Why We All have Twice As Many Female Ancestors As Male (Part I): Male Accentuated Natural Selection and the Matriarchal Structure of Hunter-Gatherer Communities

According to two recent studies comparing the genetic diversity of male Y chromosomes with the genetic diversity of men’s mitochondrial DNA – one by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, the other by the University of Arizona – all human beings alive today, with some small regional variations, most notably in East Asia, have more or less twice as many female ancestors as male: a finding which, if correct – and coming from two separate institutions, I have no reason to suppose that it is not – I believe to be of far greater import than even some of the researchers themselves seem to appreciate. For while it may seem merely a matter of intellectual curiosity that, historically, roughly twice as many women have reproduced and passed on their genes than men, the whole issue takes on a lot more significance once one discovers the implications this has for the average family tree, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Family Tree Exhibiting a 2:1 Ratio of Female to Male Ancestors

The first thing you’ll probably notice about this diagram is that it doesn’t look like any family tree you’ve ever seen before. For a start, it’s much narrower. For while it shows the current subject of DNA testing as having two parents, one biological mother and one biological father – something that is biologically inescapable – it doesn’t then expand exponentially, doubling in size with each generation as a result of the fact that the two parents are usually the progeny of four grandparents (two grandfathers and two grandmothers), who, in turn, are usually the offspring of eight great-grandparents (four great-grandfathers and four great-grandmothers): an arrangement which, as you would expect, gives rise to what we now regard as the more usual ratio of female to male ancestors, that of 1:1. In order to produce a cumulative ratio of 2:1, however, not only does the subject at the base of the tree need to have had a single grandfather who married and had children with both of his grandmothers, but in order to offset the inescapable 1:1 ratio of his parents, he also needs to have had at least one male ancestor – in this case I have made it a great-grandfather – who married and had children with at least three of his female ancestors, in this case all of his great-grandmothers, only three of whom are now actually required.

Not, of course, that this is unimaginable. After all, I’ve just imagined it. What you have to remember, however, is that this ratio of 2:1 is an average or cumulative ratio covering our entire genetic history, stretching back more than 70,000 years since homo sapiens first walked out of Africa, during which time there would have had to have been periods in which the ratio was significantly higher than 2:1 in order to offset the fact that for the last two or three thousand years, many if not most societies throughout the world have adopted the institution of monogamous marriage, thereby bringing the ratio down. Indeed, a second, even more recent study from the University of Arizona has graphically mapped variations in the ratio over time which seem to indicate that at one point, for a short period around 8,000 years ago, soon after human beings ceased being hunter-gatherers and adopted a settled, agrarian way of life, the ratio may even have been as high as seventeen to one.

Unfortunately, this has led many scientific journalists and other commentators to concentrate their attention on the kind of social and economic conditions which could have possibly given rise to such an extreme anomaly, thereby actually drawing attention away from what would otherwise appear to be a consistent underlying pattern in human reproductive behaviour: one which may well have been acted upon by fluctuating socio-economic factors, but which can hardly be explained by them. For what such a strong underlying pattern indicates is something far more fundamental, something inherent in human nature itself: an underlying genetic factor which would also imply that the resultant behavioural characteristic must, at some time, have had an important evolutionary value.

Nor is it particularly difficult to determine what this evolutionary value may have been. For while it is to the advantage of any species which reproduces sexually to have as many of its females reproduce and bear children as possible, thereby ensuring that the next generation is as well populated as it can be, there is no such advantage to be gained from having all the males reproduce. On the contrary, there is actually a distinct evolutionary benefit to be had from restricting the number of males who become fathers, so that only the strongest, fittest and best adapted pass on their genes, thereby using this otherwise largely superfluous male side of the mating equation to weed out genetic weaknesses.

