“As if the Boskop story were not already strange enough, the accumulation of additional remains revealed another bizarre feature: These people had small, childlike faces. Physical anthropologists use the term pedomorphosis to describe the retention of juvenile features into adulthood. This phenomenon is sometimes used to explain rapid evolutionary changes. For example, certain amphibians retain fishlike gills even when fully mature and past their water-inhabiting period. Humans are said by some to be pedomorphic compared with other primates. Our facial structure bears some resemblance to that of an immature ape. Boskop’s appearance may be described in terms of this trait. A typical current European adult, for instance, has a face that takes up roughly one-third of his overall cranium size. Boskop has a face that takes up only about one-fifth of his cranium size, closer to the proportions of a child. Examination of individual bones confirmed that the nose, cheeks, and jaw were all childlike.”

The discovery begs a number of questions. Evidently there is not a clear time line regarding how many years in the past these Boskops lived, though a visit to Wikipedia says it was 10,000 – 30,000 years ago. Wikipedia also says the skull sizes have been exaggerated. Evidently there are a number of different opinions on how big the skulls actually were.

To assign the Boskops the name of “hominid” seems exaggerated if, indeed, they are from the last 100,000 years. They are evidently a variation of Homo sapiens.

What interests me most is not the exact brain size but the idea that an increased brain size is associated with neotenous features. The next question would be: What do digs surrounding these skeletons suggest about the culture that accompanied their brain size? Is there evidence of an exaggerated aesthetic?

I hypothesize that dance was central to humans evolving big brains fast. What would distinguish this particular branch of human evolution to suggest that a larger brain might be more closely connected to dance, music, body painting, fashion or song? Scanning web articles, I have found that writers on the Boskop are focused almost exclusively on brain size.

If Boskop skull size is significantly larger, an issue that is argued about (which seems strange, either they are a certain size or they are not), then is there evidence suggesting how long it took to grow these large skulls? If the surge in size was very brief, then it seems to be significant information.

Discover is a reputable publication. The Boskop finds are associated with no small number of disparaging articles. It’s not clear what exactly is happening here.

Understanding neoteny as integral to human evolution and current social change is to reference evolutionary theories common in the nineteenth century (i.e., Mivart, Hyatt, Cope) that were let go when natural selection was raised to be our theory of choice. Ideas evidencing sensitivity to interconnection were abandoned in a theorizing environment that focused on theories offering the greatest number of questions being answered by the simplest hypothesis.

A reductionist milieu tends to pay less attention to solutions that suggest a connection between individuals or species across a scale or between scales. Over the last ten years, there has emerged a new evolution theory discipline called evolutionary developmental biology. In many ways, evo devo harkens back to the nineteenth-century theories that focused on the power of interconnection to both understand and predict how evolution will unfold. Central to evo devo and to the nineteenth-century theories was understanding the power of how individuals mature, and how maturity trajectories change over time when species are influenced by evolution. Central to understanding these kinds of changes, changes in maturity, is understanding how the environment directly and indirectly encourages evolutionary change. It is helpful to examine how the environment and social structure impact ontogeny, or growth.

Neoteny is one of two foundation maturity paradigms, one where the infant or embryo features of an individual in a species unfolds over generations to appear in later and later stages until manifesting in the look and behavior of adults. This is not a theory. This is a description of biological process. These processes can be studied by reading about heterochrony, described in detail in Stephen J. Gould’s Ontogeny and Phylogeny.

Humans evidence neoteny. It can be argued whether humans do or don’t evidence neoteny, but neoteny is central to how species evolve. Infant and embryo features of our ancient forebears have emerged to appear in the physiology and behavior of contemporary adults. I would suggest that what is occurring now in modern society, with huge increases in diversity, transparency and horizontal communication, is evidence of society being impacted by neotenic tendencies. I would go so far as to closely associate neoteny and the Internet.

