I hypothesize that female infanticide and foeticide are patrifocal societal tools used to maintain a patrifocal frame.  Males that don’t fit the male patrifocal ideal don’t achieve a wife and don’t pass on ideal genes.  Maintaining a high male/female birth ratio goes a long way toward encouraging long-term patrifocal societal stability.

“Bao and Li are one of four couples in their 600-person village to have espoused uxorilocal marriage, or living with the wife’s family.  Couples in some regions have opted for this lifestyle throughout Chinese history, but the practice is typically stigmatized.  By rewarding daring couples with land and public praise, Care for Girls aims to remove the stigma.  Bao says it worked:  “People don’t discriminate against you now.”  (Science, p. 1164)

The article goes on to describe attempts to adjust male/female ratios by intervening in the intransigent patrifocal social structure.

“The demographers realized that reversing the trend would require a major cultural shift.  Undermining the patrilineal order, they suspected, might do the trick.  With Marcus Feldman, Zhu and Li surveyed two counties in China where historically loose clan structure had led to a high percentage of men living with their wives’ families.  Both uxorilocal counties had a normal sex ratio at birth and low female child mortality.  Moreover, matrilineality seemed to provide the same benefits as patrilineality: ‘We found that daughters provided economic and emotional support to their parents equal to that of sons,’ Li says.” (Science, p. 1165)

Researchers in China have discovered that social structure is directly related to male/female birth ratios.  What other features may these unique, less patrilineal provinces reveal?  Perhaps there are additional advantages to relieving oneself of allegiance to a society heavily dependent on the concept that males are more valuable than females.  I suspect that there are positive economic repercussions.

The Chinese culture is unique in more ways than can be counted.  Whereas in the West until this last century matrifocal tendencies were demonized along with the serpent, a major symbol of the old goddess religions, in Asia the serpent was assimilated and deified.  In the East, matrifocal values were never totally repressed.  Asian spiritual paths revere the power of the female while seeking balance between the two hormonal archetypes.

The distance that the Chinese culture has to go to begin to respect the rights of women and arrive at a balance that provides bonuses to all may not be as far off as many think.  Though there are many societal habits to be adjusted, there is a spiritual infrastructure that allows for the emergence of the unique.  China is seeking profound industrial and commercial innovation and a primary position in the world’s economies.  By focusing on birth ratios as the symptom of a restraining frame of reference, the peoples of China may have a high quality source of information on how close they are coming to acquiring a useful reference for the new global economy.

Patrifocal societies may be both useful and beautiful in a world that requires and rewards stable societies that can survive over long periods of time.  Now that our global cultures are integrating, innovation is king.

If necessity is the mother of invention, then China’s new matrilineality may be the mother of innovation.

I’m seeing similar patterns in other regions of the world.  Of course, individuals from Finland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark have immigrated to Canada, New England, Minnesota and Wisconsin, carrying their biological and social proclivities with them.  Would this explain why North Dakota and Montana are so conservative by comparison?  Do North Dakota and Montana have different ethnic makeups?

I’m seeking evidence that simply living in a northern latitude influences populations to exhibit neotenous features.  One place to look for information is by exploring differences between indigenous American Indian populations.

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“Thus evidence will be presented to show that among the present traditional hunting-fishing population such as the Eskimo, Barry also found a lower degree of conformity on the Asch Conformity Test and more independent values.  Hence a higher number of left-handers was predicted for the Eskimo, while observed incidence is 11.3 percent.  (Dawson, John L. (1977) An anthropological perspective on the evolution and lateralization of the brain.  Annals of the New York Academy of Science 299: p. 426)

This is not much of an increase in left-handedness.  As a side note, female infanticide is common along with other powerful patrifocal tendencies in Eskimo populations.  This would not support the thesis that latitude alone might influence neotenous trajectories.  (Click here for my hypothesis that neoteny and left-handedness are closely associated in human evolution.)

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Taurodontism, a tooth condition that evidences itself in 57% of Down’s syndrome subjects, often shows up in Eskimo populations and in Neanderthal remains.  Down’s features are often highly neotenous. (See Opitz, John M. & Gilbert-Barness, Enid F. (1990) Reflections on the pathogenesis of Down syndrome.  American Journal of Medical Genetics 7: p. 42)  Are there other neotenous features that Eskimos retain?

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“Balikci (1967: 623) has discussed the various cultural strategies, including child betrothal, adaption, and importation of wives, that were employed to ensure satisfactory recruitment of females into the adult population.  Interestingly, such practices existed alongside female infanticide, the very practice that contributed above all others to the shortage of women!”  (Freeman, Milton M. R. (1971) A social and ecological analysis of systematic female infanticide among the Netsilik Eskimo.  American Anthropologist 73, 5: p. 1013)

Freeman’s study does not do much to support my conjectures.  My hypothesis states that female infanticide and neoteny are only related in a Conventional Patrifocal context (see Introduction to the Theory of Waves).

