Daddy’s Skeleton Army
Someone has suggested that the cover of our new book (the 10,000 year explosion) symbolizes the splitting of the human race into different species. I will award a metaphorical cigar to the first person who figures out what it _really_ means.
(Daddy’s Skeleton Army is the alternate title suggested by my son Ben)
Labels: 10000 Year Explosion
Cities: Humans check in, but they don’t check out.
More people = more variation = more fodder for selection to dig its red teeth and claws in?
The differences in skeletal morphology represents the drastic changes in phenotypic evolution from past to present. The increasingly off-center skeletal outlines represent the disjunction between our environment and our phenotype. The variegated colors represent diversification in overlapping phenotypes across geographic space.
Analysis of what it means: I must get over my disdain for my mother.
Here’s my guess:
Regarding the evolution of humans: the more recent the time period, the less likely we are to see ourselves objectively.
Increasing population and diversity.
‘What it _really_ means’? I’m going to have to go with the post-modern angle on this: there is no ‘real’ meaning. The prismatic interpretation, humanity split into ‘colors’ over time, is one obvious take. Now if you want to say you had something else in mind when you chose it, that’s great… but the picture is ambiguous.
I should add that you seem to like being cryptic. It reminds me of something someone said about Schwinger (I think): ‘Feynman lectures to show you how to do it, but Schwinger lectures to show you that only he can do it’.
Greatly increased popoulation sizes at more recent stages of human evolution.
To me there seems to be a splitting and them coming together again – so speciation (Neanderthal), followed by introgression (Modern Humans)?
Or, if you mean a phrase, I’d say:
“Endless forms most beautiful”
Greatly increased population sizes at more recent stages of human evolution.
Something to do with Jason and the Argonauts?
This time I won’t string it out. The cover artist never talked to us and never had a chance to read the book.
It doesn’t mean anything at all. It’s not even a reference to my unholy army of the night. Someone, however, was speculating about the deep nefarious agenda it conveyed and I felt compelled to respond.
Each color represents particular ethnic group, subspecies or races among homos. Genetic multation with advantage in particular group give its group advantage over others, which in turn help advantageous allele spreading into other populations, and move entire human evolution. Each group takes turn to produce beneficial alleles in the process. Fierce competition between groups accelerate such process.
We’re turning into polychromatic chaos?
Looks like some devolution taking place at the end there…
Independent of the lack of communication between you and the cover artist, it’s actually a nice looking cover. I’ll likely assign your book as part of my seminar on anthro genetics.
The human race is not splitting into different species. Parts of each individual are sprayed out and slowly all combinations of different individuals would produce almost the same copy someday. Its like saying, if whites, asians and blacks would mix together, we would see an population of arab looking humans someday.
I was going to guess that the overlapping of colors represents an original genetic diversity, split into different lineages by selection in different environments, with cultural and lifestyle choices accelerating the diversification.
Bury the tooth of the Hydra and a skeleton army will arise.
If the illustrator didn’t talk with the authors or read the book, what did they base their illustration? It does seem somewhat appropriate. I guess the publisher did a decent enough job of communicating the idea to them.
wave particle duality.
I just got my copy from Amazon today, so I’ll have to wait until I read it, but it’s interesting to find out the cover art wasn’t necessarily “informed” in that way I thought it would be.
Dear gcochran,
Did you ever ask the cover artist what he/she thought it meant?
I think I’ve seen a somewhat similar book cover in the somewhat distant past. Dredging the memory brings up muck like “Ascent of man” and some connection to John von Neumann (was it a book by him or about him?). Now I’m curious.
Went and googled and confirmed that my memory is flat fucking amazing, though I’ve no idea how Von Neumann got in there (author was Bronowski and the only thing my memory tells me about him is that he was never president of the U.S. Can’t have everything, I guess.)
There is a correlation between the population density of gay skeletons and their ability to stand erect.
If you look at the cover through anaglyph glasses (“3D” red/cyan-blue lenses), one fellow near the left side rises above all the others – therefore the cover represents the triumph of socialism as we evolve to become more ant-like.
I just got mine as well (a copy, that is).
Interesting as it is, I am curious about what Greg C. cryptically referred to in another post–topics the publisher wouldn’t let them put in the book. Taking a shot at it, I’d say such topics might be related to race or sexual orientation. Any guesses?
BTW, is GC still a proponent of the pathogen theory of homosexuality? He’s been silent on this for a time from what I can tell, anyway. It made sense years ago when he proposed it, and seems to make even more sense today, considering all the research revealing viral triggers to a myriad of afflictions, but…he has been silent, right? Or have I missed something?
