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Comment by AequitasOmnibus | Hacker News Reader

Or put differently, 8-10 thousand years ago, the number of men reproducing dropped significantly. That makes sense to me given that this is the period in human history where society begins to form into agrarian communities [1]. The beginnings of social stratification would likely impact reproductive trends.

Saying that the development of society caused more sexual competition among men isn’t crazy. This study basically uses Y-chromosomal tracing to support that point.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_prehistory#cite_no...

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If I understand correctly, the crux is this graph?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/core/lw/2.0/html/tileshop_pmc/t...

Showing total # of male ancestors (left) and female (right)

I guess writing, agriculture, and fixed settlements allowed for dominance on a far greater scale. There's a natural limit to how much power you can project without technology.

So would you say this is a recent trend of the last 10K years? And perhaps it was more equal going back a million years ago?

Millions ? Lucy isn't an human and yet 3M years old. Humankind is about 300K year for Homo sapiens and half of that about what can be called modern human.

Is the suggestion elites were controlling access to procreation? Maybe men were also just killing each other extra fierce in the land grab. Uncompletely uneducated speculating on my part.

Definitely a factor. As agrarian societies expanded into hunter gatherer territory they would kill the men and take the women. Agriculture did not spread because it was a better deal for the individual at the time, it spread because it could support higher population density and specialization, including a warrior caste. And thus was more succesful at conquering and holding land.

8-10k years ago puts us at the near end of the last ice age.

I know it's poo poo'd in academic circles but if there was a great flood that destroyed most of human civilization that would also describe why this occurred.

> if there was a great flood that destroyed most of human civilization that would also describe why this occurred

Do floods kill significantly more men than women?

How much area would need to be flooded to affect most of human civilization 8-10k years ago? By that point we were spread out throughout the entire planet (except what, Polynesia and New Zealand?)

To the extent there's evidence of a great flood, it hardly destroyed most of human civilization.

I dont see the connection

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