e:\doc\web\99\01\narc.txt In a message dated 99-01-24 17:51:34 EST, brand@crispian.demon.co.uk writes: << >Adam Smith pointed out that the >wealth-creation happens through specialization. And David Ricardo showed that >even if a nation is worse at manufacturing everything than its potential trade >partner, it should still specialize in whatever it's relatively least worse >at. The analogy to racial groups is obvious. > Yes, specialization is the answer. >> This is brilliant. So like cichlid fish, which have differentiated from one species to hundreds in Lake Nyas duing a mere 11,500 years, you propose that the races have differentiated to take advantage of adjacent but separate niches. Much of the mechanism for this is descirbed in the enclosed material from my upcoming book, _Global Brain: the evolution of mass mind from the Big Bang to the 21st century_ (John Wiley & Son). ------------------ One of the most powerful diversity generators in humans and animals is a force Freud called "the narcissism of minor difference." Individuals extremely similar to one another find some petty distinction then bicker about it. To paraphrase Emile Durkheim, a community of saints will classify a bit of lint on the heavenly robes as intolerable and viciously hound those who aren't lint free. Eventually the supposedly unkempt may seek out others with a casual bent, and wall themselves off as a separate entity free to pursue a messier destiny. A primitive form of this impulse far precedes humanity. The closer insects are to each other in physical form and habits, the more likely they are to be enemies. The most dangerous foes of ants are other ants. The major adversaries of South American wasps are other South American wasps. And, in general, the greatest threat to each social insect group is not a marauding bird, lizard or mammal. It's another cluster of social insects. I don't mean to say that social insects are more ruthless than you and me. They greet each other politely, rush to each others' rescue, bow meekly to superiors, and even carry each other around. But cannibalistic ants tend to pick their meals from those who most resemble themselves. And parasitic ants sup on hosts who seem their semi-duplicates. A major reason: insects with the same shape, size and tastes have a yen for the same nest sites, food and foraging space, so they're willing to battle for these prizes...sometimes to the death. Like many forms of turmoil, this conflict between clones has a creative side. If a passel of nearly identical animals is cooped up on a common turf, it frequently splinters into opposing groups which scramble determinedly down opposite evolutionary paths. E. O. Wilson, who brought attention to this phenomenon forty years ago, called it character displacement. The battle over food and lebensraum compels each coterie to chisel its needs from a separate slot in the shared environment. For example a small number of lookalike cichlid fish seems to have found its way to Lake Nyas in Eastern Africa roughly 12,400 years ago. It didn't take long for the finny explorers to overpopulate the place. As food grew harder to find, squabbles and serious fights probably pushed the population to square off in spatting cliques. The further the groups grew apart, the more different they became. The details of this process are somewhat speculative, but the result is incontestable. Each subgroup developed a crowbar to pry open opportunities others had missed. Some evolved mouths wide enough to swallow armored snails. Others generated thick lips to yank worms from rocks. One diabolical coven acquired teeth like spears, then snatched its rivals' eyes and swallowed them like cocktail onions. In a geological blink of time what had begun as a small group of semi-carbon copies became 200 separate species--a carnival of variety. This is probably how the wandering of Homo erectus got its start. Pre-human clans, like cichlids, hit the carrying-capacity of their environment, then budded off in search of untapped openings. For example, the Yanomamo tribes of northwestern Brazil and southern Venezuela swell until they reach 300 members or so, then break into arguments between blood relatives. The quarrels often end in violence, convincing a fed-up group of malcontents to start a new life somewhere else. The tendency of those alike to fight when times get tough defies a cardinal rule of conventional evolutionary theory--that the closer creatures are in the composition of their genes, the more they will help each other. The violation is particularly strong in the battle of brother against brother. Species of genetically related ants are, in E.O. Wilson's words, "the least likely to tolerate each other's presence." The same sometimes applies to human beings. On his way through the Alps to spring his surprise attack on Rome, Hannibal ran across two groups of