“To adopt Dawkins’ gene’s-eye view for a moment, we can see that it would make sense for a gene to take advantage of any developmental opportunity, without caring whether the influence originated inside its organism’s skin or outside it.  Viewing this widely ramified network of interactions in terms of extended phenotypes rather than of developmental systems, however, has several disadvantages.  First, if a gene’s phenotype may be part of another organism’s body, then any organism’s genotype would seem to be distributed as well.  Just what genes were part of that genotype, furthermore, would change with time, since different genes would ‘manipulate’ this particular body at different times.  Second, even if one retains a more mundane view of genotype roughly as that complement of genes enclosed within the skin, the organism in Dawkins’ account is not only something of an epiphenomenon to genetic wheelings and dealings (as it already seems in many sociobiological accounts), but a mosaic epiphenomenon to boot, created to run by its own genes and by the genes of multiple others.  The concept of the developmental system, on the other hand, incorporates the insight that a given phenotype is a product of quite a bit besides its own genes without doing away with the individual organism itself.  It is ironic to me that biologists who begin by being enthralled by the forms and workings of plants and animals sometimes end up analyzing them out of existence.”  (Susan Oyama, The Ontogeny of Information:  Developmental Systems and Information, 2d ed., rev. and exp., with a Foreword by Richard C. Lewontin (Durham, N.C.:  Duke University Press, 2000), p. 177.)

Reading Susan Oyama’s books on the battle among current genetic paradigms offers an experience not unlike observing wars among Western origin myths.  It feels less about which model is more useful and more about which views of the world feel intuitive to the theorists.  Intuitions often have social structure sources, informed by hormonal predilections.  That feels in play regarding genetic theory.  I find myself siding with Oyama, when I can understand her, but her tone suggests someone involved in a venture that is not fun.  She seems disgusted with the astonishing number of colleague-published accounts based upon hidden assumptions rather than upon observed conditions.

She cites dozens of academics I’m not familiar with, describing interpretations of genetic/environmental relationships in ways I find unfathomable, yet her point is clear.  Most male academics think that every living being in the world operates according to a set of instructions, less so by the relationships they form or the environment that they live in.

At this point, I feel comfortable interpreting the genetic algorithm outside the venue of individuals, as noted in the passage above.  Consider looking at any individual’s genes as shared resources of the larger system.  This view is accompanied by not looking at the individual as the level and context through which evolution operates.  This creates an opportunity to observe evolution outside our human obsession with noting parts, not wholes.

Natural selection as it emerged from the evolution theory synthesis in the mid-twentieth century often does not satisfactorily explain what we observe.  I believe one reason is that we are obsessed with interpreting the world from the scale of the individual, which happens to be the scale in which we as split-consciousness beings (self-aware beings) seem to spend most of our time.

Another reason is that implications of the new discipline, evolutionary developmental biology, are only beginning to be understood as regards the effects of social structure and the environment on maturation rates.

Both issues relate to autism.  The autistic often do NOT view the world from split-conscious awareness, but from a primary-process, presplit-consciousness orientation.  There is a world out there that exists outside materialistic, reductionist, cause-and-effect-relationship frames of reference.  A question is:  How do we integrate autistic and neurotypical paradigms?

If autism is a condition that can be partially explained by understanding how humans, species, ecosystems and systems in general mature, then perhaps we should be paying less attention to natural selection as a theory that offers solutions and more attention to alternative theories that concentrate specifically on maturation.

Because male humans differentiate from the foundation female at six weeks after conception, might this reflect an ancient emergence of testosterone after estrogen?  Might the Pre-Cambrian explosion have had something to do with there being no testosterone to call an end to the party?

…

“No one, least of all Williams and Kafatos, expect the eventual story to be so simple.  But it does seem likely that normal development is controlled by gradually decreasing concentration of a hormone acting primarily at high levels of the regulatory system.  This is also an ideal mechanism for the simple and rapid production of heterochronic effects.  Any acceleration of adult characters by reduction in the titer of juvenile hormone, or extension of juvenile traits by maintenance of a high titer, represents heterochrony.  Since minor alterations in the concentration of a hormone can lead to substantial changes in morphology, heterochrony may play an important role in geographic variation (secretion of juvenile hormone is influenced by temperature and photoperiod, for example), polymorphism (including sex, caste, and phase) and speciation itself.”  (Gould, S. J. (1977) Ontogeny and Phylogeny.  Cambridge: Belknap Press, pp. 295-6)

Why can’t it be simple?  Why not hormones acting at the level of the regulatory system influencing evolution quickly and profoundly?  Particularly if those hormone levels are easily influenced by the environment?