There is one aspect of this process which was not understood in the nineteenth century, and it is only beginning to be understood today. Neoteny is hypothetically closely associated with matrifocal social structures, societies where women share authority with men. Cooperative males are highly valued in societies that value commanding women. Modern society is evidencing profoundly matrifocal tendencies. It is possible that surges in neoteny emerging today are closely associated with female-centered social structure that respects cooperation and creativity.

To observe perhaps the greatest evidence on neoteny today you need go no further than the Creative Commons. When an aesthetic features a proliferation of borrowing, with each creative act deeply influenced by the creativity of others in the environment, you are observing a societal reproduction of what occurs in earliest embryo ontogeny. As embryos, each being is profoundly impacted by changes in the environment, with growth determined by how each cell decides to grow, impacted by the behavior of its neighbors. Earliest maturing, ontogeny, is all about responding to the environment. That exact dynamic is emerging today in the behavior of those relying upon the Creative Commons for information that influences their personal growth and creativity.

Neoteny, the prolongation of infant and embryo features into the look and behaviors of adults, is perhaps the guiding principle, the zeitgeist, of our time.

“Juveniles and adults of these dinosaurs look very, very different from adults, and literally may resemble a different species,” said dinosaur expert Mark B. Goodwin, assistant director of UC Berkeley’s Museum of Paleontology.  ”But some scientists are confusing morphological differences at different growth stages with characteristics that are taxonomically important.  The result is an inflated number of dinosaurs in the late Cretaceous.”

In the article, Goodwin’s associate, John “Jack” Horner, says, “Dinosaurs, like birds and many mammals, retain neoteny, that is, they retain their juvenile characteristics for a long period of growth, which is a strong indicator that they were very social animals, grouping in flocks or herds with long periods of parental care.”

Horner associates neoteny with sociality, suggesting that animals that congregate throughout their lives exhibit neotenous characteristics.  I wish I knew more about these areas.  My next question is:  Are there specific social structures associated with those animals that group in flocks and herds?

If it is true that in animals, when neoteny emerges as influential in the way ancient species appear, we can assume that these are social animals, then can we also assume particular social structures were in play?  If this is the case, and social structures are influenced by the environment, then this supports an ability to possibly examine not only species alive today, but ancient species like the ones that Goodwin and Horner describe, in a context of environment and social structure informing evolution.

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.

What I’m trying to get a feel for here is how universal, exactly, are the principles that I’m playing with.  I keep seeing signs, smelling flavors that call my attention to this alternative frame of reference.  The Goodwin-Horner study suggests that neotenous features suggest flock/herd inclinations.  Prolonging the features of infancy, dependency and close attention on the mother into the adult of species encourages social behaviors.  How clear is the pattern that species that congregate exhibit greater neoteny than those that don’t?  The implications of that suggestion are profound.  Frankly, outside my exploring this in connection to humans, it is not something I’ve ever considered, except in the context of social structure.

What exactly are the social structure predilections of congregating, herd and flock species?

“Forest-dwelling apes efficiently conserve their water reserves, which they obtain primarily from fruit and vegetation, such that they need only rarely to visit predator-frequented watering holes.  By contrast, humans active in hot desert can lose up to 28 liters of water and up to 10% of bodily salt reserves per day (Morgan, 1982).  This incredible profligacy with water and salt suggests that early hominids must have enjoyed no shortage of either: they probably dwelled fairly close to fresh and salt water when not foraging.  Rivers and lakes would have provided not only drinking water, but also allowed body-washing and food-washing, offered fish, aquatic crustaceans, and shellfish for eating, and, because the thermal conductivity of water is much higher than that of air, quick swims would have allowed for efficient cooling-off after a long, hot day of foraging.  Note that these conditions would make the aquatic ape hypothesis (Hardy, 1960; Morgan, 1982) a bit more plausible…”  (Geoffrey F. Miller, “Evolution of the Human Brain through Runaway Sexual Selection:  The Mind as a Protean Courtship Device,” unpublished thesis (1994), p. 164.)