I just got mine (a copy, that is) as well. While I am certainly interested in the topics covered, I admit to great curiosity about Cochran’s reference a few weeks ago on this very blog to the topics their publisher wouldn’t allow in the book. Just guessing–suppose those topics might deal with race, gender, or sexual orientation? Anyone else care to hazard a guess? He did suggest he supposed we’d find out. Cryptic, as always.
BTW, speaking of sexual orientation… anyone know if GC still subscribes to the pathogen theory? It’s been a while, a couple of years, I think, since I read anything from him on this subject although it’s true I certainly could have missed a post from him. Ever since I first read it, it seemed a great hypothesis, and considering all the recent research substantiating pathogenic triggers of a myriad of diseases, it seems even more likely today, but I’ve heard nothing from him. Anyone know if he is more or less convinced of it today?
elaine, if you go to the book’s website you can find unpublished excerpts. I don’t know if that’s what he was referring to though.
Mostly the publishers wanted cuts that tightened up the book, and for the most part they had a case. There ere some quibbles about the controversiality of a few topics, but we pretty much said what we wanted to.
Not that there aren’t other interesting things to say on the general topic of recent human evolution…
As for some pathogen causing male homosexuality, sure, it makes more sense than any other idea that has yet been floated, and I might publishes something, particularly since an editor asked me to just last week. I really should, since there are probably people who aren’t mad at me yet – and that’s not right. But you know, it’s almost impossible to find a researcher who actually wants to understand the cause.
Thanks, I did read the unpublished excerpts–somehow that’s not what I was thinking he meant.
BTW, sorry for the double post–didn’t think the first one went through.
Sad that such researchers, microbiologists and such, I presume, are hard to find. I’d would have thought someone who was older and not worried about his or her future would have been up to the task. If nothing else, I’d have expected someone outside this pc country to take a good hard look at it. God, looks like too many scientists are like too many politicians, scared of their shadows. Pathetic.
IIRC, I read that there are flu innoculations around the corner for the very young. If those get underway in a few years, I wonder if we just might not see a reduction in the number of boys who grow up to be gay. Just wondering–guess we don’t know what pathogens might be in play.
Gcochran, if I’m not mistaken the book only touches on massive-scale harem-keeping (or, some might call it sex slavery, which would be difficult to argue with). Regardless – couldn’t mass concubinage significantly speed up positive selection? I don’t suppose it would alter the rate of new beneficial mutations or the odds of those beneficial mutations going extinct, but shouldn’t it tend to beef up the selection coefficients for those that do escape extinction?
Book hasn’t arrived yet. Looking forward to it.
To gcochran, I, for one, hope you do publish on *that* topic. Who knows? Maybe that’ll be just what it takes to nudge a researcher in that direction. Besides, yes, you really do need to tick someone off. Something tells me you do your best work under such circumstances.
“IIRC, I read that there are flu innoculations around the corner for the very young. If those get underway in a few years, I wonder if we just might not see a reduction in the number of boys who grow up to be gay. “
Something like this happened a generation ago. There used to a surprisingly common kind of heart failure in young kids, primary endocardial fibroelastosis. It was fatal (barring a heart transplant) and hit about 1 in 5000 kids.
There was some evidence that it might be a rare consequence of mumps – and after mumps vaccination became standard, it almost vanished.
Something like this happened a generation ago. There used to a surprisingly common kind of heart failure in young kids, primary endocardial fibroelastosis. It was fatal (barring a heart transplant) and hit about 1 in 5000 kids.
There was some evidence that it might be a rare consequence of mumps – and after mumps vaccination became standard, it almost vanished.
I have a feeling that an Epstein-Barr vaccine would help with all kind of rare diseases.
There was some evidence that it might be a rare consequence of mumps-and after mumps vaccination became standard, it almost vanished.
I have a feeling that an Epstein-Barr vaccine would help with all kind of rare diseases.
Yes, and what about the same kind of thing for the Borna virus which seems linked to depression? Innoculation there too would be interesting.
That so many behaviors have been chalked up to the “psyche” of the individual is astounding.
It does blow me away that in the year 2009 with all we do know about the body, we still don’t know the specific location of cells responsible for our most primal urge, mating, and that we haven’t identified how something that would appear to be so basic to survival gets screwed up.
It reminds me…little did I know when I was in a high school literature class decades ago and the teacher pointed out the part of the chapter devoted to explaining how the settling of the Americas decimated the native peoples from infection, that she’d be so right when she said, “Class, I think in years to come we’re going to find out we are ourselves infected with many things.” We laughed at her. We knew her husband was a doctor and figured she had gotten that notion from him, but that didn’t stop us from laughing at her. Shame on us.
gcochran
But you know, it’s almost impossible to find a researcher who actually wants to understand the cause.
