Running some more riffs off of yesterday’s conjectures regarding the particular hypothetical dynamics that I’ve been exploring in human evolution, are there species that tend to cluster (1) sexual selection with females picking males for particular qualities (dance, song, plumage, etc.) and (2) females assigning relatively large amounts of attention to the young?  If so, males can be chosen for their neotenous features, features females would be attracted to in their young, which might result in relatively larger brains, more cooperative behavior, more tendencies to play, more creativity.

This could veer off in two directions.  If the female is picking males for those features that demand higher testosterone levels (bright red plumage), the male will not likely be displaying neotenous tendencies and would not likely be helping in the raising of the kids (though this would depend on seasonal variations in hormone levels).  Yet, if the female is picking males that are challenged to behave with some creativity, or at least species-related novel behavior, to get the females’ attention, the male may end up evolving in ways that suggest how the human species has evolved.

I’m thinking that those predators that hunt in cooperative packs might as a trend display larger brains, exhibit relative creativity in display when seeking mates, be more playful as adults and be more or less well disposed toward caring for the kids.  Chimpanzees hunt in several male units, as do dogs.  Both are tolerant of little ones, at least not usually engaging in infanticide.

I know too little about these things to have ready information that sorts into this idea.  I expect that’s why I write almost exclusively about humans.  Humans I can observe.

Regarding primates, Knight wrote, “The variations and permutations are numerous, but the basic result is that females arrange themselves across the landscape in characteristic patterns – grouped or isolated, fast-moving or slow, in trees or on the ground – and the males in pursuing their sexual goals adopt strategies which take account of the situation which the females have defined.”  (Chris Knight, Blood Relations (New Haven:  Yale University Press, 1991), p. 133.)

With female behavior often informing social structure founded on how both sexes hunt or forage in the context of the location and availability of what is required for sustenance, and the resulting social structure often delegating the hormonal constellations of a particular species, there seems to be a not so subtle relationship described as follows:  Environment > nourishment procurement strategies > social structure > male/female relative hormonal constellations > evolutionary trajectories (changes in hormones adjust ontogeny, changing the species over time).  This looks to me like a paradigm description of how evolution can occur, a variation of what I’ve been playing with as relates to humans.

Postulate 23: The Orchestral Theory of Evolution is the study of the rates and timing of maturation, with testosterone levels impacting rate and estrogen levels controlling timing, with those environmental or social structure adjustments that influence levels of testosterone and estrogen determining the speed, timing, features and direction of evolution.   I’ve not been considering much the hypothesis outside of humans, but it seems, at least among some species, that this paradigm may be in play.

There is this sense that the environment informs social structure that can then invest the female with powers to compel evolution in interesting directions based upon her ability to encourage neoteny or acceleration.  My head is spinning.  It’s feeling like a whole new area is opening up with clear influence trajectories or interlocking cause and effect relationships suggesting how evolution unfolds.

Social structure and the environmental effects upon social structure feel central to how species change cascades across an ecosystem.

“On the other hand, his sense of aesthetic appreciation, based on the pleasure which man can receive from the construction and matching of musical patterns involving the interaction of rhythm, melody, and harmony and visual patterns resulting from the interaction of form and color, has also resulted from the freeing of his association areas from the more rigid relationship with the lower centers and with the more stereotyped, amorphous symbol patterns which constitute the inner reality of all other animals (Koestler 1964).  Aesthetic appreciation, therefore, is a foetalised form of the continuous search for congruity or matching between models of the environment, models which the animal constantly constructs in its brain by processing its perceptions and the stereotypes retained in its memory store.”  (Crombie, Donald L., “The Group System of Man and Paedomorphosis,” Current Anthropology 12(2) (1971):163.)

Going through my store of excerpts from several hundred papers and close to 300 books, I came across the passage above, having no memory of having recorded it.  This is what I’ve been playing with the last few weeks as regards a theory of music and aesthetics that emerge as a result of embryonic features appearing in the behavior and experience of adults.…

Three things are bouncing around my brain after I drank coffee to knock out a headache, which worked.

I’m finishing the over 100 piece that seeks to provide a less-stressed introduction to this theory than the earlier “Introduction to the Theory of Waves.”  First, the theory is now called “The Orchestral Theory of Evolution.”  The name changed when I hypothesized that estrogen manages the timing of maturation.