Moreover, the primary mechanisms by which this evolutionary principle may be instantiated are also fairly obvious, the most commonplace and straightforward being to simply have the males of a species fight each other for the right to mate: a strategy which works particularly well in species in which the breeding males do not need to play any significant role in either rearing their multiple offspring or in providing for their offspring’s mothers. Thus grazing herbivores, such as deer, cattle, buffalo and antelope – species in which the females suckle their young and where their own food is both plentiful and easily obtained – are all well represented in this category.

This strategy does not work so well, however, in species in which the females do not suckle their young and where the food for both themselves and their offspring has to be caught. The most obvious examples here are birds, where almost the entire class falls under this heading, though even among birds there are some exceptions. Chickens and other flightless, ground-feeding foul, for instance, tend to behave more or less in the same way as ruminants, with the male birds fighting and often even killing each other for control of a female flock. In most avian species, however, the need for both parents to work all day in order to feed the gaping mouths of their ever-demanding brood – whether it be with insects, torn up pieces of rabbit or regurgitated fish – means that an alternative method of male selection is required. Instead of fighting each other, therefore, the cocks of most species compete to win the hens’ affections by demonstrating their genetic superiority, usually by singing, dancing and displaying their extravagant plumage, but sometimes also by demonstrating a skill. The male bowerbird, for instance, of which there are actually twenty different species, builds an elaborate structure to which he attaches brightly coloured objects in an attempt to attract a mate, presumably to show her that he could also build a nest.

Because most birds mate for an entire breeding season – and sometimes even for life – and because every rejected male also results in an unpaired female, this alternative mode of selection does not, of course, produce a disparity in the breeding ratio between males and females. However, it does achieve the primary objective of what, for the purposes of this essay, I have called the principle of Male Accentuated Natural Selection, or MANS: that of weeding out genetic weaknesses on the male side. The most significant feature of this second mode of MANS instantiation, however, is that it effectively passes the power of selection to the female: something we also see in a number of other mainly predatory species.

Other examples of this female-determined form of selection can be found, for instance, in various species of wild dog, nearly all of which are relatively small in size and often require two or three individuals to bring down larger prey. As a consequence, they nearly all hunt in packs: a fact which not only obliges them to work together tactically – mounting attacks from different directions, for instance – but very often requires them to take considerable individual risks for the sake of the greater good, thereby also requiring them possess the rather peculiar evolutionary attribute of loyalty, both to each other and to the group as a whole. The last thing a pack of wild dogs therefore needs is for the males to be fighting and potentially wounding each other for the right to mate the females.

Once again, therefore, it is up to the females to ‘select’ which dogs they will mate with, not this time by judging the quality of their plumage, but by literally fighting off any dog that doesn’t make the grade, the sheer ferocity of the female’s self-defense putting most males quite firmly in their place and ensuring that only those males with the courage and self-belief to stare down her snarling rebuffs will eventually be rewarded with her acquiescence.

What all these examples most compellingly demonstrate, however, is not just the rich diversity with which nature instantiates the MANS principle, but its consequent usefulness as a predictive tool. For knowing little more than what a species eats and a few of its other physical characteristics, one can fairly accurately predict, not only which mode of MANS instantiation is likely to dominate, but the kind of social structure to which it is also likely to give rise.

Take, for instance, lions, which, like dogs, also hunt together in groups, tactically driving their quarry in one direction while separating out targeted individuals. There is, however, one major difference between a pride of lions and a pack of wolves, in that being much larger and stronger than any canine species, it only takes a single lioness to bring down almost any prey. This means that a pride of lions does not need to be as large as a wolf pack. In particular, it does not need to support more than one hungry male, who having gained his position by fighting off all the competition, doesn’t actually take part in any of the hunts, but merely stands vigil on the side-lines, protecting his pride from other males.

So what about human beings? What can we deduce from our own physical characteristics that would dictate how we might have been expected to have instantiated MANS?

Well, the first thing to note, of course, is that we too are essentially pack animals. For being carnivorous by preference – the fat in meat having roughly twice the calorific value of carbohydrate – but lacking the power and strength of larger predators, we too have evolved to work cooperatively in ways that preclude the males of the species constantly fighting each other for the right to mate. Once again, therefore, one would expect the MANS principle to be instantiated through female selection. There are, however, a number of physical differences between human beings and dogs which make the structure of a human tribe very different from that of a canine pack.

