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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.
This is part of the extreme hostility toward men in the U.S. culture.
The body is extremely complicated. There are maybe a million chemicals? Choosing one supposedly connected with men but actually present in both men and women, testosterone, and talking about its importance is thinly veiled hostility.
The current wave of hostility of women toward men began with the book The Second Sex, by Simone de Beauvoir, a woman who was very confused about life. The book mentioned negative things men do, and avoided mentioning the negative things women do. Part of her viewpoint was influenced by the fact that she was trying to get women to have sex with her.
There is a movie that shows Simone de Beauvoir was treated as an equal by Jean-Paul Sartre, a French philosopher and friend. She was not second.
Both Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre had terrible childhoods and both did things in their adult lives that demonstrated their confusion.
The Washington Post article linked in the Slashdot summary says, "No, this isnâ(TM)t some jab at dudes." Yes it is, and extremely stupid about biochemistry and civilization, also.
The amount of hate-speech against men in society today is rather alarming. In the days before feminism, I'm not sure men ever suggested that women be exterminated as a gender. And yet today, the war on men grows increasingly loud and hate-filled by the day.
It is also the only reasonable theory form a biological standpoint, as Testosterone has been studied exhaustively and simply does not in anyway reduce cooperation or friendliness. In fact in general testosterone seems to be positively correlated to number of friends and ability to cooperate.
Why should it have the opposite effect in ancient humans?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
'Necessary' doesn't mean they had more babies, though.
What's more likely is that with the advent of agriculture, more people spent their lives living in one place, with a number of consequences. One is that women and their children were more likely to live their lives alongside their other children, so having more cooperative, less violent children became advantageous. Another is that women were more likely to be impregnated by one of the local farmers, rather than the hot wandering barbarian hunter or the gang of rapists.
Furthermore, there is a theory that the primary purpose of developing agriculture was not for food but for alcohol. It may have been that the peaceful farmers' access to stuff that could get women drunk was conducive to them having more babies.
Testosterone isn't some Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde concoction like you seem to think it is.
As long as we're dealing with anecdotes I will throw mine into the ring. I've engaged in powerlifting as a hobby for the past two years, during which I have met some very impressive, and dedicated, individuals. These men are strong. Really strong. Functionally strong. They're not just pounding out hammer curls and shrugs to get a pump. They are training for strength, the kind of strength where elevated testosterone just comes with the territory. And they've all been pussycats. After benching just shy of 400lbs they aren't grunting and scowling, they're grinning ear-to-ear and are practically giggling. They're considerate with the equipment and readily share when the weight room is busy. They don't scoff at the 110lbs new guy, rather they're begging the new guy to take before-and-after shots because, "...if you keep this up you are going to be AWESOME in a year!"
Testosterone does not cause assholish-ness, per se, so much as it exacerbates it. If you are a kind, decent, person then becoming strong (and thus achieving higher levels of testosterone) will not change that. But if you are dick...well now you are a dick who is strong and you likely no longer feel the need to restrain your jackass behavior because you feel as though you can physically overwhelm any challengers to your supreme phallus.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/re...
The study's results, however, contradict this view sharply. Test subjects with an artificially enhanced testosterone level generally made better, fairer offers than those who received placebos, thus reducing the risk of a rejection of their offer to a minimum. "The preconception that testosterone only causes aggressive or egoistic behavior in humans is thus clearly refuted," sums up Eisenegger. Instead, the findings suggest that the hormone increases the sensitivity for status. For animal species with relatively simple social systems, an increased awareness for status may express itself in aggressiveness. "In the socially complex human environment, pro-social behavior secures status, and not aggression," surmises study co-author Michael Naef from Royal Holloway London. "The interplay between testosterone and the socially differentiated environment of humans, and not testosterone itself, probably causes fair or aggressive behavior."
Moreover the study shows that the popular wisdom that the hormone causes aggression is apparently deeply entrenched: those test subjects who believed they had received the testosterone compound and not the placebo stood out with their conspicuously unfair offers. It is possible that these persons exploited the popular wisdom to legitimate their unfair actions. Economist Michael Naef states: "It appears that it is not testosterone itself that induces aggressiveness, but rather the myth surrounding the hormone. In a society where qualities and manners of behavior are increasingly traced to biological causes and thereby partly legitimated, this should make us sit up and take notice." The study clearly demonstrates the influence of both social as well as biological factors on human behavior.
I don't care enough to express an opinion on the rest of your post and the debate you're in...
I find it pretty weird that such a logical, clear thinker has no opinion on the question of whether society is unfair to approximately 50% if its members, but fair enough, your choice.
... but this part strikes me as very false. A conspiracy theory is completely unnecessary to explain the "poisoning" of the term feminism. It's entirely believable that, as radical elements of feminism naturally arose (and they did arise naturally; there's no way in hell that's a false flag operation), both non-feminists and those with actively anti-feminist inclinations lumped those radical elements with the less extreme versions of feminism. That's a story as old as time, same has happened with Islam, atheism, race relations, LGBT issues, etc. People are really bad at ignoring threatening extremes. It's a natural impulse, no deliberate poisoning necessary. As far as I know, the only viable means of fighting this trend is for the more moderate (but still similarly aligned) elements to actively, loudly disavow the radicalization of their views.
I wouldn't describe it as a conspiracy, but as a group of people attacking an idea they view as immoral or dangerous, in the most effective way possible. This often involves picking isolated sentences out of context to make a different impression that you would get reading the entire book, or blog post or whatever. Its very effective in our soundbite, 'gotcha' culture. I think the exact same thing happens to the other groups of people you mentioned, usually by the same reactionary people.
People are really bad at ignoring threatening extremes. It's a natural impulse, no deliberate poisoning necessary. As far as I know, the only viable means of fighting this trend is for the more moderate (but still similarly aligned) elements to actively, loudly disavow the radicalization of their views.
This shifts the burden from people who over-generalize to the objects of generalization, to police other people. Trying to control free thinkers and individualists is folly, as is trying to protect the ignorant from their own errors. People who are interested will explore ideas for themselves. Gay people shouldn't need to hide the guy bare-ass in chaps and a cowboy hat, and nothing else, to be respected and have equality before the law. Feminists shouldn't have to hide the bra-burners to have the same rights and opportunities as men.
I also think that for all your example there are plenty of moderates putting their ideas out there, and denouncing extremists, and it doesn't work the way you claim it should. You can't argue people out of positions they were never argued into in the first place. The majority of anti-feminists, anti-gay, anti-whatever people who I have run into have these opinions because of cultural and political identity.
Defensiveness won't get you anywhere, it'll just legitimize the suspicion surrounding the issue further.
I wasn't trying to be defensive, but to defend an idea. I didn't see any good posts defending feminism, and plenty of weak ones attacking it.
The map is not the territory.
Oh damn, got so off track replying to parent / grandparent, I didn't have a chance to make the post I wanted.
http://www.nature.com/nature/j...
Testosterone is the hormone which is responsible for aggressiveness and individuality, right? Except when it's not. It's the 'everybody knows' kind of wisdom that is bunk -> I've been studying this off and on for a while, and the hormone in both males and females that is responsible for aggression, IMHO, is progesterone; think of your wife / gf who gets PMS, this hormone is in play, and men have some of it in their systems as well. Testosterone seems to get a bad rap, with half the research saying this, and half saying that. Read up on it...the scary thought is, if one half is right, then chemical castration of sex offendors actually makes things worse, rather than better.