That, by the way, was a bizarre realization.  Bizarre for two reasons.  First, it came to me without my being aware that it had come to me.  I just found myself working with that premise, not having noted when it became part of my thoughts.  Second, for more than 11 years, I’ve been working with testosterone controlling the rate of maturation without it having ever crossed my mind that it would be interesting to know what managed the timing.  It just never struck me that it was relevant or knowable, even though I’d been discussing rates and timing of maturation for 11 years.  At the same time, for 11 years, I’d been wondering how specifically estrogen might fit into the theory that was coming together.  I sensed that the theory was out of…

“In a study of alcoholism, it was noted that alcoholism is a significant health concern for lesbians, with an incidence rate perhaps three times that of the general population.  The relationships among the development of alcoholism in women, the experience of stigmatization and the complex facets of lesbian identity and lesbian community are explored.  This exploration provides for a more comprehensive and critical analysis of alcoholism in lesbians.  As a phenomenon of women’s health, alcoholism is examined using the perspectives of developmental theory, symbolic interactionism and critical theory.  The author offers insights and implications for health care, research and theory building.”  (Hall, J. M., “Alcoholism in Lesbians:  Developmental, Symbolic Interactionist, and Critical Perspectives,” Health Care for Women International 11(1) (1990):89-107.)

“Yalom et al. (1973) studied 20 16-year-old boys of diabetic mothers, who had received estrogen or progesterone during pregnancy.  These boys showed less heterosexuality and less masculinity than 20 control boys.  Netley and Rovet (1982) showed that among 33 males with 47,XXY syndrome, 24% were nonrighthanded, compared to 10% of a control group. …  In the present study, as well as in Lindesay (1987), only homosexual men were studied.  In Rosenstein and Bigler (1987) and McCormick et al. (1990), both

…

Explorations of societies displaying matriarchal, or matrifocal, tendencies often struggle with a definition that will adjust to very different examples of the paradigm.  Often, a woman’s exercise of authority within a culture can be profound but not obvious, as if there were an agreement that men look like they are in control.  There are different areas where authority manifests such as home, work, market, social situations.  Female authority may vary depending on the context.  Shared authority can look very different in different societies.

What I am calling “The Orchestral Theory of Evolution” is a feminine theory of evolution insofar as both sexes share the ability to inform change and both foundation hormones have profound impact.  “Feminine” suggests sharing and cooperation.  In the context of evolutionary theory, a feminine paradigm is a cooperative paradigm with both a male and female command of process.

Nevertheless, from our Western perspective, provide a woman any control in a hierarchical context where men have traditionally called the shots, and the female anomaly often receives negative attention.  Evolutionary theory traditionally focuses on the male.  Some exceptions with a focus on the female have emerged over the last 40 years, mostly from female theorists, but so long…

If heterochrony is the study of the rates and timing of maturation, with testosterone levels impacting rate and estrogen levels controlling timing, then those environmental or social structure adjustments that influence levels of testosterone and estrogen determine the speed, timing, features and direction of evolution.

Central to the dynamic that winds its way throughout this work, and what I am now calling the Orchestral Theory of Evolution, is the idea that biological evolution and social evolution are the same.  The present paradigm behaves like there has been so profound an effect upon society and consciousness by self awareness and language that culture now seems separated from biology.  This work seeks to integrate biology and culture.  This integration is made possible by an understanding of how evolution proliferates variation outside of natural selection.  This is an old idea, one that emerged in the nineteenth century.  Stephen J. Gould, in his 1977 Ontogeny and Phylogeny, sought to codify this idea.  He focused on the principle of heterochrony, a word coined by Ernst Haeckel.  Heterochrony is a process that describes the dynamic of progeny variation, a process that is not random.

The natural selection paradigm hypothesizes that the progeny produced by a parent…

There is this thesis that I’ve been playing with.  Like the experience physics theorists have described, it seems too beautiful to not be true.  Nevertheless, Stephen J. Gould has described the trap biologists sometimes get themselves into, the dogged pursuit of a beautiful thesis that turns out to be false.

The thesis I am now exploring has been developing since late 1997.  It has grown deeper with time.  Earlier immersion in works by William Irwin Thompson and Riane Eisler prepared me for what followed.  It started out as an exploration of how Darwin’s theory of sexual selection juxtaposed with Chris Knight’s explanation of matrifocal human evolution.  This insight was joined by Gould’s description of heterochronic processes, associated with Norman Geschwind’s studies of cerebral lateralization and Annett’s discoveries regarding handedness distributions.

Darwin, Knight, Gould, Geschwind and Annett each offered pieces that suggested an integrated whole.  Sexualselection.org describes the thesis, introduced in 1998.