The first and most important of these is the size of our brains, which, relative to most other species and the size of our own bodies, are very big: a characteristic which has given us an enormous evolutionary advantage, of course, but which also comes with a number of disadvantages, particularly for the females of the species, especially during pregnancy. Needing time for our big brains to develop, the gestation period of human infants, for instance, is considerably longer than for most other species. Relative to the size of the mother, human babies are also significantly larger at birth, not only making childbirth that much more hazardous, but rendering the pregnancy, itself, that much more of an encumbrance, especially during the third trimester when the weight of the child being carried in the womb and the size of the mother’s abdominal distention make it very difficult for her to move with any agility and almost impossible to run at any speed or for any significant distance.

Given that human babies also take much longer to be weaned than the offspring of almost any other species and that they remain dependent on maternal care for a number of years even after that, one of the main differences between human tribes and canine packs, therefore, is that, during the many thousands of years we spent as hunter-gatherers, our ancestors would have nearly always divided themselves into two groups each day, with only the men going off to hunt while the women and children foraged: a clear separation in the roles of men and women which has been empirically confirmed in studies of Australian aborigines and other hunter-gatherer peoples who survived through to modern times.

What’s more, this social division in itself had further evolutionary consequences. For while, in order to be successful hunters, there was an evolutionary advantage to be gained from the men becoming as large, strong and fast as possible, there was no such advantage to be gained by women being of a similar size and stature. Indeed, the contrary was again the case. For being required to undertake the very specialist task of bearing large-brained children, there was actually an evolutionary benefit to be had from hunter-gatherer women remaining smaller and less muscular than their men, in that they didn’t therefore need as many calories per day to maintain their own metabolism, thereby allowing them to use more of their calorific intake to feed their large-brained babies.

What this all meant, however, was that unlike the females of most canine species, who hunt alongside the males and sometimes even lead their packs, not only did hunter-gatherer women not directly earn their own share of the meat produced by a successful hunt, but being smaller, weaker and less athletic than the men, they weren’t in a position to fight for a share either – at least, not against the males. Worse still, this physical disadvantage also left them with only limited defenses against unwanted sexual advances. Thus, they not only needed the males to provide for them, but to protect them as well: a combination of requirements which meant that this whole evolutionary path would not have been possible without a simultaneous development in the social rules governing the behaviour of men towards women.

Indeed, one might almost be tempted to say that we could not have developed as the big-brained, highly intelligent species we became without the males of the species becoming gentlemen. And, indeed, I like to think that most men do, in fact, have an instinctive urge to both protect and provide for their women. The less flattering but far more probable reality, however, is that men only evolved in this way because of MANS, as part of a successful evolutionary strategy which consistently resulted in a certain type of man being selected by women: women naturally preferring to mate with men who looked after them rather than brutes who simply raped them.

The problem, however, is that such an evolutionary development in men could only have occurred in the context of a society in which the right of women to choose was already establish and protected: that is to say a context in which men already behaved in the way that women required of them. This means, therefore, that the societal development had to have come first, and had to have done so on the basis of reasons and motives which, to begin with at least, would have had less to do with male protectiveness than male self-interest and whatever social dynamics were inherent in the structure of hunter-gatherer communities at that time. It is in male self-interest and the structure of these communities, therefore, that we must look to find the origin, not just of the unique relationship between human men and women which allowed our species to evolve in such a remarkable way, but also, in all likelihood, the 2:1 breeding ratio to which this unique relationship also gave rise.

Starting with the structure of hunter-gatherer tribes, therefore – or what we know of such communities from those that survived into the modern era – most of them would have been organised along two orthogonal lines, the first and most fundamental of which would have been the matriarchal family or clan: the term ‘matriarchal’ here being used in a narrow, strictly technical sense, in which it merely denotes a society in which fatherhood is not recognised.