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“Amongst the various Amerindian populations (Figs 91 and 92) there is a wide variation in height means.  North American Indians are taller and heavier than South American and Central American Indians.  The Blackfeet means are well up in the European range, as are the means for British Columbian Indians (Birkbeck, Lee, Meyers & Alfred, 1971; Lee et al., 1971; not plotted).  The Apache Indian and Alaskan Eskimo children are also considerably taller at all ages than the South and Central Americans.  Even though they do have many traits in common, North American and South American Indians differ considerably in physique and craniofacial structure.”  (Eveleth, P. B. & Tanner, J. M. (1976) Worldwide Variation in Human Growth: Cambridge Univ. Press, London p. 127)

An issue would be whether the Indians at the very south of South America start to increase in height again.  Otherwise, this passage would seem to suggest that northern populations are taller than southern populations, which would support the ideas we are playing with.

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“The highest proportion of left-handedness that I could discover from a reliable source was for the Kwakiutl Indians of British Columbia, 17 to 22 per cent of whom were left-handed or ambidextrous for writing (Marrion 1886). [footnote says ‘Marrion reported that no fewer than 6 per cent of Kwakiutl Indians could write with either hand.  However, there is no tradition of written language in this culture, and many adults do not write after leaving school.  Marrion (personal communication) noted that many treated writing their name as an activity akin to drawing.’” (Bishop, D. V. M. (1990) Handedness and Developmental Disorder.  MacKeith, Manchester p. 12)

Bishop’s excerpt would support a position that northern populations exhibit matrifocal features such as higher percentages of left-handedness and ambidexterity.

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I can’t say the patterns are very clear.  This first pass through easily accessible studies shows indigenous American populations with features supporting and not supporting the thesis that Northern populations evidence more neoteny than Southern populations.  Studies of the Hopi, for example, show that they have a number of matrifocal features as do other tribes scattered across North and South America, though North America seems to be where these features congregate.

On one side perches the atomic bomb and pregnancy ultrasound, two of the most powerful tools of a patrifocal society. On the other side, serving a matrifocal society, are the Pill and the Internet.

Across the world there is a war being fought between destruction and creation. On the eastern front, battles wage across a woman’s womb; and the sex of the survivor determines both the structure of future society and that society’s talent and tendency to innovate. On the western front, the military-industrial-financial world alliance is clashing with the Internet society, and losing.

Female foeticide is one of the greatest killers on the planet, a scourge that goes almost unremarked. Modern ultrasound technology has facilitated the abortions of female fetuses rather than the drowning and smothering of infants. It is a machine that insures a child is male. The liberal West supports abortion. The conservative West supports patrifocal culture. It so happens that aborting females supports patrifocal culture. Is it any wonder we read or hear so little about the millions of females that are aborted?

The fewer females that survive the womb, the fewer non-ideal males in a society that find a wife. Those males achieving patristic success that manifest an ability to work well within hierarchy, take orders, give orders, command followers and perform well in male-to-male competition are rewarded with an opportunity to procreate. These males are the ideal mate. If only the ideals sire children, the values of the society are far more likely to be passed on. With the ideal male being one that fits in well and cooperates with the established patrifocal paradigm, innovation is not encouraged. Innovation is not a feature of societies that kill a female foetus. It is no mistake that societies displaying the most stability are societies that kill the girls.

In the quickly transforming West, where women are achieving parity with men, the Pill places in the hands of women the kind of man that they will mate with. In the West, concepts of the ideal male have blended together and produced any man that can contribute to an innovation. The idea of a Western ideal male has disappeared. Societal ideals have become amorphous with independence. Innovation thrives in an environment where the female can pick a mate with no guidance other than what she feels is best for her personally. The Pill provides her the power to make her own choice. Only males that she approves of supply her seed. The result is a proliferation of male ideals with an emphasis on males that can beat out other males to make a woman happy.

In the meantime, those Western males with a facility to thrive in hierarchy, take orders, give orders, command followers and perform well in male-to-male competition, build bombs. Multileveled corporations and military hierarchies work closely together with government and lending institutions to build a world where males are in control.

Encouraged by the shift to female choice and a reverence for innovation, the West has invented and nurtured the Internet. The web is planting matristic values into societies across the world. Horizontal communication, transparency and diversity are spreading like hurricane-propelled seeds from a continent of wildflowers. Disappearing borders are making bombs seem so yesterday. Observe our governments needing to encourage borderless adversaries to be able to continue to manufacture the myth of the enemy.