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“According to this theory [right-shift], the benefits of left hemisphere specialization for speech are induced by a gene (rs+) which impairs right hemisphere function at some sensitive period of cerebral growth.  Those carrying one copy of the gene (rs+ -) heterozygotes, about 49% of the population) enjoy the advantages of lateralization of speech to the left hemisphere, with minimal risk to the right hemisphere, while those having two copies (rs+ +) homozygotes, about 32% of the population) risk significant loss of right hemisphere power.  Those with no copy of the gene (rs – - homozygotes) are at no risk of hemisphere impairment (right or left), but risk developmental delays of speech and associated language skills due to the inherent difficulty of programming a large brain to serve speech…” (Annett, M. and Manning, M. (1990) Arithmetic and laterality.  Neuropsychologia 28 (1): pp. 61-62)

The work of Annett and her colleagues makes clear that there may be a direct connection between Right Shift theory and the cause of autism.  There exists a population with a tendency to display no particular handedness.  That population produces more maturationally delayed people.  Much of the autistic population comes from that group of the maturationally delayed.

…

“Schacter reported that women exposed in utero to the synthetic estrogen diethylstilbestrol had a handedness distribution on the Edinburgh Handedness Inventory (EHI) that was shifted away from strong right-handedness.  Nass et al. found that females with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), a disorder that results in increased androgen production during gestation, displayed a lesser degree of right-hand preference than unaffected sibling controls on the EHI.  However, males with CAH displayed a trend in the opposite direction.  More recently, Helleday et al. reported that females with CAH did not differ from controls in either degree of right-hand preference or in dichotic listening asymmetry.”  (Moffat, S. D. and Hampson, E. (1996) Salivary testosterone levels in left- and right-handed adults.  Neuropsychologia 34 (3): pp. 225)

If sexual hormone levels affect handedness, and if handedness is associated with degrees of cerebral lateralization, with degrees of cerebral lateralization suggesting variations in human evolution with increased lateralization over time, then are hormone levels influencing evolution?

…

“The finding from these three tests of behavioral laterality suggest that as one side of the brain assumes control of the behavior in these tasks, a smaller CC [corpus callosum] favours increased control by the specialized hemisphere, whereas the larger CC distributes this role more equitably between the two sides.  The magnitude of the resulting asymmetry, with better performance for the tasks lateralized to different hemispheres as expected, did not correlate significantly with the CC area.  However, the amount of dual task interference was strongly inversely correlated with the CC area in both within-hemisphere (right hand) and between-hemispheres (left hand) conditions.  Left hand slowing was significantly higher than in previously reported results, reflecting the increased demands and complexity of the task we used.  As the CC area became smaller, the left hand (right hemisphere) performance was more interfered with by the verbal (left hemisphere) activity.  This between-hemispheres relationship might reflect activation of systems distributed through the whole cerebrum rather than activation of a single hemisphere with increased task demands.”  (Yazgan, M. Y., Wexler, B. E., Kinsbourne, M., Peterson, F., Leckman, J. F. (1995) Functional significance of individual variations in callosal area.  Neuropsychologia 33:  775-6)

It seems to me that the corpus callosum is hugely important as regards speech production.  A smaller CC may be encouraging speech.  Does CC size reflect different degrees of self awareness?  How does CC size interface with degrees of cerebral lateralization?  For example, in what ways is a person with two cerebral hemispheres the same size with a large CC different from a person that is highly lateralized (right-handed with a far smaller right hemisphere) with a small CC?

…

“It is satisfying to consider embryos and adults as merely different parts of the slope of a curve subject to natural selection.  If biologists cannot agree to Haeckel’s concept, ‘ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny,’ there may be room for a less ringing slogan, ‘ontogeny concords with phylogeny.’” (Swan, Lawrence W. (1990) The concordance of ontogeny with phylogeny.  Bioscience 40: 384)

How about we just return to seriously considering that ontogeny and evolution are related?  If we note sexual hormones influencing ontogeny, what is so difficult in believing sexual hormones might influence biological evolution?  For humans, social structure seems an obvious place to start.