This doesn’t mean, of course, that hunter-gatherers didn’t recognise or understand the causal relationship between sexual intercourse and procreation. After all, it’s fairly hard not to notice that the one tends to lead to the other. It was rather that the fathers of children had no status as such. Nor did they have any responsibility for rearing their offspring. According to the Polish anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski, who studied the native people of the Trobriand Islands during the first world war and was thus able to observe first-hand one of the few remaining matriarchal societies to make it into the 20^th century, that role fell to the mother’s male relatives on the matrilineal line. These would have been her brothers born to the same mother – as distinct from any offspring her father may have produced with other women, who would not have been recognised as siblings at all – and her mother’s brothers born to the same mother – her maternal uncles – all of whom, collectively, would have also been responsible for the woman herself, along with every other female relative within the matrilineal clan.

By only including matrilineal forebears, this again represents a much narrower family tree than we are used to, the absence of fathers preventing any lateral reach into other familial lines. Just as important as the absence of fathers, however, is the absence of husbands, these two roles not only being closely related but logically connected. For although a society can have a concept of fatherhood without a concept of marriage, the traditional concept of marriage – in which a man and a woman cohabit in a long term relationship and have children together for whom they share a joint responsibility of care – more or less entails the concept of fatherhood. The absence of this latter concept, therefore, more or less entails the absence of the former.

Without the concept of marriage, sexual relations in hunter-gatherer communities would thus have been far more fluid than in most post-matriarchal societies, with most women having multiple sexual partners during their lifetime. Given the otherwise largely unstructured nature of a nomadic way of life, what this also meant, therefore – as again borne out by Malinowski – is that, even in a long term sexual relationship, women did not ‘move in’ with their sexual partners – whatever that might have meant in a nomadic encampment – but remained instead within their own matrilineal clan, where their male relatives – their brothers and maternal uncles – continued to provide for their material needs – while their female relatives – their mothers, aunts and sisters – not only provided them with support during pregnancy and childbirth, but with the freedom they needed to renew or commence a new sexual relationship whenever they eventually felt inclined to do so: the children of the entire matrilineal family being cared for communally.

By thus supporting women’s sexual freedom, at this point one might therefore suppose that a matriarchal social structure of this kind would have actually worked against a breeding ratio of 2:1 and tended, rather, towards parity. And, indeed, taken on its own, that would have been the case. In addition to the genetically encoded selectivity in a woman’s choice of mate, however, there are two other important factors in the mating equation which would have swung the breeding ratio back the other way again.

The first of these is the fact that, during the later stages of pregnancy and early months of motherhood – before a child is weaned – a large number of women would have been effectively taken out of the mating pool, which, as a result, would always have been somewhat smaller than the overall size of the adult female population, thus reducing the number of women available to men looking for a mate: an imbalance which would have greatly increased the threat of sexual violence against women and again reduced the breeding ratio if it had not been for the second organisational structure within a hunter-gatherer tribe: the leadership of the tribe itself, which, if for no other reason, would have come into being quite naturally as a result of the hunter-gatherers’ preferred source of nutrition, and which, in contrast to the matrilineal clan, would have therefore had an entirely male, hierarchical structure. 

This is because hunting large wild animals with the limited weapons hunter-gatherers had available to them was an essentially communal enterprise, a joint venture which therefore had to be directed and coordinated by someone ‘in charge’: a leader whose orders the others would have followed, partly, one assumes, because he had the experience and tactical astuteness to ensure that the hunt was a success, but also, in all likelihood, because he had the strength, speed and courage to lead from the front, actually doing, himself, what he demanded of others.