The aquatic ape hypothesis overlaps in two ways with the theorizing I’ve been conducting the last few years.  What I’m now calling The Orchestral Theory of Evolution and the aquatic ape hypothesis both have strong feminist components.  Elaine Morgan presented her thesis, one where male survival of the fittest was not the focus, as an alternative theory to Desmond Morris’s The Naked Ape.

Both Morgan’s hypothesis (Alister Hardy was the original creator of the theory) and my work feature an emphasis on neoteny.  The aquatic ape hypothesis states we lost our body hair to better spend our time in water, and that by evolving in a neotenous direction, access to hairlessness was encouraged.  An upright stature is also associated with neoteny, and estuary or river waders often acquire upright positions.  I’ve shown that lower testosterone levels can be associated with longer limbs.  Both low testosterone and long limbs are associated with maturational delay and neoteny.

Feminism and neoteny are closely tied to both our theories, and interestingly, Elaine Morgan and I are both nonscientists and artists who are thinking outside conventions in perhaps complementary fashions.  We are both in the origin myth business, working with similar material, constructing pasts that support an emerging zeitgeist.

“From Neolithic villages to organized state, from gardening to irrigation farming, from inconography to writing, from disorganized raids to institutionalized warfare, from custom to law, from matriarchal religious authority to patriarchal political power, from mystery to history; the transformation was so complete that the past itself was reinvented to create a new foundation for a radically altered present.  Now that we ourselves are moving into a radically altered present, it is small wonder that the patriarchal image of prehistory is disintegrating.  The movement into the future always involves the revisioning of the past.”  (William Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take To Light (New York:  St. Martin’s Press, 1981), p. 208.)

One of the things Elaine Morgan was often criticized for was that though her conjectures explained a number of unique human features, there was no obvious way to prove the thesis.  Her subjects did not easily fossilize where they lived by shores.  Regarding human theories of evolution, we have such an astonishingly small amount of information to work with that it surprises me that proof would be the main criticism.  Barely grounded hypotheses are common among human evolution theorists.  I suspect she was more derided for her feminist positions.

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.

This is not looking at art as a contingent or accidental property associated with intelligence that was naturally selected because intelligence exhibits facility with tools.  Art is instead approached as central to what humans sexually selected in each other as they sought mates exhibiting sensitivity to aesthetics.

In addition, the passage above suggests that art itself reflects an embryonic dynamic, a period in ontogeny when growth is characterized by an environment integrally involved with how an individual develops.

A question emerges.  I posit that neoteny is central to human evolution driven by sexual selection/social structure and environmental issues, with the creativity of infants appearing in the behavior of adults.  In addition, I consider, as the passage above suggests, that actual embryonic processes themselves are reflected in the aesthetic dynamics of our species.  Is there a relationship between neotenic physical features appearing in species over time and the creative exhibition of either males and/or females when displaying to achieve a mate?  In other words, do other species show alliances between neoteny and creativity?  How are neoteny and sexual selection closely allied outside humans?

In an earlier piece, I surmised that increases in estrogen in the female would also increase her tendency to focus with more discrimination on features in a potential mate while perhaps paying closer attention to her young.  If patterns in nature operate similarly to the way I describe how humans may have evolved, then might the exhibition of creativity in other species besides humans be also an exhibition of a tendency to prolong infant or embryo features into the adult of the species, where they would then provide males more behavioral flexibility when it comes to accommodating female predilection for the unique?

Does female choice result in not only sexual selection but a tendency toward male neoteny, resulting in the emergence of creativity when seeking mates?

It is rare when I think of human evolution dynamics in the context of other animals.  Doing so now, I find myself wondering if larger patterns are in play.

As regards understanding, convention is useful.  The following is a proposal for a new shared evaluation protocol.

What we understand “teleology” to mean is central to how we interpret current events, societal change, politics, geopolitical dynamics, the control of resources and the ability of the disenfranchised to feel free of want.  “Teleology” can be defined as the belief that there are overriding, perhaps spiritual, forces at work, compelling society to evolve or transform in particular directions featuring progress, improvement and an enhancement of individual positive experience.  There are atheist humanists that nonetheless display teleological tendencies insofar as they experience a confidence that our species has been acting and will continue to act, more or less, in our own best interest, compelling an ongoing positive direction.  Teleology is not widely discussed because it is associated with religious tendencies, and our academics, for the most part, operate from a materialist milieu.