I struggled to write a larger, cogent overview of the thesis but a combination of deep disappointment around failed attempts to start conversations with academics (many polite responses, little enthusiasm) and the need to make a living (my former business took a dive) propelled me to put my theorizing…

I’m still trying to grasp the concept that testosterone and estrogen and their associated hormones are together managing ontological, social and biological evolution by adjusting to changes in the environment by moderating the rate and timing of ontogeny.

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

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

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

This last season I’ve been applying the pattern of how estrogen controls the timing of testosterone surges at puberty to early childhood when testosterone surges prune the right hemispheres of most normal right-handed individuals.  Might estrogen levels in these infants, toddlers and children be determining…

It seems too elegant to be true, but I’ve become enamored of the possibility.

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

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

Still, I am muddling through the implications of mother and infant estrogen levels influencing the timing of testosterone surges similar to how a teenaged girl’s fat levels influence the timing of her reaching puberty.  I sometimes hear distant melodies of sense, not quite able to figure out the song.

My step-daughter Gwyn contracted juvenile diabetes when she was about 11.  She couldn’t keep fat on, and puberty was delayed.  Finally, she seemed to have achieved enough weight and her first menses arrived.  The whole family went out for supper in celebration.

All that time while she was trying to gain weight, she kept on growing taller.

I sometimes wonder if Gwyn’s effortless intelligence and astonishing facility with language is directly related to her delayed puberty and diabetes.  The brain continues to grow until puberty’s testosterone surges prune that growth.  Might a eunuch have a larger brain than a male with both testicles?  Would a male with one testicle have a larger brain than a male with two?

I had a childhood friend with a single testicle.  It descended only after he was born.  David had several Asperger’s features in his personality and a strangely large head.  He tested brilliant.  He…

“I have found the midsagittal area of the corpus callosum to be larger in mixed and left handers, referred to as non-consistent-right-handers (nonCRH), than among CRH subjects (Witelson, 1985).  Hand preference is a rough index of the pattern of brain organization.  Left handers (by various definitions) have a higher prevalence of atypical right-hemisphere representation of speech and language functions than do right handers and, in general, show a greater degree of bihemispheric representation of verbal and spatial skills (for review, see Bryden, 1988).”  (Witelson, S. F. (1991) Neural sexual mosaicism:  Sexual differentiation of the human temporo-parietal region for functional asymmetry.  Psychoneuroendocrinology 16: 139)

There seems to me to be tantalizing answers to riddles in human evolution in the various papers discussing corpus callosum structure in different kinds of human beings.  There are papers that support the conclusion that larger corpus callosums, or corpus callosums with larger sections, appear in left-handed people, women, those with two cerebral hemispheres that are the same size, musicians, the autistic and those that stutter.

“Theoretical speculation in humans (S. F Witelson,  Psychoneuroendocrinology 16 (1991) 131-153) and empirical findings in animals (R. H. Fitch, P. E. Cowell, L. M. Schrott, V. H. Denenberg, Int. J. Dev.…

OK.  Several possible estrogen-related connections have emerged in the last few days.

First, if estrogen is a trigger in teenaged girls for entering puberty, thus beginning the testosterone surges that freeze brain growth, and it is also true for males (a stretch) that estrogen levels trigger pubertal timing, might this also apply to male and female infant/toddler testosterone-surge synapse pruning that results in asymmetric cerebral lateralization?  If so, might infant/toddler estrogen levels be instrumental in causing autism, low estrogen resulting in delayed growth?

Second, noting the seeming connection between estrogen’s focus on the young and the exhibition of maternal behavior along with estrogen’s focus on very specific features in a mate (thus driving the emergence of unique male species traits), is it true that species that engage in female sexual selection are also species where the mother exhibits maternal behavior?  An implication is that K vs. r strategies might compel female choice and changes in the exhibition of male behaviors.

Third, might it be the case that estrogen, predating testosterone, is somehow responsible for early proliferation of life on earth insofar as estrogen is associated with creation, discrimination and focus on the young?

In the old religions, there is a…

If Darwin’s theory of natural selection is the yang of evolutionary theory, focusing on the repercussions of a testosterone point of view, the fight/fuck spectacle of how evolution unfolds, then what might be the yin side of species transformation?

Estrogen seems to perform many functions, but a two-word summary might be affection/evaluation.  What might an affection/evaluation evolutionary theory look like, and how might that integrate with the fight/fuck paradigm?

First, many species do not have mothers that raise their young, or they exhibit females that choose among several males when deciding whom to mate with.  The affection/evaluation paradigm is limited to a portion of the biological world.  I have no idea how large a portion that is, or where on the branching tree of our Post Pre-Cambrian explosion history the affection/evaluation paradigm tends to congregate.

