Bull shit. There was a ton of dangerous wildlife all over eurasia. We killed it off with spears and cooperation. The fact that megafauna still exist all over africa is a testament to their incompetence.
Better to ask your self why we don’t chimp out. Why did northern eurasians develop self restraint? Why are southern eurasians “hot headed” ? Why are SS Africans borderline animalistic in their emotions?
Cold climates somehow seem to kill off the most impulsive individuals. It also seems to favor monogamists. Tropical climates on the other hand have very high rates of polygamy and promiscuity, of both males and females. Polygamy always favors the most aggressive males, even in animals. Male promiscuity is a quantity over quality style of fatherhood, where males invest lower levels of resources in their offspring and usually focus on eliminating the other male competitors through violence. This strategy possibly works better in the tropics because females can access their own (plant based) food all year round.
Monogamy is a strategy in which males focus their energies on a single mate and a small number of offspring. In cold climates, males provided most of the food through hunting and having multiple wives was not very practical. Eskimos are monogamous.
Also potentially melanin itself makes animals violent. Melanin is expressed in parts of the brain and clearly has some impact on behavior. Lots of studies have shown that darker animals in a population are more aggressive. There also seems to be increased libido associated with higher pigmantation (see melanotan 2). Animals bred for docility are frequently inadvertently bred for lighter colors.
So maybe living near the equator selects for high pigmentation which in turn causes people to be violent.
Or living near the equator selects for polygamy which causes high violence. Or maybe some combination of the two.
Whites switched from a mostly meat diet to a mostly grain diet around 8000 years ago. It is believed by some that we became really white at that time. Perhaps before that we were closer in color to people like the Eskimos. A lack of vitamin D in our grain diet meant we needed to absorb more sunlight through our skin.
Perhaps this made us more docile? Docile people are capable of higher levels of economic cooperation.
"Cold climates somehow seem to kill off the most impulsive individuals."
I like this point. It is conceivable that an impulsive person would be more likely to incur injury due to frostbite caused by impulsivity and stupidity.
I really think that a big piece of the puzzle is diet. Like other great apes, africans would have relied heavily on fruit and plant foods, foods which females can gather. In cold climates, (arguably outside the natural habitat of fruit eating primates) people were forced to rely on meat, heavily, for large parts of the year. Can women hunt? No way. So men became the source of most food. This can only work if women are monogamous, and to a lesser extent males as well. Males cannot risk their lives bringing food for females who screw around. So patrilocality would have been important. And males would not have been able to support more than one family in most circumstances. This is why our dads are better dads.
I assume that meat eating and hunting was introduced to africa through some back to africa migrations before or just as modern humans developed. Mainstream anthropology seems stuck on this idea that africa was the generator of all these new cognitive and behavioral innovations, but it seems absurd. Migrations into colder climes probably are responsible for most developments in homo habilis or homo erectus types, and they just kept migrating back to africa and bringing new traits back with them.
All the “brown” populations in subtropical regions like SE Asia, the ME and India are all partly decended from groups who migrated from the north, mixing with or replacing blacker, stupider groups
Europeans also lived under strict justice systems for thousands of years. Rapists and thieves were severely punished. Prison is a relatively modern invention as feeding and housing a criminal is expensive.
This is exactly right. As hunter gatherers, they could only sustain low population density. Yet unlike most eurasians they fuck like rabbits. Male competition and infantacide must have helped to manage the population.
[ + ] PostWallHelena
[ - ] PostWallHelena 5 points 1.5 yearsNov 14, 2022 22:16:08 ago (+5/-0)
Better to ask your self why we don’t chimp out. Why did northern eurasians develop self restraint? Why are southern eurasians “hot headed” ? Why are SS Africans borderline animalistic in their emotions?
Cold climates somehow seem to kill off the most impulsive individuals. It also seems to favor monogamists. Tropical climates on the other hand have very high rates of polygamy and promiscuity, of both males and females. Polygamy always favors the most aggressive males, even in animals. Male promiscuity is a quantity over quality style of fatherhood, where males invest lower levels of resources in their offspring and usually focus on eliminating the other male competitors through violence. This strategy possibly works better in the tropics because females can access their own (plant based) food all year round.
Monogamy is a strategy in which males focus their energies on a single mate and a small number of offspring. In cold climates, males provided most of the food through hunting and having multiple wives was not very practical. Eskimos are monogamous.
Also potentially melanin itself makes animals violent. Melanin is expressed in parts of the brain and clearly has some impact on behavior. Lots of studies have shown that darker animals in a population are more aggressive. There also seems to be increased libido associated with higher pigmantation (see melanotan 2).
Animals bred for docility are frequently inadvertently bred for lighter colors.
So maybe living near the equator selects for high pigmentation which in turn causes people to be violent.
Or living near the equator selects for polygamy which causes high violence. Or maybe some combination of the two.
Whites switched from a mostly meat diet to a mostly grain diet around 8000 years ago. It is believed by some that we became really white at that time. Perhaps before that we were closer in color to people like the Eskimos. A lack of vitamin D in our grain diet meant we needed to absorb more sunlight through our skin.
Perhaps this made us more docile? Docile people are capable of higher levels of economic cooperation.
[ + ] oppressed
[ - ] oppressed [op] 3 points 1.5 yearsNov 14, 2022 23:01:04 ago (+3/-0)
I like this point. It is conceivable that an impulsive person would be more likely to incur injury due to frostbite caused by impulsivity and stupidity.
[ + ] RomanSalute
[ - ] RomanSalute 0 points 1.5 yearsNov 15, 2022 12:09:53 ago (+0/-0)
Look up the Cold Winters Theory
[ + ]deleted
[ - ] deleted 1 point 1.5 yearsNov 15, 2022 00:03:50 ago (+1/-0)*
[ + ]deleted
[ - ] deleted 0 points 1.5 yearsNov 14, 2022 22:58:03 ago (+0/-0)
[ + ]deleted
[ - ] deleted 0 points 1.5 yearsNov 14, 2022 22:34:13 ago (+0/-0)
[ + ] PostWallHelena
[ - ] PostWallHelena 0 points 1.5 yearsNov 15, 2022 00:05:18 ago (+0/-0)
I assume that meat eating and hunting was introduced to africa through some back to africa migrations before or just as modern humans developed. Mainstream anthropology seems stuck on this idea that africa was the generator of all these new cognitive and behavioral innovations, but it seems absurd. Migrations into colder climes probably are responsible for most developments in homo habilis or homo erectus types, and they just kept migrating back to africa and bringing new traits back with them.
All the “brown” populations in subtropical regions like SE Asia, the ME and India are all partly decended from groups who migrated from the north, mixing with or replacing blacker, stupider groups
[ + ] TheYiddler
[ - ] TheYiddler 0 points 1.5 yearsNov 15, 2022 01:42:51 ago (+0/-0)
Meanwhile in Africa rape isn't really a crime.
[ + ] Deathstalker
[ - ] Deathstalker 0 points 1.5 yearsNov 14, 2022 22:24:09 ago (+0/-0)
[ + ] PostWallHelena
[ - ] PostWallHelena 1 point 1.5 yearsNov 15, 2022 00:13:23 ago (+1/-0)
[ + ] Teefinyomouf
[ - ] Teefinyomouf 0 points 1.5 yearsNov 14, 2022 21:54:59 ago (+0/-0)
Or perhaps the difference is that the rest of the world dealt with the problem by domesticating animals and building secure houses.