What if there is structure to the particular way that societies change, a dynamic that offers insight on how transformation that reveals an overriding process is engaged?  What if teleology–social transformation–operated according to a biological imperative?

A theory of biological evolution that also explains human social transformation would be a powerful addition to the tools available that explain how our world works.  The nineteenth-century heterochronists (Mivart, Cope, Hyatt, Haeckel) and the twentieth-century theorists working with the concept of a fourfold parallelism (Freud, Piaget, Gebser, Habermas, Gould and Wilber) are operating with the same principles, only the nineteenth-century evolutionary biologists are not having their species transformation work interpreted by these twentieth-century psychologists, biologists and philosophers as connected to a social world.

Heterochrony includes a study of how the rate and timing changes that occur during early ontogeny or growth influence not only the structure, look and behaviors of an individual but how those changes impact that individual’s descendants.  For example, an environmental effect such as a change in a mother’s diet can transform the features of not only her children but her children’s children, changes that could compel the emergence of childlike features in the adults of distant progeny.  This is a kind of maturational delay called “neoteny,” or the prolongation of infant features into the adult of descendants.  Heterochrony is a study of evolution that focuses on changes in features based upon influences exerted by the environment or social structure.

Fourfold parallelisms are four different scales of experience–biological evolution, social evolution, individual ontological or maturational transformation, and individual experience–that are believed to exhibit the same process, evolution, at four different levels.  Discipline founders or innovators, until recently, grew new ways of looking at the world by borrowing from contiguous disciplines, hypothesizing that different discipline dynamics operated according to identical processes at their core.

What’s missing is the concept of social structure and environmental influence.  Biological evolution is compelled by social structure and environmental effects that convey very specific maturational delay and acceleration dynamics.  Those same dynamics display overriding patterns, making transparent how society evolves or transforms in particular directions in specific ways over time.  These social transformations directly reflect biological social structure maturational delay and acceleration dynamics.

What has never occurred, and what this piece is proposing, is that the particular way that heterochronists viewed biological evolution–social structure and environmental effects compelling change by adjusting the rates and timing of maturation–was never picked up by the fourfold parallelists so that they could consider that society reveals teleological tendencies that in actuality are biological imperatives.  The reason for this is that by the time the parallelists were theorizing (early twentieth century), the heterochronists (mostly Lamarckians) were receiving less attention.  One hundred years later the Lamarckians are back.  Their discipline is called evolutionary developmental biology.  These evo devo practitioners have not yet turned their attention to the heterochronists.  Even so, multiscale parallelisms are still only in vogue among philosophers and artists.

Society evolves according to changes in its rates and timing of maturation, influenced by adjustments in social structure and environmental effects.  Societies reveal maturation tendencies identical to how individuals are impacted.  Those tendencies are influenced by observable variables.  Overriding patterns can be observed.

Teleology has biological roots.

“The entire scheme represents a hierarchically organized system of increasing size, differentiation, and complexity, in which each component affects, and is affected by, all the other components, not only at its own level but at lower and higher levels as well.  Thus, the arrows in Figure12-2 not only go upward from the gene, eventually reaching all the way to the external environment through the activities of the organism, but the arrows of influence return from the external environment through various levels of the organism back to the genes.  While the feedforward or feedupward nature of the genes has always been appreciated from the time of Weismann and Mendel on, the feedbackward or feeddownward influences have usually been thought to stop at the level of the cell membrane.  The newer conception is one of a totally interrelated, fully coactional system in which the activity of the genes themselves can be affected through the cytoplasm of the cell by events originating at any other level in the system, including the external environment.”  (G. Gilbert, Individual Development and Evolution (New York:  Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 145.)