Might we suggest that it is the job of estrogen to proliferate possibilities and the job of testosterone to cull out winners?  This would seem contrary to our fight/fuck affection/evaluation relationship.  It is estrogen during sexual selection that is appraising and picking those that get to pass on their genes.  Consider that estrogen is not conducting an evaluation to limit the number of options but…

We are all females in the womb until week six.  Almost half of us then transform into the male.

Does estrogen precede testosterone in the global biological parade?  Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny only to a degree.  Does that degree include a single degree of separation between estrogen and testosterone with estrogen leading to testosterone?

The theory of evolution trumpeted in this work, summarized in the piece “Introduction to the Theory of Waves,” outlines an alternative to Darwin’s theory of natural selection when exploring how human beings evolved.  My theory places a heavy emphasis on sexual selection, with human sexual selection hypothesized to be closely connected to individual estrogen levels.  Consider that there is also an alternative way of viewing biological evolution based upon an understanding of estrogen’s integral contributions to biological transformation instead of a focus on the survival rates of various strategies for procreating.

This goes back to the mostly nineteenth century argument between evolutionary theorists regarding what exactly determines the variability of progeny between two parents.  The theory of natural selection stated variability was random.  Darwin later suggested not.  Theorists tended to take one side or the other.  The two camps divided into two views of…

The work of the 19th century orthogenesists, Mivart and Cope, concentrated on what they observed as evolutionary trajectories, contractions and elongations of physical features as they manifested or withdrew from the characteristics of descendants at various stages of ontogeny.  No explanation emerged for how this process was engaged, though the fact it occurred, for many biologists, was not in dispute.

In human beings, I’m hypothesizing (see “Introduction to the Theory or Waves“) that estrogen and testosterone together constitute the foundation for an engine of biological and social evolution.  Testosterone drives maturational acceleration and delay.  Estrogen compels a focus on delay or, absent estrogen, no focus on delay.  The ebb and flow of these two hormones behave in a fashion very like what the 19th century theory of orthogenesis describes.

Several things have just plowed into my mind.

Animals behaving like their young, exhibiting young behavior or placating behavior, defuse or tamp down on potentially damaging high testosterone behavior of a possible opponent.  Demure, behaving childlike attracts a certain kind of male.  The exhibition of childlike behaviors both disengages potential opponents from combat escalation and can attract a member of the opposite sex.

Certain levels of relatively high…

There have been studies conducted that note the testosterone levels in males at different levels of a primate hierarchy.  Conclusions correlated hierarchical positions with testosterone levels.  Higher thresholds congregate at higher hierarchical positions, lower thresholds at lower positions.

I don’t know of studies conducted that match up testosterone levels with maturation speed, delayed maturation being associated with lower testosterone levels.  Bouncing around the web, I find that there are sites that suggest it.  For example, males denied testosterone mature more slowly and live several years longer.

What interests me at this moment are studies that would observe changes in estrogen being accompanied by changes in mate-selective intensity.  Perhaps this would be easier to observe in humans.  With certain fish, male tails were artificially elongated, with the females becoming attracted to those longer-tailed fish.  What if the amount of estrogen or estrogen-related hormones were modified to increase or decrease with the female?  Would she show more or less compulsion to exercise choice?  Would she become more discriminating with higher estrogen?

Estrogen seems associated with at least two powerful female features, attention to the young and attraction to nuance.  They seem related in that attention to the young often revolves around attention…

Consider that those female children with low estrogen levels as they cross over into their teens may find themselves experiencing delayed puberty.  This may manifest delayed testosterone surges pruning cerebral synapses, resulting in more cerebral synapses and larger brains.  What exactly might be the relationship between low estrogen, low enough to delay puberty (particularly with girls), and increased encephalization?

With girls, estrogen levels that are too low will delay the first estrous cycle or stop it if already underway.  Introducing a high-fat diet to a girl nearing puberty can add on fat that sparks the transition to adulthood.

With girls, high fat encourages puberty.  It would seem that Western high-fat diets might be responsible for the drop in puberty by four years over the last 100 years.

A question arises.  Is the same dynamic engaged for boys?  Do thin boys introduced to high-fat diets also experience a push into puberty?

This dynamic suggests a number of questions.

To what degree have high and low-fat diets influenced human evolution?  If low fat delays puberty and results in more brain growth, might this be because more synapses are useful for finding more fat?