Technologies serve male or female-based societies, even forming hybrid technologies in societies like America where both social structures are in integrated combat. Male dominated Wall Street feeds off unique financial vehicles created by innovative minds. Huge influxes of corporate capital have fed the horizontal web.

Sex-determining ultrasound, the bomb, the Pill and the web all reveal how technology helps determine and support the social structures that drive societies as they change.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mother’s testosterone level > progeny maturation rate > social structure proclivity > mother’s testosterone level.

Mother’s estrogen level > progeny ability to exercise aesthetic discrimination and caring behavior > social structure proclivity > mother’s estrogen level.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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:

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

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

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.

Brenton, J. N., Devries, S. P., Barton, C., Minnich, H. & Sokol, D. K. (2008). Absolute pitch in a four-year-old boy with autism. Pediatric Neurology, 39(2), 137-8.

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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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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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Female infanticide is a manifestation of sexual selection in a cultural context. Female infanticide can be understood as patrifocal, cultural acceleration and/or stabilization. By decreasing the number of women to less than the number of available men and by being more specific about features that can be chosen for in the character and genes of the males, the more culturally rigid, both in terms of cultural ideas and the genetic pool, the culture will continue to be.

A culture keeps tight control of its degree of diffusion or drift by maintaining a low female/high male ratio. This control results in a shift toward a selection of highly specific traits. As a culture starts to idealize war, the families of those women or their fathers choose a mate based on success-in-war criteria. Female infanticide decreased the number of men likely to create progeny, increasing the likelihood that the warlike criteria would be passed on to the next generation. With a high percentage of young men who are potentially mateless, aggressive posturing abounds, violent confrontations increase and opportunities for men to show their “character” emerge. The successful men will be rewarded with a mate or mates.

In a sense, the ship of state can steer left or right, depending on how many girl babies are thrown overboard.

Embrace the female. Innovation can proliferate as criteria for the perfect mate can vary as a larger number of young women can choose from a wider variety of men.

Suppress the number of women by killing them as embryos or babies. Then fewer men can sire a child and only those highly valued, aggressive male personalities can achieve a mate. In a patrifocal society, those highly valued males can often effectively wield authority and obediently serve the established hierarchy. Creativity is not their strength.

Contrary to what the neo-Darwinists and sociobiologists would suggest, evolution is a lightning fast process driven often by sexual selection, often by abrupt changes in the rate and the timing of maturation. When prolonged, these changes in rate and timing are called neoteny. One way we have been controlling our own evolution is by committing female infanticide. Another way we direct how society transforms is by choosing mates for their nonviolent, creative, cooperative tendencies.

“…Silver foxes had been bred in captivity since 1892 on fur farms, and although some selective breeding for traits such as fertility and high fur quality had been practiced, the animals were not domesticated in any strict sense. They retained all of the essential characteristics of their wild counterparts. They molted and came into heat in a strict seasonal cycle, as in the wild; their behavior toward humans was no different than that of a wild fox raised in captivity. So Belyaev decided to try an experiment. He would rigorously select animals applying but a single criterion: Those animals that showed consistently tame behavior toward humans would be kept; those that did not would be eliminated from the breeding program. Within five generations changes were already apparent. By 1979, twenty years into the experiment, the results were astonishing. His tame-selected foxes were not just tame; they acted for all the world like domestic dogs. They approached familiar persons and licked their hands and faces. They barked like dogs. They even sought the attention of strangers by whining and wagging their tails. Their annual molting cycle was disrupted, and the females began to come into heat twice a year, like dogs, and unlike both foxes and wolves, they also developed some physical characteristics of young foxes, such as drooping ears, and some of the variations in traits seen in other domesticated animals, such as piebald coat coloration. Belyaev in an astonishingly short time produced not just one new trait, but a whole package of new characteristics. What he had done, by selecting for nothing more than tameness, was to tap into the same powerful evolutionary tool that nature had employed as a solution to the successive ecological catastrophes of the ice ages: neoteny.” (Budiansky 1992: 96-7, The Covenant of the Wild)

We humans, particularly women, are selecting tame humans, cooperative males, and changing our species in the process. Whereas female infanticide steers society toward hierarchy, male posturing, stability and war; females selecting cooperative, creative, sensitive to interdependence, independent males construct a society that is open to change.

In the way that foxes can be transformed into dog-like creatures in a mere 20 years, humans are in the process of transforming each other by picking mates for their cooperative inclinations.

Clearly, if we’re going to survive the next 100 years, it’s the males that have to change.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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