…

“This broad category [developmental learning disorders] principally includes developmental dyslexia, stuttering, delayed speech, childhood autism, and hyperactivity (CL, p. 83), and Giles de la Tourette syndrome should probably also be included (CL, p. 83).  These conditions are linked by having an excess of males, a ‘rather similar pattern of inheritance’ (CL, p. 84), and increased personal and familial left-handedness (CL, p. 84; Bishop, 1983; Boucher, 1977; Colby & Parkinson, 1977; Parac & Coren, 1981).”  (McManus, I. C. and Bryden, M. P. (1991) Geschwind’s theory of cerebral lateralization:  developing a formal, causal model.  Psychological Bulletin 110 (2): 242)

Those conditions that exhibit an excess of males might suggest testosterone (and/or an absence of estrogen) as integral to causation.  Add an evolutionary theory that suggests sexual hormones as integral to understanding transformation and we might be getting somewhere.

…

“Tan (1990a, b, c, 1991a, b, c) has investigated the relation between serum testosterone levels and hand performance extensively.  In a 1990 (1990c) study, he reported that serum testosterone levels correlated with right-hand skill on a modified version of the Annett pegboard: right-handed men showed a positive correlation between serum testosterone level and right-hand skill, while right-handed women showed a negative correlation.  This would suggest that high testosterone levels are associated with increased right-hand skill in men, but with decreased right-hand skill in women.  In a further study, Tan (1990b) found that right-hand superiority on the Tapley and Bryden (1985) dot-filling task increased with increasing serum testosterone level in males, but was unaffected by testosterone in women.  Next, Tan (1991a) showed that high testosterone levels in right-handed women were associated with poorer peg-moving performance and less improvement with practice, generally replicating his 1990 (1990a) study.  Subsequently, Tan (1991b) found the reverse pattern in male subjects.  These findings generally show that increased serum testosterone is associated with increased right-handed performance in men, but not in women.  However, Tan (1991c) has also reported that testosterone levels are significantly higher in both women with AD than in those with standard dominance, when the AD group includes left-handers, weak right-handers, and right-handers with a history of familial sinistrality.  This latter finding is in general agreement with Tan’s (1990a) report that degree of hand preference is negatively correlated with testosterone level in right-handed women and in right-handed men without a history of familial sinistrality.  However, Tan’s studies of hand skill (1990b,c, 1991a,b) suggest that increased levels of testosterone are associated with stronger right-handedness, at least in men.  Given the relatively small sample sizes employed in these studies (usually about 45 men and 20 women), the large number of potential confounding factors (eye dominance, footedness, and intellectual ability, to name a few), and the apparent inconsistencies in the effects on preference and on skill, it is unclear how best to interpret these data.”  (Bryden M. P., McManus, I. C., Bulman-Fleming, M. B. (1994) Evaluating the Empirical Support for the Geschwind-Behan-Balaburda Model of Cerebral Lateralization.  Brain and Cognition 26: pp. 151)

How about we interpret the data from an evolutionary perspective with complementary opposites as the norm?

…

“However, Moffat and Hampson (1993) have found that salivary testosterone levels are significantly lower in left-handers than in right-handers.  While circulating testosterone levels in adults may not correlate well with fetal exposure to testosterone, these data provide suggestive evidence against the Geschwind hypothesis — one would expect higher, rather than lower, levels of testosterone in left-handers.”  (Bryden, M. P., McManus, I. C., Bulman-Fleming, M. B. (1994) Evaluating the Empirical Support for the Geschwind-Behan-Balaburda Model of Cerebral Lateralization.  Brain and Cognition 26: pp. 151)

I would expect male lefties to be low testosterone, female lefties to be high testosterone (relative to females).  Discussing these issues without regard to sex makes no sense.