The position of any leader, however, is always precarious. And in the very violent world in which hunter-gatherers lived, this would have been especially true. For even though hunter-gatherer men may have needed to work together in order to mount a successful hunt and could not, therefore, be always at each other’s throats, this didn’t mean that contention did not exist, or that this contention wasn’t occasionally resolved through violence. For rivalry and competitiveness are as vital to our success as a species as loyalty and faithfulness. In addition to experience, tactical astuteness and physical prowess, therefore, what any leader in such a position would have also needed was the political skill to stave off disaffection while engendering loyalty, thereby establishing an unquestioned order which, then as now, would have best been achieved, not by the leader jealously garnering all power and authority to himself, but by actually delegating some it to those around him – especially those of comparable strength and ability – thereby turning potential rivals into trusted lieutenants and creating a cadre of high status males who, in their own self-interest, would have had reason to uphold and reinforce the position of their chief, in that, in doing so, they would also have been upholding and reinforcing their own position as well.

Indeed, it is in this way that almost any stable hierarchy is formed and maintained. And it would have been this hierarchy, arbitrating and deciding issues between the different matriarchal families, each with their own interests and loyalties, that would have provided the underlying stability for the tribe as a whole, making and enforcing rules that would have been particularly beneficial to the women of the tribe, not least because one of the rules this hierarchy would have been particularly keen to enforce would have been a general prohibition against rape.

I say this because, in addition to preventing the tribe from very possibly tearing itself apart – with the brothers and maternal uncles of the rape victim feeling themselves obliged to take revenge on the perpetrator for their sister’s or niece’s violation – prohibiting rape was actually in the interest of the higher status males, who, being among the strongest, fittest and therefore very probably the most physically attractive of the men in the tribe, were also, quite naturally, the preferred choice of mate for the limited number of women who, at any one time, would have been looking to begin a new sexual relationship. In fact, by imposing this general prohibition against rape and showing themselves both willing and able to enforce it, the men at the top of the hierarchy, would have actually made themselves even more attractive to the women who lived under their protection.  Thus, by defending a woman’s right to choose, these high status males not only ensured that they would always be the ones chosen, but that whatever genetic predisposition men had to be protective of women was thus passed on and reinforced.

Indeed, one could arguably say that it was the relative physical weakness of women, along with the  instantiation of MANS through female choice, that bred into the human species, especially its males, some of our best, most noble qualities, giving rise to the kind of heroic ideal we find in the mythology and folklore of just about every human culture.

Take, for instance, the story of Perseus, who, in order to win the hand of the beautiful princess, Andromeda, not only has to prove himself both courageous and tactically astute by fashioning a mirror so that he can defeat the gorgon, Medusa, but then has to face the ultimate challenge of using her head as a weapon against the sea monster, Cetus, so that he can free Andromeda from the rock to which she is chained. All in all, Perseus thus demonstrates more or less all the ‘heroic’ characteristics required of a man if he is to be successful in finding a mate under the MANS principle as instantiated through female choice. Not only is he brave and resourceful, thereby showing himself to be a capable provider, but his ultimate goal is the rescue and protection of the female, thereby revealing himself to be both virtuous and worthy of her hand.

The problem, of course, is that, if the MANS principle – as instantiated by the selective choices of women who are inherently weaker than their male counterparts – brought out the hero in some men, it also, somewhat inevitably, brought out the villain in others. For the fact that women in sexually unfettered matriarchal societies consistently chose to mate with only the best of men, would quite naturally have produced a significant level of disaffection among those men who, due to their lack of physical prowess, perhaps, or their less than noble characters, were consistently shunned and rejected. For not only would they have felt themselves denied something to which they may also have felt they had a natural right, but they would have resented both the lowly status to which their inability to obtain a mate would have consigned them, and the contempt with which others – particularly women – may have consequently regarded them. Indeed, they would have likely experienced all three of the cognitive conditions I set out in ‘The Phenomenology and Politics of Hatred’ as necessary for inciting hatred:  

1.  the belief – not necessarily true – that one has been ill-used, injured or unfairly disadvantaged in some way;
2. the belief – however much denied – that those responsible for one’s injury are somehow superior to oneself; and
3. the belief that, as a result of one’s relative inferiority, one is being looked down on.