Gauls on the verge of battle. The problem? A pair of brothers were fighting over who would head the tribe. Among Yanomamo, the biggest battles are between family members--and between the groups they head. A fine example of the narcissism of minor difference. ... We've sketched in an earlier episode how every culture wires infant and toddler brains in slightly different ways. As groups paraded their uniqueness with distinct dialects, methods, and beliefs, they were likely to have manufactured youngsters who saw the world from starkly different points of view. A ferment of resulting insights and ideas would have enriched the pan-human repertoire. For the intercontinental mind of Pleistocene times was seemingly laced together by a steady growth of trade. Other differences were likely to have appeared, including one it is currently unfashionable to contemplate--a minor retooling of each band's genes. Erik Erikson coined the term "pseudospeciation" to describe the growing sense that group outsiders are subhuman. But pseudospeciation seems to go further than Erikson imagined. Notes David Smillie, "The initial split creates a large genetic difference between the daughter and parent groups." It's easy to see how this could happen. Separating tribes of closely related Yanomamo rapidly set themselves apart by generating new dialects and rituals. In the same way, archaeological remains show that fissioning groups of the Pleistocene generated very different artistry and fashion. Our previous installment cited the vast evidence that women are captivated by their own culture's model of the flawless man, and the same women shun the weirdos who can't seem to get the group norms right. Thus females would have selected mates based on their splinter group's aesthetic of magnificence, which was likely to have differed defiantly from the ideal exalted by those who had stayed at home two valleys away. The result would have been a Pleistocene sexual resource shift. Men who resembled the new culture's picture of perfection would have lured more fertile females to their beds and sired more children than the schlubbier members of the tribe. The resource shifters of status and popularity would have funneled the best food, tools, homes, fanciest clothing and most enviable accessories to the new group's paragons. Meanwhile pre-human impulses would have tossed group deviants to the periphery. As a consequence, the children of each Pleistocene group's "beautiful people" would have been healthier, better looking, more popular, and destined for greater adult success (this is true even of the offspring of high ranking apes and monkeys). By contrast, the fewer youngsters birthed by oddball parents would have been bullied, shunned and occasionally killed (also true among our primate cousins). Let's hop back to modern times to get an idea of the probable result. The Yanomamo prize fierce killers. Men who slaughter the largest tally of humans from competing tribes are rewarded with the greatest number of wives and father far more children than any other villagers. Timid Yanomamo men or those who loathe bloodshed have very few kids at all. Experience with laboratory animals and domesticated standbys like pit bulls show that aggression is a highly cultivatable trait. So it wouldn't be surprising if the Yanomamo's selective breeding produced a violent disposition which exceeds even the fairly high human norm. Among some eskimo, on the other hand, aggression is frowned on. Men who can't hold their temper are given the cold shoulder. As outcasts, they have a hard time finding a mate. And when it comes time for the traditional method of demonstrating friendship, swapping wives, these wrathful types are sidelined. Just as the Yanomamo breed aggression in, the eskimo breed it out. One result, the Yanomamo are constantly at war. Eskimo experience a very different fate: they are blessed with relative peace (though war is such a human universal that even Eskimo, until recently, periodically indulged in the grisly sport). Anthropologists have noted how a splinter culture's choice of sexual fixations makes some groups tall, some short, and even alters breast and penis shape. These principles were certainly at work long before the arrival of glacial sheets and sabertooths. So language, culture and differing tools would have done for humans what simpler forms of evolution accomplished for Lake Nyas' cichlid fish--generated an outburst of diversity. The quibbling, rivalry and rebellion sparked by the narcissism of minor difference two million years ago eventually energized men and women whose ancestry was in a warm and pleasant clime to conquer the ice floes of the Arctic, the frigid plains of Siberia, the malarial wetlands of Southern China, and the bewilderingly varied environments of today's France, Spain, and Germany. Fissioning groups devised ingenious ways to haul abundance from the grasp of unknown lands and seas. A swarm of new diversity generators radically accelerated these innovations during the age of symbols. Trade made many by-products of these adaptations common human property. Since then the result--cultural evolution-- has leaped to dizzying speeds, throwing a spume of ever-increasing options into the communal brain. ------------------------------ notes Sigmund Freud. Civilization and its Discontents. New York: W.W. Norton, 1989. For variations of the concept, see Theodore D. Kemper. "Power, Status, and Emotions: A Sociological Contribution to A Psychophysiological Domain." In Approaches to Emotion, edited by Klaus R. Scherer, Paul Ekman. 375. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1984; J. Gormly, A. Gormly and C. Johnson. "Interpersonal attraction. Competence motivation and reinforcement theory." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 19, 1971: 375-380. Daniel J. Boorstin. "Our Cultural Hypochondria and How to Cure It." The Genius of American Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953: 169; Arnold Birenbaum and Henry Lesieur. "Social Values and Expectations." In Sociology of Deviance, edited by M. Michael Rosenberg, Robert A Stebbins, Allan Turowitz, 102-103. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1982. Emile Durkheim. The Rules of Sociological Method. New York: Free Press, 1964 (originally published 1895): 69; Arnold Birenbaum and Henry Lesieur. "Social Values and Expectations." In Sociology of Deviance, edited by M. Michael Rosenberg, Robert A Stebbins, Allan Turowitz. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1982: 102. E.O. Laumann. "Friends of Urban Men: An Assessment of Accuracy in Reporting Their Socioeconomic Attributes, Mutual Choice, and Attitude Agreement." Sociometry, 32, 1969: 54-70; T.M. Newcomb. Personality and Social Change: attitude formation in a student community. New York: Dryden, 1943; T.M. Newcomb. The Acquaintance Process. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1961; C.T. Hill and D.E. Stull. "Sex Differences in Effects of Social and Value Similarity in Same-sex Friendship." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 41, 1981: 488-502; Donn Byrne. The Attraction Paradigm. New York: Academic Press, 1971. The definitive book on why animals close to each other tend to be foes is Konrad Lorenz' classic On Aggression. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974. Edward O. Wilson. The Insect Societies. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971: 360, 446-449. W.L Brown Jr. and E. O. Wilson. "Character Displacement." Systematic Zoology, 5 (2), 1956: 49-64; Edward O. Wilson. The Insect Societies. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971: 454; Peter R. Grant. "Ecological character displacement." Science, 4 November 1994: 746. Robert Wright. Three Scientists and Their Gods: Looking For Meaning in an Age of Information. New York: Times Books, 1988: 140. Peter R. Grant. "Ecological character displacement." Science, 4 November 1994: 746. See also D. Schluter. "Experimental Evidence that Competition Promotes Divergences in Adaptive Radiation." Science, 4 November 1994: 798. Ann Gibbons. "On the Many Origins of Species." Science, 13 September 1996: 1498. Malcolm T. Smith and Robert Layton. "Still Human After All These Years." The Sciences, January-February 1989: 10. C. Sturmbauer, A. Meyer. "Genetic divergence, speciation and morphological stasis in a lineage of African cichlid fishes." Nature, August 13, 1992: 578. Ole Seehausen, Jacques J.M. van Alphen, Frans Witte. "Cichlid Fish Diversity Threatened by Eutrophication That Curbs Sexual Selection." Science, 19 September 1997: 1808-1810. Numerous scientists feel, as evolutionary psychiatrists John Price and Anthony Stevens put it, that "Human groups, like all groups of social animals...thrive and multiply until they reach a critical size." Then resources run low and "all the mechanisms which previously served to promote group solidarity are put into reverse so as to drive...subgroups apart." (Anthony Stevens and John Price, Evolutionary Psychiatry: A New Beginning, Routledge Press, London, 1996, pre-publication draft: 172.) Kyoto University's Toshisada Nishida gives a particularly pertinent example: "Human communities continuously split into branch communities that gradually cease to communicate peacefully with each other. Hence, ...the 1,000 tribes of New Guinea." (Toshisada Nishida, "Review of Recent Findings on Mahale Chimpanzees: Implications and Future Research Directions," in Chimpanzee Cultures, edited by Richard W. Wrangham, W.C. McGrew, Frans B.M. de Waal, and Paul G. Heltne with assistance from Linda A. Marquardt. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994: 386.) This quote is from: David Smillie. "Human nature and evolution: language, culture, and race." Given at the Biennial Meeting of the International Society of Human Ethology, at Amsterdam, August 1992: 7; citing Napoleon Chagnon. "Male competition, forming close kin, and village fissioning among the Yanomamo Indians." In Evolutionary biology and human social behavior: an anthropological perspective, edited by Napoleon Chagnon and William Irons. North Scituate, MA: Duxbury, 1979. For extremely good arguments on the limits of inclusive fitness, the theory that "the closer creatures are in the composition of their genes, the more they will help each other," see: Richard Dawkins. The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982: 28, 80. Steven B. Johnson and Ronald C. Johnson. "Support and Conflict of Kinsmen: A Response to Hekala and Buell." Ethology and Sociobiology, January 1995: 83-89. Ernle Dusgate Selby Bradford. Hannibal. New York: McGraw Hill, 1981: 59. Napoleon Chagnon. Yanomamo: The Fierce People. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968: 126; Frans de Waal. Peacemaking Among Primates. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989: 247. C. Knight, C. Powers and I. Watts. "The human symbolic revolution: a Darwinian account." Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 5: 75-114; R. Grun and C. Stringer. "Electron spin resonance dating and the evolution of modern humans." Archaeometry, 33: 153-199; P.A. Mellars. "The character of the middle-upper palaeolithic transition in southwest France." In The explanation of culture change: models in prehistory: 267; 1991 Steven Mithen. The Prehistory of the Mind: 182-183; Randall White. "Visual Thinking in the Ice Age." Scientific American, July 1989: 94; Bruce Bower, "Africa's Ancient Cultural Roots." Science News, December 2, 1995: 378. Anthony Stevens and John Price. Evolutionary Psychiatry: A New Beginning. London: Routledge, 1996, pre-publication draft: 176. Napoleon Chagnon has found ample evidence for this among the Yanomamo. (David Smillie. "Human Nature and Evolution: language, culture, and race": 6, 11. Napoleon A. Chagnon. "Male Competition, Forming Close Kin, and Village Fissioning Among the Yanomamo Indians." In Evolutionary Biology and Human Social Behavior: an anthropological perspective. J.V. Neel and R.H. Ward. "Village and tribal genetic distances among American Indians, and the possible implications for human evolution." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 65 1970: 323-330.) For arguments that genetic separation of human groups has happened and does happen, complete with a refutation of the "politically" rather than "scientifically" derived belief that among humans it does not, see: Edward M. Miller. "African Exodus: -Re-Evaluating an Hypothesis." Mankind Quarterly, Fall/Winter 1997: 69-84. David Smillie. "Human nature and evolution: language, culture, and race": 7-8. Napoleon Chagnon, "Male competition, forming close kin, and village fissioning among the Yanomamo Indians." See also: Anthony Stevens and John Price. Evolutionary Psychiatry: A New Beginning, pre-publication draft: 180; Paul van Geert, "Green, Red and Happiness: Towards a Framework for Understanding Emotion Universals," Culture and Psychology, Vol. 1, p. 267; Daniel G. Freedman. "A case for the evolutionary function of ethnocentrism," unpublished (n.d.); Robert Boyd and Peter J. Richerson. "Life in the fast lane: rapid cultural change and the human evolutionary process," 161. In Origins of the Human Brain, edited by Jean-Pierre Changeux and Jean Chavaillon. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995; Paul M. Dolukhanov. "The neolithisation of Europe: a chronological and ecological approach": 333-336. H.T. Reis. "Physical Attractiveness in Social Interaction." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 38, 1980; 604-617. E. Walster, V. Aronson, D. Abrahams, and L. Rottmann. "Importance of Physical Attractiveness in Dating Behavior." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 4, 1966: 508-516. The usual argument is that no such dominance of males could have existed in the Pleistocene, when it is assumed most "human" traits evolved. The evidence scholars raise is the fact that many modern hunter/gatherer societies--the kind that would have dominated the Pleistocene--are highly egalitarian, and oppose any man gaining a position of privilege (see for example: Christopher Boehm. "Impact of the Human Egalitarian Syndrome on Darwinian Selection Mechanics." The American Naturalist, July 1997, Volume 150, Special Supplement: S100-S120.) However at least one study indicates strongly that in "egalitarian" hunter/gatherer societies, the most successful hunters have the most offspring, partly because their children are better nourished and partly because hunting champs are the men adulterous women invite most often into their beds. (H. Kaplan and K. Hill. "Hunting ability and reproductive success among male Ache foragers: Preliminary results." Current Anthropology, 26, 1985: 131-133; Margo Wilson and Martin Daly. "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Chattel." In The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture, edited by Jerome H. Barkow, Leda Cosmides, John Tooby, 298. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.) For the effects of physical attractiveness alone, see: K.K. Dion. " Physical Attractiveness and Evaluation of Children's Transgressions." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 24, 1972: 207-213. D. Sudnow. "Dead on Arrival." Trans-action, 5, 1967: 36-44. R. Stroufe, A. Chaikin, R. Cook, and V. Freeman. "The Effects of Physical Attractiveness on Honesty: A Socially Desirable Response." Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 3, 1977: 59-62. For vast differences in late Pleistocene distributions of "wealth" see: Steven Mithen. The Prehistory of the Mind: the cognitive origins of art, religion and science: 222; Olga Soffer. The Upper Paleolithic of the Central Russian Plain. New York: Academic Press, 1985. For mate choice and its effects on genetic differentiation between groups, see: Edward M. Miller. "Paternal Provisioning Versus Mate Seeking in Human Populations." Personality and Individual Differences, August 1994: 227-255. Steven J. Schapiro, Pramod N. Nehete, Jaine E. Perlman, Mollie A. Bloomsmith, Jagannadha K. Sastry. "Effects of dominance status and environmental enrichment on cell- mediated immunity in rhesus macaques." Applied Animal Behaviour Science, March 1998: 319-332. Napoleon Chagnon. "Life Histories, Blood Revenge, and Warfare in a Tribal Population." Science, February, 1988: 988-989. Charles H. Southwick. "Genetic and Environmental Variables Influencing Animal Aggression." In Animal Aggression: Selected Readings, edited by Charles H. Southwick. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1970; John Paul Scott and John L. Fuller. Genetics and the Social Behavior of the Dog. Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 1965; Melvin Konner. The Tangled Wing: Biological Constraints on the Human Spirit, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1982: 82-86, 195-196. Norman A. Chance. The Eskimo of North Alaska. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1966: 65-66, 78; Allen W. Johnson and Timothy Earle. The Evolution of Human Societies: From Foraging Group to Agrarian State. 137- 138. David Smillie. "Human Nature and Evolution: language, culture, and race." Robert Boyd and Peter J. Richerson. "Life in the fast lane: rapid cultural change and the human evolutionary process," 168. copyright 1999, Howard Bloom ---------- Howard Bloom (founder: International Paleopsychology Project; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, European Sociobiological Society; board member: Epic of Evolution Society) International Paleopsychology Project www.paleopsych.org 705 President Street Brooklyn, NY 11215 phone 718 622 2278 fax 718 398 2551 e-mail howard@paleopsych.org for two chapters from The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see www.bookworld.com/lucifer In a message dated 99-01-25 01:08:52 EST, Howl Bloom writes: << One of the most powerful diversity generators in humans and animals is a force Freud called "the narcissism of minor difference." Individuals extremely similar to one another find some petty distinction then bicker about it. To paraphrase Emile Durkheim, a community of saints will classify a bit of lint on the heavenly robes as intolerable and viciously hound those who aren't lint free. Eventually the supposedly unkempt may seek out others with a casual bent, and wall themselves off as a separate entity free to pursue a messier destiny. A primitive form of this impulse far precedes humanity. The closer insects are to each other in physical form and habits, the more likely they are to be enemies. The most dangerous foes of ants are other ants. The major adversaries of South American wasps are other South American wasps. And, in general, the greatest threat to each social insect group is not a marauding bird, lizard or mammal. It's another cluster of social insects. I don't mean to say that social insects are more ruthless than you and me. They greet each other politely, rush to each others' rescue, bow meekly to superiors, and even carry each other around. But cannibalistic ants tend to pick their meals from those who most resemble themselves. And parasitic ants sup on hosts who seem their semi-duplicates. A major reason: insects with the same shape, size and tastes have a yen for the same nest sites, food and foraging space, so they're willing to battle for these prizes...sometimes to the death. Like many forms of turmoil, this conflict between clones has a creative side. If a passel of nearly identical