The article appearing in the 11/8/09 BBC News, “Early Life Stress ‘Changes’ Genes“, sent to me by reader Jon Gluckman, calls attention to evident changes in the genetic structure of mice genes as a result of stress just after birth.  The article wasn’t very specific except to note that changes were observed to occur at the molecular level by researcher Christopher Murgatroyd.  Watson and Crick’s Central Dogma has been adjusted to a less certain position of authority by a number of studies over the last 20 years.  Their discovery of the double helix was astonishing and beautiful, but not as easily understood as was first believed.  It’s looking like DNA is not the code of life, but the score.

When a current composer creates a symphony, he writes or types the notes to appear in a visual format to be provided to the various musicians by the conductor.  The composer does not “code” a symphony; he creates a score that then provides an idea of what the composer had in mind.  Musicians then marshal their assignment into existence by leveraging their skill with the instrument, paying attention to their own feelings, listening to their colleagues, watching the conductor and responding to the audience all at once.  There are at least these five variables impacting each individual performance.  Multiply that by the number of performers in a symphony and we begin to understand the subtlety, complexity and sophistication of DNA.  It’s as much about the environment as it is about the score.  That is the nature of art.

I hypothesize that music is not only a better metaphor than machinery or code for communicating how the genes and the environment relate, but music itself approaches the actual structure of the womb or egg environment engendered to produce an individual.  Art is a peculiarly human undertaking.  Its origins are explored far less often than language or culture, it being assumed that art is a contingent result of language or culture.  Even though art as it manifests in female sexual selection proliferates across the planet in the form of (usually) males displaying features that females like, art is not often explored as that which compelled humans to evolve.

The reason I state that art (in this case, music) was not only instrumental in how humans evolved but is a direct reflection of how evolution operates is because neoteny, the prolongation of ancient ancestor embryo features into the adults of descendants, not only made contemporary adult humans more like our chimpanzee-like embryo progenitors (as in large head, big brain, small jaws, hairless skin, head back on shoulders) but made humans behave like an embryo behaves.  Human adults make art and revel in environmental information to inform inspiration to create.  This is exactly what I hypothesize embryos do.  Embryos take their DNA score and proceed to proliferate growth based upon instructions from the environment.  Just as an audience informs production, the environment guides growth or ontogeny.  Art is not only integral to what it is to be human but is perhaps the most integral feature of what it is to be human.  In addition, art may be also how humans, and life, grow.

In other words, art may not only be the best way to represent those subtle and unique experiences that make life make sense, art may be the best way to understand how life actually unfolds.  Science, seeking to make an experience reproducible by making the number of variables so few that the outcome can be controlled, may be doing the opposite of what life actually engages in if life is to be understood.  Audience and performer, gene score and environment may be central to understanding not only evolution but ontogeny, individual experience and social relations.  Maybe it’s time science allies itself with art and makes itself part of an ensemble.

DNA’s Central Dogma, a great name, created with sensitivity to religious lines that science, with awareness, seeks to cross, needs a new name.  I would suggest Immanent Nature.  DNA’s Immanent Nature instead of Central Dogma suggests porous boundaries with continued awareness of the spiritual connotations.

If what makes humans human is that we directly reflect the processes engaged during earliest ontogeny, and our reflection of those processes compels us to create, then perhaps the unique self awareness also evidenced by humans is a feature of earliest ontogeny.

Immanence may be a feature of the system.

“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 men and women were studied, and in the latter study, a significant increase in lefthandedness (or rather nonrighthandedness) was obtained for women.  This was assumed to be related to higher-than-normal levels of prenatal testosterone levels.  In their results, the increase in lefthandedness in homosexual women (which have lower occurrence than men in the general population) is much larger than that of homosexual men.  It is, therefore, fair to assume that the increase in testosterone, believed to cause both lefthandedness and homosexuality in women, will give a more pronounced effect in women than in men (p. 184).”  (Coates, T. J., Ekstrand, M., and Gotestam, K. O., “Handedness, Dyslexia and Twinning in Homosexual Men,” International Journal of Neuroscience 63(3-4) (1992):179-86.)