When there is more fat in diets and puberty…

“We do have data from Japan that are highly suggestive.  Here, for many centuries, fair skins have been under parental control and, other things being equal, parents seek attractive brides for their sons.  As elsewhere, members of the upper classes tend to be the luckiest.  This might be expected to lead to selection as the generations have gone by.  Research which I conducted a few years ago (Hulse 1967) indicated that this has taken place, for upper-class high school students have the fairest skins and those of the lower class the darkest, while middle-class students are intermediate in pigmentation.  Furthermore, data from Greece (Friedl 1962) indicate that girls who are considered good-looking marry earlier than, and need not be supplied with as large a dowry as, their less-attractive sisters.  Throughout southern Europe, the upper classes contain a disproportionate number of blondes and near-blondes.  Sexual preferences, though they may be based on social snobbery rather than aesthetic interest, are capable of shifting allele frequencies in human population.”  (Hulse, F.S. (1978) Group selection and sexual selection in human evolution.  In Evolutionary Models and Studies in Human Diversity (Hague) Meier, R., Otten, C. M., Abdel-Hameed, F. (eds.), Moulton Publisher, Paris, p. 33)

There…

“In a case-control study of testis cancer 259 cases with testicular cancer, 238 controls treated at radiotherapy centres and 251 non-radiotherapy hospital in-patient controls were interviewed about some possible prenatal and familial risk factors for the tumor.  For firstborn men, the risk of testis cancer increased significantly according to maternal age at the subject’s birth, and this effect was most marked for seminoma.  The association with maternal age was not apparent for cases other than firstborn.  The risk of testis cancer was also significantly raised for men from small sibships and of early birth order.  These results accord with the theory that raised maternal levels of available oestrogen during the early part of pregnancy are aetiological for testicular cancer in the son, although other explanations are possible; there is evidence that seminoma risk may particularly be affected.” (Swerdlow, A. J., Huttly, S. R., Smith, P. G. (1987) Prenatal and familial associations of testicular cancer.  Br J Cancer 55 (5):571)

A number of studies have emerged that connect birth order to enhanced likelihood of contracting specific diseases or conditions and increased hormone levels associated with those conditions.

A connection not made is that hormones, specifically testosterone, particularly the mother’s testosterone levels…

Just had a rather odd thought that may or may not be relevant to the principles I’ve been exploring.  I’m wondering if estrogen levels in procreating males and females influence the number of children in families.

There are r and K strategies for guiding progeny to maturity.  In an r strategy, you have as many children as possible to compensate for an inability to control an environment often hostile to progeny achieving maturity.  In the K strategy, parents conclude that by paying close attention to fewer progeny, adulthood for the offspring can be more predictably achieved.

A high-estrogen male would likely be more inclined to pay close attention to his children than a low-estrogen male.  That attention would more likely translate into a K strategy whereby the child is ushered into adulthood with much attention.  Plummeting birth rates in Europe and developed countries might be directly related to changing male hormone levels, elevating estrogen.  Twentieth century high fat diets may be partly responsible for drops in birth rates.

High fat diets granted to emerging middle classes in developing countries may be leading to a diminution in population explosion as males become more solicitous of their children.

Studies with animal populations…

Ten years ago, I was exploring the possible origin of human culture in tribal societies driven by rhythmic dance and music. Tribal societies are on rare occasions characterized by paternal anonymity, or children who are unaware of the identity of their biological father. Observing that human brain size began to diminish about 25,000 years ago, I hypothesized that this reflected an emerging patrifocal emphasis on speech instead of gesture and a movement away from a selection for big-brained males. If this was the case, I suspected that there might be remnants of the old matrifocal paradigm that still exist within contemporary society. In the neurological literature, I sought humans with unusually large brains, difficulty with language, but who were also ambidextrous or left-handed. I came to find that autistic individuals commonly display these features; in addition, I discovered that individuals with autism are often obsessed with pattern replication and have perfect pitch (Brenton, Devries, Barton, Minnich & Sokol, 2008).

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…

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

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

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

It…

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

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

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

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

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

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

We have noted that Marian Annett observed a balanced polymorphism of gradations between random-handed and strong right-handed individuals within a society. We might conclude that just as there is a hypothesized random-handed prototype human and a strong right-handed prototype human, with some people fitting those exact prototypes, most folks in our four-pole hypothesis…

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

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

It is a convention in our society to observe the effects of testosterone, concluding that it is the will…

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

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

—

We are playing with the concept of four prototype pairings, with eight prototype human beings, four in each sex. We are estimating that because the mother, at six weeks before birth, sets her children’s testosterone levels based upon her own testosterone levels (mother with high testosterone T creates low t males and high T females while a mother with low t creates low t females and high T males) that estrogen will run a similar dynamic. The result will be natural…