animals is cooped up on a common turf, it frequently splinters into opposing groups which scramble determinedly down opposite evolutionary paths. E. O. Wilson, who brought attention to this phenomenon forty years ago, called it character displacement. The battle over food and lebensraum compels each coterie to chisel its needs from a separate slot in the shared environment. For example a small number of lookalike cichlid fish seems to have found its way to Lake Nyas in Eastern Africa roughly 12,400 years ago. It didn't take long for the finny explorers to overpopulate the place. As food grew harder to find, squabbles and serious fights probably pushed the population to square off in spatting cliques. The further the groups grew apart, the more different they became. The details of this process are somewhat speculative, but the result is incontestable. Each subgroup developed a crowbar to pry open opportunities others had missed. Some evolved mouths wide enough to swallow armored snails. Others generated thick lips to yank worms from rocks. One diabolical coven acquired teeth like spears, then snatched its rivals' eyes and swallowed them like cocktail onions. In a geological blink of time what had begun as a small group of semi-carbon copies became 200 separate species--a carnival of variety. This is probably how the wandering of Homo erectus got its start. Pre-human clans, like cichlids, hit the carrying-capacity of their environment, then budded off in search of untapped openings. For example, the Yanomamo tribes of northwestern Brazil and southern Venezuela swell until they reach 300 members or so, then break into arguments between blood relatives. The quarrels often end in violence, convincing a fed-up group of malcontents to start a new life somewhere else. The tendency of those alike to fight when times get tough defies a cardinal rule of conventional evolutionary theory--that the closer creatures are in the composition of their genes, the more they will help each other. The violation is particularly strong in the battle of brother against brother. Species of genetically related ants are, in E.O. Wilson's words, "the least likely to tolerate each other's presence." The same sometimes applies to human beings. On his way through the Alps to spring his surprise attack on Rome, Hannibal ran across two groups of Gauls on the verge of battle. The problem? A pair of brothers were fighting over who would head the tribe. Among Yanomamo, the biggest battles are between family members--and between the groups they head. A fine example of the narcissism of minor difference. ... We've sketched in an earlier episode how every culture wires infant and toddler brains in slightly different ways. As groups paraded their uniqueness with distinct dialects, methods, and beliefs, they were likely to have manufactured youngsters who saw the world from starkly different points of view. A ferment of resulting insights and ideas would have enriched the pan-human repertoire. For the intercontinental mind of Pleistocene times was seemingly laced together by a steady growth of trade. Other differences were likely to have appeared, including one it is currently unfashionable to contemplate--a minor retooling of each band's genes. Erik Erikson coined the term "pseudospeciation" to describe the growing sense that group outsiders are subhuman. But pseudospeciation seems to go further than Erikson imagined. Notes David Smillie, "The initial split creates a large genetic difference between the daughter and parent groups." It's easy to see how this could happen. Separating tribes of closely related Yanomamo rapidly set themselves apart by generating new dialects and rituals. In the same way, archaeological remains show that fissioning groups of the Pleistocene generated very different artistry and fashion. Our previous installment cited the vast evidence that women are captivated by their own culture's model of the flawless man, and the same women shun the weirdos who can't seem to get the group norms right. Thus females would have selected mates based on their splinter group's aesthetic of magnificence, which was likely to have differed defiantly from the ideal exalted by those who had stayed at home two valleys away. The result would have been a Pleistocene sexual resource shift. Men who resembled the new culture's picture of perfection would have lured more fertile females to their beds and sired more children than the schlubbier members of the tribe. The resource shifters of status and popularity would have funneled the best food, tools, homes, fanciest clothing and most enviable accessories to the new group's paragons. Meanwhile pre-human impulses would have tossed group deviants to the periphery. As a consequence, the children of each Pleistocene group's "beautiful people" would have been healthier, better looking, more