“Although numerous researchers have hypothesized a biological factor in the etiology of homosexuality, there is a lack of empirical evidence.  Previous investigations did not focus on behavioral functions of the brain.  Using neuropsychological testing, we found an increased incidence of left-hand preference (defined as non-consistent right-hand preference) in a group of 32 homosexual women.  A trend in the same direction was found in a group of 38 homosexual men.  These results suggest that homosexual orientation has a neurobiological component possibly related to hemispheric functional asymmetry.  The results are consistent with previous reports that (1) prenatal neuroendocrine events are a factor in the development of human sexual orientation and functional brain asymmetries, and (2) the mechanisms associated with homosexual orientation and related neuropsychological characteristics are different between the sexes, i.e., elevated levels of prenatal sex hormones in women and decreased levels in men.”  (Kingstone, E., McCormick, C. M., and Witelson, S. F., “Left-handedness in Homosexual Men and Women:  Neuroendocrine Implications,” Psychoneuroendocrinology 15(1) (1990):69-76.)

“Human homosexual males report more stressors (such as bereavement) during their mother’s pregnancy than controls (Dorner, Schenk, Schmiedel, and Ahrens 1983).”  (S. Baron-Cohen, S. Lutchmaya, and R. Kinickmeyer, Prenatal Testosterone in Mind:  Amniotic Fluid Studies (Massachusetts:  MIT Press, 2004), pp. 11-12.)

“Matched groups of homosexual men, heterosexual men, and heterosexual women (n = 38 per group) were tested on three measures of spatial ability and two measures of fluency that typically reveal sex differences.  For the three spatial tests and one of the fluency tests, the mean performance of homosexual men fell between those of the heterosexual men and women.  The pattern of cognitive skills of homosexual men was different from that of heterosexual men: homosexual men had lower spatial ability relative to fluency.  The cognitive pattern of homosexual men was not significantly different from that of heterosexual women.  In addition, the results suggest that homosexual men classified on the basis of hand preference may form two subgroups that differ in cognitive pattern.  These findings are compatible with the hypothesis that there is a neurobiological factor related to sexual differentiation in the etiology of homosexuality.”  (McCormick, C. M., and Witelson, S. F., “A Cognitive Profile of Homosexual Men Compared to Heterosexual Men and Women,” Psychoneuroendocrinology 16(6) (1991):459-73.)

“The raised incidences of strong left-handedness and of mixed-handedness in homosexual men, as in dyslexics, are mutually consistent under the normal distribution function, as expected by the right shift theory of handedness.  It is argued that atypical laterality in these groups is better described as a ‘reduction of right shift’ than as a ‘left shift.’”  (Annett, M., “Comments on Lindesay:  Laterality Shift in Homosexual Men,” Neuropsychologia 26(2) (1988):341-3.)

“A study of handedness, dyslexia, stuttering and twinning, was included in a study of sexual habits of homosexual men.  A questionnaire was mailed to homosexuals, and 394 forms suitable for data analysis were received.  The results showed an increased rate of lefthand writing (17.5% compared to 8-8.4%), and a clear left shift.  There were increased occurrence of both stuttering (7.1% compared to 1.6%) and reading difficulties (7.9% compared to 1-3%).  The incidence of twins was lower than the population (1.3%).  The results confirm earlier attempts to show a left shift in homosexuals, and support Geschwind’s hypotheses about etiological factors for both lefthandedness and homosexuality.”  (Coates et al., 179-86.)

“`

Phonetic dyslexics (Annett, 1990); stutterers (Corballis, 1981; Bryden, 1994); many Tourette’s sufferers (Shapiro et al., 1972); many gifted athletes, mathematicians, artists, musicians (Deutsch, 1978; Hassler, 1991b; Hassler & Gupta, 1993), and composers (Hassler, 1992); many schizophrenics (Crow et al., 1996); specific alcoholic types (London, 1985) and many obese women are individuals located at the left end of this societal balance that I’ve been describing.  In addition, there are many homosexuals and lesbians firmly positioned in matrifocal social structure displaying high testosterone women and low testosterone men.