…

“Bryden mentions only studies in his review of research directly linking T and cognitive abilities, namely, a study by Hassler (1991) reporting decreased levels of salivary T in male musical composers and increased levels of T in female musical composers, and a study by Christiansen and Knussman (1987) showing that, in college-age men, T levels correlated positively with spatial relations and negatively with performance on verbal-sequential tasks.  The latter study is unusual in that there have been several studies showing better spatial performance in higher-androgen young women and lower-androgen young men, compared to their same sex counterparts (Gouchie & Kimura, 1991; Moffat & Hampson, in preparation; Shute et al., 1983).  One interpretation of these findings is that, across sexes, there may be a nonmonotonic relationship between T (or its metabolites, which have not been measured directly in any of these studies) and spatial performance, with optimal performance occurring in the middle range of T values, closer to the lower end of the normal range of T for young adult males.” (Hampson, E. and Moffat, S. D. (1994) Is testosterone related to spatial cognition and hand preference in humans?  Brain and Cognition 26: 257)

Another interpretation of these findings might be to explore handedness and sexual hormone levels from an evolutionary perspective with high-testosterone females and low-testosterone males as the musical composing forebears of current society.

Individuals severely traumatized in early childhood are often maturational delayed.  It’s as if large parts of them are unable to easily progress in a natural fashion.  Resources are tied to the trauma at the maturational stage they were in when the trauma occurred.  Therapy can unclench the individual from that stage.  Resources released, they can continue to grow.

Is it possible that early trauma can impact an individual to reproduce a neurological environment similar to that experienced by those naturally maturational delayed?  If so, can early trauma result in the exhibition of both the symptoms and the occasional remarkable intelligence and creativity exhibited by those individuals?

Those with Asperger’s, autism and other conditions exhibiting maturational delay, such as stuttering and phonetic dyslexia, often have unique brains, a predictable cluster of personality characteristics and behaviors featuring OCD, perfect pitch and other features.  Are there situations involving trauma where children without this familial predilection acquire features of these conditions as a result of the trauma?

What is the evidence that early trauma can result in a surge in creativity or intelligence?  Clearly, the opposite is often the case.  What might be the specific circumstances that parse out the two?  When unusual intelligence or creativity is exhibited, might accompanying features of the personality approximate those with familial maturational delay?  Might there be specific, unique features of cerebral lateralization characteristic of those traumatized exhibiting high intelligence and/or creativity that are similar or identical to the familial maturational delayed?

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.

…

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.

…

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.

…

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.

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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.

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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.

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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:

Annett, M. (1985). Left, right, hand and brain: The Right Shift Theory. London: Lawrence Erlbaum.

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.

Ahluwalia, B. S., Clark, J. F., Westney, L. S., Smith, D. M., James, M. & Rajguru, S. (1992) Amniotic fluid and umbilical artery levels of sex hormones and prostaglandins in human cocaine users. Reproductive Toxicology, 6(1), 57-62.

Ahluwalia, B., Jackson, M. A., Jones ,G. W., Williams, A. O., Mamidanna, S. R. & Rajguru, S. (1981). Blood hormone profiles in prostate cancer patients in high-risk and low-risk populations. Cancer, 48(10), 2267-73.

Baron-Cohen, S., Lutchmaya, S. & Knickmeyer, R. (2004). Prenatal testosterone in mind. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

Barrett-Connor, E. & Khaw, K. T. (1987) Cigarette smoking and increased endogenous estrogen levels in men. American Journal of Epidemiology, 126(2), 187-92.

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Castilla-Garcia, A., Santolaria-Fernandez, F. J., Gonzalez-Reimers, C. E., Bastita-Lopez, N., Gonzalez-Garcia, C., Jorge-Hernandez, J. A. & Hernandez-Nieto, L. (1987). Alcohol-induced hypogonadism: Reversal after ethanol withdrawal. Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 20(3), 255-60.

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Crow, T. J., Done, D. J. & Sacker, A. (1996). Cerebral lateralization is delayed in children who later develop schizophrenia. Schizophrenia Research, 22(3), 181-5.

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Geschwind, N. & Galaburda, A. M. (1987). Cerebral Lateralization. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Gimbutas, M. (1991) The Civilization of the Goddess. San Francisco: Harper Collins

Glass, A. R., Swerdloff, R. S., Bray, G. A., Dahms, W. T. & Atkinson, R. L. (1977). Low serum testosterone and sex-hormone-binding globulin in massively obese men. Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, 45(6), 1211-19.