With so many men having so many reasons to be resentful, this, in itself, therefore, would have constituted a serious problem for any tribal chief trying to maintain order, or would have done had it not been for one other aspect of hunter-gatherer life, which, combined with female selectivity and a general prohibition against rape, would ultimately have led to the breeding ratio of 2:1. This was the tendency of hunter-gatherer tribes to prey upon each other, or, more accurately, for the stronger tribes to prey upon the weak: a practice which, from an evolutionary point of view, would, in any case, have been absolutely essential in order to prevent excessive inbreeding – especially in smaller tribes which may only have consisted of a single matrilineal clan – but which would have been used by tribal chiefs, both as a way of channelling aggression away from internal grievances, and as a means of incentivizing and rewarding those of their men whose disaffection might otherwise have boiled over into insurrection.

For the general prohibition against rape, of course, would only have applied within the tribe itself. It would not have applied to the women of other tribes who may occasionally have been encountered while they were out foraging, for instance, and who would only have been protected by old men and boys too young to join their own tribe’s hunt, all of whom would have been quickly despatched by the second tribe’s hunters, along with any other male children and children too young to look after themselves, while the women and girls would then have then been taken into captivity as slaves, where access to them would have been used by the chief as a reward for those of his men who fought well, including many who would have seen this encounter as one of their few chances to have sex, and who would therefore have fought all the harder for it, as the chief, of course, would have known they would.

Of course, it will be argued that, there being no historical records from this period, we cannot actually know that this is how hunter-gatherer tribes treated each other. They could have just as easily hailed each other in friendly terms and join each other in a celebratory meal. In fact, in numerous conversations I have had on this subject, I have often been told that my depiction of our species is far too bleak, completely ignoring our capacity for empathy, our inherent friendliness towards others and the kindness people continually show towards strangers. Like the loyalty genetically programmed into us as pack animals, however, most of these qualities crucially depend on our identification of the ‘other’ as being ‘like us’ or indeed ‘one of us’: an identification which, stimulated by such subliminal messages as the smell of those to whom we are genetically related, does not come naturally to us outside of our own tribal group. Indeed, on encountering strangers – especially those who differ markedly from ourselves in appearance or manner – our far more natural response is one of apprehension, suspicion and even fear.

More to the point, to assume that hunter-gatherer tribes dealt with each other with the respectful cordiality of fellow human beings is to ignore most of the lessons of our subsequent history.

Take for example the siege of Magdeburg during the Thirty Years War, the fall of which, in 1631, led to a bout of behaviour on behalf of the victorious Imperial army which was very similar, if not slightly more extreme, than the imaginary behaviour of the hunter-gatherer tribe outlined above. Because the city had withstood the siege for more than two months, when it eventually fell on 20^th May 1631, the Imperial general in charge of the besieging army, Johann Tserclaes, Count of Tilly, allowed his troops to sack the city for four days, during which time they killed anyone who resisted them, stole whatever property they could lay their hands on and raped every woman they came across. Of the 25,000 civilian inhabitants of the city at the beginning of the siege, only 5,000 survived the massacre, most of them women who were then taken as slaves by the soldiers, who continued to repeatedly rape them until they were eventually traded for food, Germany, at that time, being in the grip of the Little Ice Age and suffering from widespread crop failures and famine, neither of which was helped, of course, by the endless war. The result was that many of the female survivors were so traumatised by their experiences that they either committed suicide or had to be confined to insane asylums for the rest of their lives.

The Sack of Magdeburg is, of course, notorious: one of the worst such atrocities in history. However, it is not unique. In fact, throughout history, such a sacking has been the common fate of any city which chose to withstand a siege rather than surrender at the outset, the threat of such a terrible outcome being almost universally used by besieging generals to encourage a speedy capitulation. As in the case of the hunter-gatherer chief above, it was also used by army commanders to encourage those of their soldiers who would be scaling the walls, incentivizing them with the knowledge that, once inside, they would be allowed to rape and pillage for as long as their general’s displeasure with the city remained unabated.