Congregating these various excerpts in a single place, I’m hoping to make clear the pattern this particular group exhibits in the context of the thesis I’ve been describing.  There are groups in current society that exhibit neurological, endocrinological and handedness dispositions characteristic of matrifocal social structure and, hypothetically, our recent evolutionary forebears.  Gays and lesbians fit the paradigm.  Gays evidence maturational delay and females evidence acceleration.  In addition, females exhibit higher testosterone levels, males lower levels, and both are coming from high testosterone mothers.

I’d expect that male homosexuals, if they congregate features like those that we hypothesize were common when we were evolving in matrifocal social structures, would be often narcissistic, performance based, highly sexually motivated, often obsessive compulsive, musically inclined and excellent dancers.

I would estimate that lesbians would often feature female traits in our ancient matrifocal archetype.  They would have commanding dispositions, and they would be overweight (high testosterone/high estrogen), extremely discriminating and musically inclined.

I would also predict that gays and lesbians would often have relatives with autism and Asperger’s, with homosexuality not uncommon among the autistic and those with Asperger’s.  Gays and males with autism feature maturational delay; lesbians feature maturational acceleration.

The patterns here seem pretty clear.

Are you proposing that testosterone levels are driving evolution of mammals in general or primates specifically?

The evidence that testosterone is driving evolution mostly comes from anomalies emerging in neuropsychology around progeny maturation changes that result from environmental influences upon a pregnant mother and other studies in the neuropsychological literature.

An interesting primate study was as follows…

“In a 5-year longitudinal study, we examined the effect of disrupting the neonatal activity of the pituitary–testicular axis on the sexual development of male rhesus monkeys.  Animals in a social group under natural lighting conditions were treated with a GnRH antagonist (antide), antide and androgen, or both vehicles, from birth until 4 months of age.  In antide-treated neonates, serum LH and testosterone were near or below the limits of detection throughout the neonatal period.  Antide + androgen-treated neonates had subnormal serum LH, but above normal testosterone concentrations during the treatment period.  From 6 to 36 months of age, serum LH and testosterone were near or below the limits of detection.  Ten of 12 control animals reached puberty during the breeding season of their 4th year, compared with five of 10 antide- and three of eight antide + androgen-treated animals.  Although matriline rank was balanced across treatment groups at birth, a disruption within the social group during year 2 resulted in a marginally lower social ranking of the two treated groups compared with the controls.  More high (78%) than low (22%) ranking animals reached puberty during year 4.  During the breeding season of that year, serum LH, testosterone and testicular volume were positively correlated with social rank.  Thus the lower social rank of treated animals may have contributed to the subnormal numbers of these animals reaching puberty during year 4.  However, of those animals achieving puberty during year 4, the pattern of peripubertal changes in serum testosterone and testicular volume differed between control and antide-treated animals.  The results appear to suggest that the disruption of normal activity of the neonatal pituitary–testicular axis retarded sexual development, but that social rank is a key regulatory factor in setting the timing of sexual maturation in male rhesus monkeys.  The effect of neonatal treatment with antide and low social rank on sexual development could not be reversed by neo-natal exposure to greater than normal concentrations of androgen.”  Abstract from Sexual maturation in male rhesus monkeys: importance of neonatal testosterone exposure and social rank by Mann, Akinbami, Gould, Paul and Wallen.

It seems that mammals in general may be so affected, but I have not explored this.

How specifically is testosterone expression selected for?

I see this as largely a social structure question.  Any number of fluctuating environmental situations can encourage differing social structures.  For example, if a primate society experiences dispersed food sources gathered by females often foraging out of sight of males, then male control of female procreation may be less effective than a promiscuous social structure evidencing lower male testosterone levels and less hierarchical posturing.  See “What is Neoteny?”

How do changes in the timing of testosterone influence the evolution of mammalian life history?

This is not a question that I have researched, but only asked.  I don’t know.

How has Darwin’s theory of natural selection, inherently based upon interactions with the environment and organisms, biased a current ability to note the effects of the environment upon evolution?

