Wednesday, April 13, 2016

The Archaeology of Human Behavior Over Time



It seems to me there may be some peculiar characteristics that distinguish how humans extend themselves genetically and conjunctively in a cultural representation, based on an empirical record of human reproduction rather than the theoretically supposed record that so many scientific thinkers have presumed in their conception and modeling of the human reproduction schema.
                The genealogical conveyance of human DNA chains that link one generation to the next, are very likely not what human science has predicted over the long course of the human past. It appears from my lifetime of comprehension that human chains and their interwoveness are dynamic and adaptable in the history of their reproductive patters, with men and women only very recently reaching comparable statuses in the statistical gauges of how each sex fares over time. Human social patterns and adaptations also vary widely depending upon the precursory history of a population in mating, nursing, prenatal, birthing and parenting methodologies and technologies a culture may possess. It not only affects the survival success of offspring but also of the mother.
In particular, I am arguing that there is considerable difference between male and female reproductive outcomes and lifespans, and the architecture of its impact on the human social structure throughout human history in both the East and the West. Certainly, in any society that uses harems where a single male operates as the sperm donor for a cadre of female offspring producers, that genetic archaeology is very different in comparison with an egalitarian population where men and women operate monogamously. The same of course would be true for the Mormon populations of the U.S. West or other groups where a single male has exclusive access to a group of several or more females. Genghis Khan is an outstanding example in Mongolian cultural history as are some of his ancestors. The Arab World is notorious for similar behaviors such as with Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden, the father of al-Qaeda’s Osama bin Laden who fathered seventy-seven children with twenty-two wives or various emperors in China or India.
Even Charlemagne of the Franks in the annals of Western European history fathered eighteen children with four wives and five known concubines, as so many Normans later inordinately contributed to the birthing expansion of their related populations in Normandy, England or Sicily. It is a different take than Thomas Malthus suggested in the science of propagation patterns he had proposed. It is also quite a departure from the scientifically presumptive history that most males will father offspring reasonably equally with that of females in given populations. It seems that the sperm pools of many populations are limited to small male groups that disproportionately seed the DNA chain.
Secondly, the lifespans of women are – because of the perils of childbirth – probably very different in pattern and contribution than the male patterns. In fact, in Early American history as an empirical demonstration, it seems that a visit to any New England or pre-Civil War eastern cemetery would demonstrate the patrilocal/patrilineal foundation for the constancy of the family and its continuation versus that of the female. Many males had two, three, four and sometimes five wives during the course of their lives, with men frequently marrying women ten to twenty or thirty years their junior. 


                           To be completed at a later time