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Hjiej, H., Doyen, C., Couprie, C., Kaye, K. & Contejean, Y. (2008). Substitutive and dietetic approaches in childhood autistic disorder: Interests and limits [French]. L’Encephale, 34(5), 496-503.

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MacConnie, S. E., Barkan, A., Lampman, R. M., Schork, M. A. & Beitins, I. Z. (1986). Decreased hypothalamic gonadotropin-releasing hormone secretion in male marathon runners. The New England Journal of Medicine, 315(7), 411-7.

MacMahon, B., Trichopoulos, D., Cole, P. & Brown, J. (1982). Cigarette smoking and urinary estrogens. New England Journal of Medicine, 307, 1062-5.

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Ross, R., Bernstein, L., Judd, H., Hanisch, R., Pike, M., & Henderson, B. E. (1986). Serum testosterone levels in healthy young black and white men. Journal of the National Cancer Institute, 76(1), 45-8.

Schmidt, T., Wijga, A., Von Zur Muhlen, A., Brabant, G. & Wagner, T. O. F. (1997). Changes in cardiovascular risk factors and hormones during a comprehensive residential three month kriya yoga training and vetetarian nutrition. Acta Physiologica Scandinavica Supplement, 640, 158-62.

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Wiercinski, A. (1979). Has the brain size decreased since the upper paleolithic. Bulletins et Memoirs de la Societe d’Anthropologie de Paris, 6(6-4), 419-27.

Witelson, S. F. (1991). Neural sexual mosaicism: Sexual differentiation of the human temporo-parietal region for functional asymmetry. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 16(1-3), 131-53

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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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Male tE
Male te
Female Te
Female TE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Consider the following…..

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“A corollary of our hypothesis is that hormonal effects on the brains of offspring may vary with the time of conception. The activity of the pineal gland changes seasonally with alterations in day length. As a general rule, during the dark winter months the pineal becomes active and suppresses both ovaries and testes, whereas in the summer it is inactive and sex hormone levels are higher. For this reason many animals bear young in the spring, an advantageous situation since temperature and food supplies are more suitable for survival. An example of such seasonal modulation of hormonal effects on the brain is observed in the HVc nucleus of the singing bird (Nottebohm 1981). This description of pineal physiology is, however, somewhat oversimplified. An animal’s sensitivity to light may vary through the year. Gonadal hormones may thus become activated in the spring, but as a result of loss of sensitivity to light over the summer hormone levels may diminish as fall approaches. Despite these facts, day length is a powerful influence. Thus, steers increase their weight more rapidly in the winter when artificial light is supplied to lengthen the day. This light-enhanced growth of muscle mass does not take place if the bull is castrated, suggesting that the effect of light is mediated through a rise in testosterone effect (Tucker and Ringer 1982)…..If pineal effects on sex hormone levels are important, then the birth months of lefthanders, and of those with learning disorders, might not be uniform throughout the year, since fetuses conceived at different seasons might be subjected to very different hormonal environments. These effects should differ in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres and at the equator, although other factors, such as variations in the ethnic composition of populations, would also have to be considered. Data are still very sparse. Badian (1983) found that in males born in each of the six months beginning in September, the rate of nonrighthandedness was higher than that found in any of the other six months, but no clear trend was observed for female births.” (Geschwind & Galaburda 1987: 116-7, Cerebral Lateralization)

Noting the observations of Geschwind and Galaburda in 1987, I am struck by how many of their insights apply to the possible origins of autism. Consider the emergence of autism among Somali Minnesotans. (Click here to note the autism-inducing implications of equatorial populations migrating to extreme Northern climates, taking into consideration Geschwin and Galaburda’s hypothesis.)

Many of the studies inspired by their work did not take into consideration the difference between familial left-handers and those who became left-handed as a result of trauma. Results of those studies were usually inconclusive. I sometimes wonder how often it is that cerebral palsy and autism have identical etiologies, only different parts of the brain were traumatized. Researchers conducting studies involving left-handedness who do not remove those individuals that have been traumatized study two different etiologies, muddying results.

It seems to me that administering Marian Annett’s dexterity/speed peg tests would efficiently separate those untraumatized genetic lefties from those that had experienced early, hostile environments. (Natural lefties often evidence facility with both hands.)