The version of Darwin’s theory of natural selection in widest use today is the Neo-Darwinian interpretation of Darwin’s work, with Dawkins as the most vocal representative.  Fern Elsdon-Baker, in The Selfish Genius, describes the rather odd situation that we are in with Darwin’s pluralistic perspective not being the general understanding of how evolution works; instead, it is Wallace’s rather orthodox interpretation (though Wallace believed deity intervened to make our brain).  What this largely boils down to is:  How random, exactly, is the variation that emerges in progeny?

Neo-Darwinism makes clear that Lamarckian principles are dead and that evolutionary developmental biological ideas (that the environment can compel changes in ontogeny) are a special case.  The current theorizing environment does not support the idea that the environment can affect evolution by influencing the parents in their lives to produce progeny with features that reflect the parents’ experience.  Darwin discussed this issue at length, providing numerous examples in his The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication.  This two-volume work was basically a list of anomalies that did not fit his theory of natural selection.

Whereas the environment is noted as important because it decides which features encourage an individual to live long enough to procreate, in most current theory the environment is not noted as important in its ability to influence the kinds of individuals that are created by the parents’ experience.  My emphasis is that the environment influences the rate and timing of maturation, adjusting ontogeny, encouraging the emergence of a host of features.

How does your theory contrast with Darwin’s presentation of sexual selection and differential selective pressures between males and females in The Descent of Man?

In 1998 I was reading Darwin’s The Descent of Man, Gould’s Ontogeny and Phylogeny, Campbell’s The Masks of God and Geschwind and Galaburda’s Cerebral Lateralization at the same time.  The four books kind of blended in my mind.  I was looking for support for the thesis that we evolved within matrifocal societies featuring males with neurological structures similar to the contemporary autistic.  I hypothesized that these matrifocal societies were evolving big brains and cooperation by females.  In mate selection, females were mostly picking males for being evocative dancers.

After coming up with the idea that human evolution was compelled by dance, following an R. A. Fisher sexual selection feedback loop thesis, I came across Geoffrey Miller’s 1994 work presenting a more detailed exposition of that thesis, except Miller said it was art in general that compelled human evolution.  Miller’s 2000 The Mating Mind is the published account of his ideas.

I see no difference between Darwin’s The Descent of Man thesis and my work, except I’m hypothetically providing far more detail on how exactly the dynamic of sexual selection is engaged.  Darwin did not yet have endocrinology, neuropsychology or even anthropology.  To me, the work of Gould, Campbell, and Geschwind feels like the manifestation in other disciplines of Darwin’s sexual selection thesis.  Sexual selection, without an understanding of how social structure informs the direction evolution takes, only provides part of the picture of species transformation.  Sexual selection and insight into how neoteny and acceleration compel specific evolutionary trajectories create an opportunity to view the kind of physical, neurological and behavioral transformations that accompany the particular features that the female is choosing.  We can use human sexual selection to understand the neurological repercussions of particular social structures, thus creating an opportunity to view not just our species but particular neurological variations within our species as related to social structure and sexual selection.

I think I’m just answering this question in a way that makes more questions.  I can send you a more detailed explanation of this thesis if you like, though it’s kind of long.

What is the empirical support for testosterone managing rate and estrogen the timing of maturation, influencing evolution?

This was her last question, the most difficult.  This lies at the foundation of most of what I write about.  I answered in six pages, citing a number of different studies, but there was no study that even asked these questions.  My conclusions are based upon what I infer.

Back in 1998, when a lot of this was coming together, I read a paper cited by Geschwind and Galaburda in Cerebral Lateralization that noted that a mother’s testosterone levels at six weeks before birth determined her child’s maturation rates.  I’ve been looking for the paper for almost a year, having noted that I found the paper in Cerebral Lateralization, but I failed to note the specific paper.  I recently reread Cerebral Lateralization to find the reference, but I couldn’t find it.  Nithya and Rosanna, who have helped me on this project, haven’t found reference to such a paper.  Did I dream it?