Ancient Skulls Show Civilization Rose As Testosterone Fell

An anonymous reader writes Even though modern humans started appearing around 200,000 years ago, it was only about 50,000 years ago that artistry and tool making became popular. New research shows that society bloomed when testosterone levels in humans started dropping. A paper published in the journal Current Anthropology, suggests that a testosterone deficit facilitated the friendliness and cooperation between humans, which lead to modern society. "Whatever the cause, reduced testosterone levels enabled increasingly social people to better learn from and cooperate with each other, allowing the acceleration of cultural and technological innovation that is the hallmark of modern human success," says University of Utah biology graduate student Robert Cieri.

Comments

correlation, causation

[roc97007]

I have trouble with pronouncements like these, because it's so easy to jump to conclusions about correlation and causation.

It seems like their conclusion might have a Politically Correct component. Could it be instead that civilization caused a general lowering of testosterone, because high testosterone levels were no longer vital to survival?

Re:correlation, causation

[Mr D from 63]

Could it be instead that civilization caused a general lowering of testosterone, because high testosterone levels were no longer vital to survival?

If you follow evolutionary theory, that's the first conclusion one should reach. To assume otherwise is quite scientifically naive. As humans became more proficient at survival and had more time on their hands, being able to sit still and think for a little while was likely a good thing.

Re:correlation, causation

[a_mari_usque_ad_mare]

... If they continue to use a term as poisoned as "feminist" then you might look to question their actual motive and intent.

This is the problem right here: the term feminist has been poisoned intentionally. Its similar to the right-wing hit job on 'liberal'; the only way to defeat an idea that most people already accept is to reframe and demonize that idea as something objectionable.

You could find me a billion links to nutty, anti-male websites if you like. It doesn't matter. If you think it does matter than I allow me to discredit all right-wing politics by giving you a link to the American Nazi Party, or to discredit any idea of treating animals humanely by linking to PETA.

Feminism is the belief that women are just as capable and deserving of respect as men. Unless you believe women deserve less respect or fewer opportunities, simply for being female, congratulations, you are a feminist. Being anti-male, wanting to feminize men or de-feminize women, denying basic biological differences, or whatever other stupid idea you have been taught feminists believe, these are categorically not feminism.

Feminism is basically a social criticism that in many spheres of our society an elite group of men has taken control for their own benefit, to the exclusion of others. Keep in mind that women only gained the right to vote last century, as late as 1970 in France, and that people are still alive who remember women not being able work after marriage, legalized martial rape, and a whole bunch of other obviously misogynist practices, and its not a huge stretch to imagine that our society might still not be 100% perfect, or that social groups who were severely discriminated against in living memory still are.

Even if you are 100% self-interested, you should recognize that as women have gained more freedom over the last 50 year so have men, particularly in areas of child care and parental leave. Freedom and rights are not zero sum. The fact is that the same 'boys club' attitude that is bad for women is also bad for the vast majority of men.

I'll leave you with a Germaine Greer quote (paraphrasing):

Aspiring to equality with men is a terrible mistake, since men live and work in a frighteningly unfree and tyrannical society, one built on confederacies and conspiracies, on initiation and blooding rituals, on shared antisocial behaviour, on ostracisms and punishments, practical jokes, clannishness and discrimination.

Re:correlation, causation

[epyT-R]

Which is a perfect example why political correctness is such a detriment to the free world. A society that increasingly cannot accept truth eventually succumbs to it, usually violently.

Re:Coincidence

[ColdWetDog]

I seriously don't understand how they can measure the level of testosterone from 50,000 years ago. Was it recorded with fine detail? Hell, did they know it existed?

Anyway. The lower testosterone levels could be a coincidence that arose at the same time humans discovered the benefits of empathy, which is essential in group negotiations and community support.

They didn't. Here is their logic train:

- They measured facial characteristics, some of these characteristics have been associated with aggression (not testosterone levels).
- There are studies that link aggression with testosterone.
- Therefore, early humans had large degrees of aggression and therefore testosterone.
- Modern human skulls have fewer / less of the linked facial features, therefore our testosterone levels are lower.

- Therefore early human testosterone levels were higher and further, this was selected for in some way, shape for fashion.

Total BS. Two speculative leaps and a nice large jump to a conclusion. It is trivial to create other equally valid hypotheses from this data.

Re:Nonsense in scientific language

[Intrepid imaginaut]

I'm directly saying that people, men and women, who are mature adults vote in their own best interests rather than pandering to some sort of juvenile playground instinct as feminists would prefer them to. They vote for the person they believe will best represent those interests. Now if you want to talk about why more women don't stand for election, go for it, but that's a different conversation. There is, after all, nothing stopping them.

Re:Men are obsolete

[ganjadude]

yet for some reason those are the ones that get all the coverage. Try going to a feminism blog and reading for yourself. I had someone try and equate telling a woman she has nice eyes to rape just earlier today. apparently chivalry is dead, and it was killed by women

Re:Men are obsolete

[Intrepid imaginaut]

Perhaps because that is not practical.

Or perhaps because only something as demented as feminism could come up with such a lunatic idea in the first place.

The human species cannot continue to exist without women. Men, on the other hand, could be replaced with a sperm bank. Long before the sperm bank is depleted, female scientists should be able to perfect human ova-fusion, which is already working in mice.

I am not saying men should be exterminated. I am just saying that there are no significant technical barriers.

Completely unneccessary. Assuming a world where feminists (not women mind you, women tend to like men quite a lot) reign supreme, why not just keep a minimum breeding stock of boys and off them after they hit age 20? After all that's what leading feminists Mary Daly and Sally Miller Gearhart wanted, reduce the population of men to 10% or so, frothing nazis that they were.

Happily however the general population is starting to go very sour indeed on feminism, and I would hope to see the final end of the religion within my lifetime.