“The earliest civilizations of the world–in China, Tibet, Egypt, the Near East, and Europe–were, in all probability, matristic” Goddess civilizations. “Since agriculture was developed by women, the Neolithic period created optimum conditions for the survival of matrilineal, endogamous systems inherited from Paleolithic times. During the early agricultural period women reached the apex of their influence in farming, arts and crafts, and social functions. The metrical with collectivist principles continued. There is no evidence in all Old Europe of a patriarchal chieftainate of the Indo-European type. There are no male royal tombs and no residences in magarons on hill forts. The burial rites and settlement patterns reflect a matrilineal structure, whereas the distribution of wealth in graves speaks for an economic egalitarianism.” (Gimbutas, Marija (1991) The Civilization of the Goddess. Harper: S. F. P. 432)

There are two major currents contemporary theorists are not noticing, forces influencing the direction that society evolves and its individuals adjust to. Handedness is not arbitrary. Those that are random-handed (commonly called left-handed) are the old matristic or matrifocal neurological types common perhaps 100,000 years ago, and they were still exerting influence in terms of social structure as recently as early recorded history. Second, when Geschwin and Galaburda note the influence of features of the environment, such as light, on handedness, they are observing one of the ways that an individual’s neurology and resulting social structure is modified. Sexual selection proclivities also have enormous influence on these maturational trajectories, revealing left-handers as matrifocal in origin. Visit here and here for more on sexual selection and conditions featuring maturational delay.

Understanding social structure and the relationships between matrifocal and patrifocal frames as they drive human evolution provides insight on the origin of conditions characterized by maturational delay. Understanding the neuropsychological origins of these conditions and the many related psychological and oncological disorders offers awareness of how the nature of societal transformation integrates into the neuropsychological, psychological and physiological profile of the individual.

Much comes down to how and whom we pick as partners. And then, how we live our life. Perhaps the poets should be writing about evolution. Perhaps they are.

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.

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

The higher the mother’s testosterone levels, the more likely the male children will have maturational delay and the females maturational acceleration. The males’ testosterone levels will be relatively lower compared to boys born from mothers with low testosterone levels. The females’ testosterone levels will be relatively higher compared to girls born from mothers with low testosterone levels.

When the mother’s testosterone levels are high, she is propelling her children backwards in evolutionary time. Backwards in evolutionary time for humans is away from patrifocal social structure and towards matrifocal social structure. Males experience more maturational delay, females more maturational acceleration. A mother with elevated testosterone levels (a woman comfortable in a matrifocal society) sends her children on a journey to the society of her societal and evolutionary precursors.

Eventually, we go back far enough in time to when males were first acquiring facility with spoken language. Go back even further in time and females are first acquiring facility with spoken language. Hence the higher number of males exhibiting autism, Asperger’s, stuttering and other conditions characterized by maturational delay. Males don’t have to go very far back in time, compared to females, to begin wrestling with the origin of speech.

With this premise, one could come to the following conclusions. The older the mother grows, and the higher her testosterone levels, the more likely her male children will experience maturational delay, her girls maturational acceleration, and the more common autism will be. The youngest son, conceived when the mother is oldest, should exhibit a number of personality features associated with a matrifocal social structure vs. a more hierarchical, commanding, aggressive oldest male in the family. One might also consider that the youngest sons would be more graceful than the robust older sons, if there are physiological concomitants to social structure traits. For example, the matrifocal bonobo are slimmer and lighter, with longer legs than their close cousins, the chimpanzee.

For the same reason, one could hypothesize that lankiness would be common among autistic males.

You can see where I’m heading. Since a mother’s testosterone levels rise with her age, if the hormone variation is relatively extreme and she has children across the whole spread of the years that she can conceive, then we might observe an arc of features in her children that would roughly reproduce human evolution over a span of tens of thousands of years.

A mother’s testosterone levels can be impacted by a host of other factors, such as smoking, physical exercise, stress, exposure to light, alcohol consumption, diet, touch, etc. For example, if a mother grows fatter over the years, the weight gain will increase her testosterone levels, sometimes radically.

So, though it may seem like it all begins in the womb, consider all those variables that influence hormone levels in the womb. Beginnings become blurred if a multitude of factors influence that beginning. The characteristics of our children may in some cases have as much to do with the mother’s environment as her ancestral inheritance.