My point in drawing the reader’s attention to such horrors, however, is not merely to give greater credibility to my view as to how hunter-gatherer tribes most likely interacted, or even to demonstrate how thin the veneer of civilization sits on human nature, but rather to highlight the inherent instability of homo sapiens’ instantiation of MANS by way of female selection. For given the significant disparity between men and women in terms of their size and strength, and women’s consequent need for male protection – whether this be based on the self-interest of the dominant males within a group or the incipient but clearly unreliable instinct among men to be protective of women – women’s security outside the matrilineal family – and even, perhaps, inside it – was always bound to be precarious to say the least.

Indeed, it almost seems as if our entire history as a species has been one long precarious walk along an evolutionary tightrope, in which the many benefits we have gained from our large brains – our ingenuity, resourcefulness, imagination and forward thinking, to name but a few – have been consistently offset by the ever-present threat of social disintegration and species collapse, which the physical disparity between men and women has constantly represented. More than anything else, however, it has been our large brains, and our consequent ability to appreciate the underlying nature of our predicament which has probably saved us. For like no other species, it has allowed us to intervene in our own development, not least through the accumulation and transmission of both wisdom and values preserved in such cultural artefacts as the legend of Perseus and other such myths: stories told around countless hearths and campfires to wide-eyed boys and idealistic young men in order to provide them role-models to follow and standards to which to aspire. For while the veneer of civilization may be thin and, at times, almost non-existent, it is nevertheless what allowed us to rise above our evolutionary programming, especially once a number of environmental factors, along with our ingenuity and resourcefulness began to lessen the demands of our daily existence, thereby giving us the time and opportunity to put the true potential of our big brains to work.

For, of course, our story did not end with us wandering the earth as nomadic hunter-gatherers. For around eleven and a half thousand years ago, after more than one hundred thousand years during which time the earth underwent its most recent period of glaciation, the planet at last began to warm up again, allowing human beings to settle in one place and become farmers for the first time in our history. This, as I shall endeavour to explain in more detail second part of this essay, ‘Male Accentuated Natural Selection and its Social Sexual Expression (Part II): Patriarchal Farmers’, then led to a whole raft of other interconnected social and economic changes. Farming, for instance, quite naturally gave rise to the idea of  inheritance and the recognition of fatherhood, which, in turn, led to the patrilineal family and the end of the matriarchal order.

At the centre of all these social changes, however, was the institution of marriage, which, for a while at least, not only formalised the instantiation of MANS through female selection – the rituals of courtship and the actual ceremony of the wedding bestowing a new kind social recognition on a man and woman’s union – but civilized it, the very nature of monogamous marriage allowing more men to secure a mate than ever before, which, in turn, not only reduced the breeding ratio between women and men to something approaching parity, but brought far more men in from the margins of society than the matriarchal order had ever allowed, enabling them to enjoy the kind full and meaningful life previously restricted to an elite few and rendering them, as a consequence, far more at peace with the world.

Indeed, it could be said that, to date, marriage has been our most successful solution to the instability problem inherent in our instantiation of MANS through female selection. Despite the fact that it curtailed women’s sexual freedom and tied couples together for life in a way that did not always end in happiness, it nevertheless provided a social structure through which women could safely make their choice of mate and a stable economic environment in which they could then bring up their children.

Marriage, however, is now in decline. For reasons I partially explained in ‘Women’s Liberation and the Monetarisation of the Economy’, not only are we no longer marrying – or, at least, not in the numbers we were even twenty years ago – but we are actually forming fewer long term relationships, with more and more of us living alone. The result is that the intrinsic instability in our instantiation of MANS by female selection is once again becoming apparent, with involuntary male celibacy on an ever-steepening rise, accompanied by a similar increase in the reported incidence of rape. The question we all have to answer, therefore, is where we want to go from here. And while I have no obvious answer to this question, it is the question, itself, which, more than anything else, I have set out to frame in this two part essay, the second segment of which I hope will still yet further clarify both the problem and our choices.