popular, and destined for greater adult success (this is true even of the offspring of high ranking apes and monkeys). By contrast, the fewer youngsters birthed by oddball parents would have been bullied, shunned and occasionally killed (also true among our primate cousins). Let's hop back to modern times to get an idea of the probable result. The Yanomamo prize fierce killers. Men who slaughter the largest tally of humans from competing tribes are rewarded with the greatest number of wives and father far more children than any other villagers. Timid Yanomamo men or those who loathe bloodshed have very few kids at all. Experience with laboratory animals and domesticated standbys like pit bulls show that aggression is a highly cultivatable trait. So it wouldn't be surprising if the Yanomamo's selective breeding produced a violent disposition which exceeds even the fairly high human norm. Among some eskimo, on the other hand, aggression is frowned on. Men who can't hold their temper are given the cold shoulder. As outcasts, they have a hard time finding a mate. And when it comes time for the traditional method of demonstrating friendship, swapping wives, these wrathful types are sidelined. Just as the Yanomamo breed aggression in, the eskimo breed it out. One result, the Yanomamo are constantly at war. Eskimo experience a very different fate: they are blessed with relative peace (though war is such a human universal that even Eskimo, until recently, periodically indulged in the grisly sport). Anthropologists have noted how a splinter culture's choice of sexual fixations makes some groups tall, some short, and even alters breast and penis shape. These principles were certainly at work long before the arrival of glacial sheets and sabertooths. So language, culture and differing tools would have done for humans what simpler forms of evolution accomplished for Lake Nyas' cichlid fish--generated an outburst of diversity. The quibbling, rivalry and rebellion sparked by the narcissism of minor difference two million years ago eventually energized men and women whose ancestry was in a warm and pleasant clime to conquer the ice floes of the Arctic, the frigid plains of Siberia, the malarial wetlands of Southern China, and the bewilderingly varied environments of today's France, Spain, and Germany. Fissioning groups devised ingenious ways to haul abundance from the grasp of unknown lands and seas. A swarm of new diversity generators radically accelerated these innovations during the age of symbols. Trade made many by-products of these adaptations common human property. Since then the result--cultural evolution-- has leaped to dizzying speeds, throwing a spume of ever-increasing options into the communal brain. ------------------------------ notes Sigmund Freud. Civilization and its Discontents. New York: W.W. Norton, 1989. For variations of the concept, see Theodore D. Kemper. "Power, Status, and Emotions: A Sociological Contribution to A Psychophysiological Domain." In Approaches to Emotion, edited by Klaus R. Scherer, Paul Ekman. 375. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1984; J. Gormly, A. Gormly and C. Johnson. "Interpersonal attraction. Competence motivation and reinforcement theory." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 19, 1971: 375-380. Daniel J. Boorstin. "Our Cultural Hypochondria and How to Cure It." The Genius of American Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953: 169; Arnold Birenbaum and Henry Lesieur. "Social Values and Expectations." In Sociology of Deviance, edited by M. Michael Rosenberg, Robert A Stebbins, Allan Turowitz, 102-103. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1982. Emile Durkheim. The Rules of Sociological Method. New York: Free Press, 1964 (originally published 1895): 69; Arnold Birenbaum and Henry Lesieur. "Social Values and Expectations." In Sociology of Deviance, edited by M. Michael Rosenberg, Robert A Stebbins, Allan Turowitz. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1982: 102. E.O. Laumann. "Friends of Urban Men: An Assessment of Accuracy in Reporting Their Socioeconomic Attributes, Mutual Choice, and Attitude Agreement." Sociometry, 32, 1969: 54-70; T.M. Newcomb. Personality and Social Change: attitude formation in a student community. New York: Dryden, 1943; T.M. Newcomb. The Acquaintance Process. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1961; C.T. Hill and D.E. Stull. "Sex Differences in Effects of Social and Value Similarity in Same-sex Friendship." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 41, 1981: 488-502; Donn Byrne. The Attraction Paradigm. New York: Academic Press, 1971. The definitive book on why animals close to each other tend to be foes is Konrad Lorenz' classic On Aggression. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974. Edward O. Wilson. The Insect Societies. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971: 360, 446-449. W.L Brown Jr. and E. O. Wilson. "Character Displacement." Systematic Zoology, 5 (2), 1956: 49-64; Edward O. Wilson. The Insect Societies. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971: 454; Peter R. Grant. "Ecological character displacement." Science, 4 November 1994: 746. Robert Wright. Three Scientists and Their Gods: Looking For Meaning in an Age of Information. New York: Times Books, 1988: 140. Peter R. Grant. "Ecological character displacement." Science, 4 November 1994: 746. See also D. Schluter. "Experimental Evidence that Competition Promotes Divergences in Adaptive Radiation." Science, 4 November 1994: 798. Ann Gibbons. "On the Many Origins of Species." Science, 13 September 1996: 1498. Malcolm T. Smith and Robert Layton. "Still Human After All These Years." The Sciences, January-February 1989: 10. C. Sturmbauer, A. Meyer. "Genetic divergence, speciation and morphological stasis in a lineage of African cichlid fishes." Nature, August 13, 1992: 578. Ole Seehausen, Jacques J.M. van Alphen, Frans Witte. "Cichlid Fish Diversity Threatened by Eutrophication That Curbs Sexual Selection." Science, 19 September 1997: 1808-1810. Numerous scientists feel, as evolutionary psychiatrists John Price and Anthony Stevens put it, that "Human groups, like all groups of social animals...thrive and multiply until they reach a critical size." Then resources run low and "all the mechanisms which previously served to promote group solidarity are put into reverse so as to drive...subgroups apart." (Anthony Stevens and John Price, Evolutionary Psychiatry: A New Beginning, Routledge Press, London, 1996, pre-publication draft: 172.) Kyoto University's Toshisada Nishida gives a particularly pertinent example: "Human communities continuously split into branch communities that gradually cease to communicate peacefully with each other. Hence, ...the 1,000 tribes of New Guinea." (Toshisada Nishida, "Review of Recent Findings on Mahale Chimpanzees: Implications and Future Research Directions," in Chimpanzee Cultures, edited by Richard W. Wrangham, W.C. McGrew, Frans B.M. de Waal, and Paul G. Heltne with assistance from Linda A. Marquardt. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994: 386.) This quote is from: David Smillie. "Human nature and evolution: language, culture, and race." Given at the Biennial Meeting of the International Society of Human Ethology, at Amsterdam, August 1992: 7; citing Napoleon Chagnon. "Male competition, forming close kin, and village fissioning among the Yanomamo Indians." In Evolutionary biology and human social behavior: an anthropological perspective, edited by Napoleon Chagnon and William Irons. North Scituate, MA: Duxbury, 1979. For extremely good arguments on the limits of inclusive fitness, the theory that "the closer creatures are in the composition of their genes, the more they will help each other," see: Richard Dawkins. The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982: 28, 80. Steven B. Johnson and Ronald C. Johnson. "Support and Conflict of Kinsmen: A Response to Hekala and Buell." Ethology and Sociobiology, January 1995: 83-89. Ernle Dusgate Selby Bradford. Hannibal. New York: >> Let us take the idea of specialization back to sports. The athletic superiority of men with respect to women suggests that they compete in separate venues. This is to make things "fair." Fairness seems to be the ultimate social goal, today. On this premise, black men and white men should not compete to gether, because white men end up looking inferior. Black boxers should only fight other blacks and black basketball players should only play in black leagues, etc. That would make it "fair." George Kocan Hi, guys, honored to be in such company anybody who has me on their lists, please use arthurhu@halcyon.com instead of raima.com, they might not like it if they found out a company email were used with such a bunch. But my big question to you all, I have a theory that head size might be related to developed IQ instead of the other way around. Arnold Schwarzenegger is bigger than other people because he is "buffed" up. Similarly, an exercised brain is probably more complex and bigger than an atrophied one. Is there any data on brain size and IQ within races? What do you folks make of schools such as Barclay in Baltimore and Wesley in Houston where black inner city children get math and reading test scores on par with above average suburban whites and Asians? Aren't basic skills tests simply weak versions of IQ tests? I've also noted that some programs such as Bennett's wife's respect program result in teen pregancy rates for inner city black teens that are lowe than any published rates I've seen for Asian teens. Is it not possible that, like gay genes, that preference and predisposition is NOT the same as destiny?