The womb may be only the beginning….of the beginning.

Visit http://www.neoteny.org/?cat=7 for more on the cause of autism.

Still enamored of natural selection, medical theorists explore the etiologies, or origins, of conditions and disorders encumbered by a theory structure that supports a narrow, patrifocal point of view. Informed by the fertile, earlier work of Norman Geschwin, Baron-Cohen has noted some of the most important clues to understanding how humans evolved and autism develops, but he is unable to see the larger picture.

Autism is an evolutionary condition. Ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny, Geschwin and Baron-Cohen’s clues are major interstate intersections on the roadmap of Homo sapien’s unfolding. When navigating across country, we look at the map and then use our eyes to read the signs around us, and then use the signs around us to read the map. We go back and forth between two representative systems while passing through the real world to find our way. To satisfactorily navigate the riddle of how autism emerges, it is necessary to explore both evolution and ontogeny, while paying attention to sexual selection and social structure in society, jumping back and forth, until we can figure out where we’re located in the life of a human being.

There are major intersections in our evolution, as there are major events in our own ontogeny or personal unfolding. A hundred years ago, this perspective was conventional. The Darwinian synthesis of the mid 20th century, accompanied by the cultural capitulation to Social Darwinist perspectives, narrowed orthodox theorizing to a thin band of back roads hypothesizing around an allegiance to the idea of random origins. Understandings informed by shifting scales, for example, comparing biology, society and ontogeny, were considered unproductive and became unfashionable.

Perhaps no single feature of a human being so informs both our evolution and our children’s lives more than the testosterone levels of the mother while the child is in the womb. Baron-Cohen understands this point but hasn’t assimilated the repercussions. This feature is one of the major physiological intersections informing the directions we evolve. High testosterone mothers birth low testosterone males and high testosterone females. Low testosterone females create high testosterone males and low testosterone females. Mother’s blood suggests and prescribes social structure, evolutionary trajectories and individual human skill/challenge constellations, simultaneously.

Very few myths are shared by aboriginal tribes on six continents. One central belief is that a woman’s blood possesses more power, more potency than all other magic. No single issue motivates social conservatives more than the compulsion to control a woman’s womb. In the roadmap of human experience, this issue is where the mythic and manifestly real intersect.

Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. Perhaps 150,000 to 50,000 years ago, before the exodus from Africa, there occurred the shift to right-handed males from random-handed males. This shift is the conversion from random-handed, cooperative, neotenous males with two hemispheres the same size to the more aggressive, hierarchical, right-handed males with the left hemisphere slightly reduced in size. I would suggest this facility-with-language anomaly evidenced itself at puberty. As the feature of non-gestural, verbal articulate behavior was encouraged by women choosing men displaying the trait, they chose non-neotenous males, accelerating or manifesting adult features into the childhood of descendants rather than prolonging infant features into adulthood as had been done in matrifocal societies for perhaps hundreds of thousands of years. Consider that the testosterone surge we see in early childhood is a re-enactment of its emergence as a feature around puberty perhaps a hundred thousand years before, the process having appeared earlier in ontogeny with every passing generation. What we are observing in early childhood with synapse pruning in right-handers is the repercussion of the emergence of a trait, selection for that trait and the absorbing of that feature by the species.

In other words, the contemporary (soon-to-be right-handed) infant/toddler testosterone surge might be an echo of puberty from before our African ancestors hit the road.

It has been suggested that a split brain was necessary to talk because the tongue is in the center of the body. Gestural communication would rely upon noncompeting hemispheres controlling one side of the body at any time. When both brain hemispheres sought to control the tongue, stuttering was the inevitable result. (A high percentage of stutterers are left-handed.) By selecting males that did not stutter when talking, females were selecting men with single hemispheric control of speech.

Why females were already talking when the process of speech production began for men I’ll discuss in another entry.

What might reverse that process that compels the emergence of males having difficulty speaking? On this roadmap we are exploring, what might coerce traffic to move in the opposite direction? What might influence changes in the amount of testosterone in a mother’s blood?

Unfold your evolutionary roadmap. Let’s go for a ride.

(Visit http://www.neoteny.org/?cat=7 for more on the cause of autism.)