterine environment that guide our children to a fertile adulthood.

Many neurological conditions and diseases are a direct result of hormonal messages guiding the rate and timing of development and maturation of individuals in circumstances that convention does not view as useful for survival. Extremely maturationally delayed individuals can evidence autism. Heterochronic theorists and neuropsychologists are both describing the effects of environments on the rate and timing of maturation. Both are describing the identical processes. Neuropsychologists see the effects of rate and timing changes on a time scale of the present–fast time. Evolutionary biologists have difficulty speeding up enough to see it. Without the perspective across time–slow time–characteristic of an evolutionary biological point of view, neuropsychologists behave unaware that a condition may have an evolutionary foundation. Observing autism, they don’t see its evolutionary origins. In both cases, because nonrandom changes can lead to single-generation changes, theorists trained to note only random changes do not see them.

Those ancient myths describing the power of women, the magic of menstruation, may be grounded in those same processes that make up the world of the evolutionary biologist and neuropsychologist. Aboriginal myths may be describing the power of the female womb to determine the specific nature of the child within. It has recently been discovered by a neuroscientist that a mother’s hormone levels while her child is in the womb dramatically influence that child’s maturation rates. Artificial and environmental interventions change an embryo’s maturation speed by changing the mother’s testosterone levels. The blood of a woman carries a heavy magic.

Ancient peoples across the planet have myths grounded in a magic we are only starting to understand. Scientists in different disciplines may be actually exploring the same aboriginal territory, unaware that they have colleagues mere feet away in the very same jungle.

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.

It is the anomalies that hold hidden treasures. It is the things that don’t fit in that suggest where doorways to new understandings are located. As we study human evolution and develop a theory that explains anomalies, with the hope of being useful, we find that an issue has emerged that suggests a productive new direction because it doesn’t fit in. This issue has to do with neoteny in contemporary social structure.

Asian cultures and physiologies are different from African cultures and physiologies in very specific ways that put them on opposite ends of a societal manifestation of neotenous characteristics. This difference is predictable because the two societies often exhibit opposite social structures. We are talking in generalities here.

Still, there is the conundrum. Asians exhibit far more neotenous features than Africans while Asian societies are far more patrifocal.

Whereas in a matrifocal society, neoteny focuses on the male in a way that results in an emphasis on cooperative males operating within a horizontal social structure, in a patrifocal society it is the females that are chosen for their neotenous characteristics, tending to be more docile, while the males combat one another for position in a stratified society.

Asian culture is classically patrifocal. These societies are highly stratified, and women are repressed with high incidence of female infanticide. Males battle for position with a heavy emphasis on status.

African culture is a mix. There is evidence to suggest that until relatively recently, many African tribal cultures were matrifocal in orientation. One physiological manifestation is the relatively large size of African male testicles relative to Asian males. This size difference suggests relatively recent, intense male competition for females in a matrifocal social structure. Relatively small, Asian male testicle size fits with a culture that is highly focused on male control of female procreation–less sperm required.

We are not discussing testicle size in connection to how much testosterone is produced or how aggressive a male is in that society, but how testicle size relates to sperm production. The more power or choice a woman has in society and the freer she is to choose her mates, the more sperm the male requires to insure that he is able to compete. In societies where the father is not known, copious amounts of sperm are required. Charm is far more important in a matrifocal society than in a patrifocal society. In a patrifocal society, it is more necessary to vanquish an opponent physically, control procreation through male head of family and use societal mores to compel a woman to mate with a single man.

In many African societies, males were, and to some degree still are, chosen for their ability to succeed in a matrifocal culture. Predictably, they have relatively large testicles. The females do not exhibit particularly neotenous characteristics. In an Asian society, females are chosen for their docility and cooperative tendencies, males for their facility and commanding authority. Females exhibit highly neotenous physical features.

This description all makes perfect sense. But why does the Asian society as a whole exhibit highly neotenous features relative to African societies?

“Mongoloid women accordingly tend to be more paedomorphic [neotenic] than women of other groups. Not only do women of Mongoloid origin present more prominent and rounded foreheads, but the bones of the whole skull, and, indeed, the whole skeleton, are more delicately made. Mongoloids generally tend to be shorter, and have larger heads, including larger brains — 150 cc by volume greater, on the average, than Caucasoids. The face is flatter, the jaws and palate smaller, the nose smaller and flatter at the root (the miscalled “bridge”), and the slight fold of skin over the median part of the eye (the epicanthic fold) is preserved. The body is less hirsute, and there are fetal traits….The differential action of neoteny has produced some peculiar effects. For example, among the highly neotenized Japanese the males’ upper and lower jaws have been reduced in size while the teeth have not. The result has created a disharmony in many males in the form of extreme crowding and malocclusion of the teeth.” (Montagu, Ashley (1989) Growing Young N.Y.: McGraw Hill p. 40)

Societies at the social structure extremes select for neotenous females or neotenous males. Evidently, selecting for neotenous females results in highly neotenous features overall, with both sexes being influenced. Yet, over the course of human evolution in the last few million years, until recently (last 10,000-25,000 years) we have been selecting for neotenous males, with our whole species drifting in a neotenous direction without nearly as much visual neoteny being evident as in Asian culture.

If anybody has ideas, please tell me what they are.

Perhaps a solution has to do with the difference of choosing behaviors only vs. behaviors and appearance. Our species has evolved by choosing males that exhibit neotenous behavior and females comfortable with wielding authority. Asian cultures highly value female cooperative, neotenous behavior, males that are comfortable commanding authority and a number of female physical characteristics such as large eyes, light skin color and petite build. Is it possible that a culture-wide fixation on female neotenous appearance rather than culture-wide attention to those that are highly skilled in dance (see earlier posts) has so influenced Asian societies that both men and women exhibit highly neotenous characteristics?

Last thought. In Asian societies with stable hierarchies built around the long-term maintenance of irrigation works, males that will cooperate with hierarchical conventions perhaps are males displaying neotenous characteristics after all. Battling for position, they compliantly honor the station they achieve. In an anomalous fashion, both Asian sexes exhibit neoteny in a context of a highly patriarchal culture.

[On January 10th a resolution to this riddle was posted here, with continuing pieces discussing these issues located here.]