You are making this too hard. The Christian Right has the motivation and bottomless sums of money to help you out. Throw around enough $$ and you’ll have a line of applicants.
Greg
My friend from college had an aunt with two sons. One was gay and the other had severe Scoliosis. Her neice has two sons, one is obviously gay the other has Scoliosis. I always found that interesting.
The Christian Right has the motivation and bottomless sums of money to help you out.
No, I don’t think so. Not that they would mind it if a vaccine could be developed to eliminate homosexuality, but I think their main interest is in curing it as a behavioral deviance (ie., sin). Proving that homosexuality is a real infectious disease would essentially excuse it as a behavior – not what they’re looking for.
I’m no expert on the Christian Right, but I do know several fundamentalists and others I’d simply term conservative, and frankly, they seem open to a biological explanation, a marked change from positions of years past. Granted, I live in CA so it’s quite likely that a fundamentalist here is nowhere near as rigid as one in, say, the South.
I thought the sheep industry was working on this, what with all the dud rams costing them a lot of money. Nothing going on there?
Hmmmmm. What common sheep virus is shared with humans? Or are there several? If only a few, can’t we look for evidence of them instead of looking for a needle in a haystack?
Dr. Cochran
Childhood family correlates of heterosexual and homosexual marriages: a national cohort study of two million Danes.
This is the highest quality, large sample of gays ever taken. Compare gay birth months with straight birth months. If there is a statistical difference you’ve found the first hard evidence of the gay germ. So easy a caveman can do it and probably a lot cheaper than hiring a microbiologist. All you need is an unbiased statastician.
Birth months correlates must have been done, don’t you think? Wouldn’t someone start by looking at such an easy thing? Also, a candidate bug wouldn’t have to strike when the child was born.
What about HLA types? There’s a Northwestern sibling study that should be about to come out. They got a million dollars. Wonder if they did HLA typing? I admit to not knowing how expensive such typing is.
An in-progress UCLA study claims to be of a different sort–they’re studying twins and trying to see if epigenetics is involved. What’s your guess about that?
Why would “the cause” of homosexuality be any different in type from “the cause” of heterosexuality?
If we take “sexual orientation to males” as a typical female trait (or collection of traits perhaps) and “sexual orientation to females” as a typical male trait why, given a bell-curve distribution of traits and some tendency to select mates with similar traits to oneself, would we not expect some males to “fall over” into a typical female trait and some females to “fall over” into a typical male trait? And, given that the male bell curve on traits tends to be flatter, this happen more among males than females?
Such a mechanism would also tend to keep the pattern of typical male and female traits more distinct by creating a barrier to trait-convergence.
Supporting evidence could include the same-sex oriented tending to be cognitively “cross matched”, showing cognitive traits more typical of the other sex. And broadly similar patterns of same-sex/other-sex orientation across populations and over time.
Conversely, would not a pathogen tend to show wildly fluctuating “infection” rates, over time and across populations? (Same-sex oriented folk congregating in cities surely being a safety/visibility/partner selection phenomenon.)
Monotheist cultures hang ups about sex regularly infect science. Darwin presuming the only point of sex was to exchange semen, for example. Or same-sex orientation “has” to be a pathology of some kind.
I admit to not knowing how expensive such typing is.
Dirt cheap by PCR.
It strikes me as an interesting idea. I google-scholared [homosexuality hla], then [homosexuality mhc], and got nil. I only spent about 90 seconds.
would not a pathogen tend to show wildly fluctuating “infection” rates, over time and across populations?
Not necessarily. Remember, if a gay germ exists, straight people might often be infected asymptomatically – literally everyone in the world might be infected. A disease can be infection dependent and still have an effective communicability that’s arbitrarily low, or zero.
Monotheist cultures hang ups about sex regularly infect science [...] same-sex orientation “has” to be a pathology of some kind
There are different ways to defining disease. All that really matters for the gay germ idea, I think, is that male gays have low darwinian fitness – reproduce less. (They do, by a whole lot.) It also matters whether this was true in the past – a non-trivial question, since they may have had quite a bit more sex with women in extremely anti-gay societies. Still, it’s hard to imagine them having equal fitness.
What about exploring homophobia as a possible biological trait? That sounds like a fun way to irritate the far left.
Obviously, its prevalence and intensity have dropped a lot in the West, and may eventually approach zero, because of changes in environment. This doesn’t rule out a genetic component for the variance that exists now in say the USA.
Is homophobia heritable? (Ie, MZ vs DZ twin concordance.) If so, is it a spandrel of general biological hostility or of general biological sexual normativity, or was it possibly selected per se?
Does it exist in the hunter-gatherer groups which Gcochran says lack exclusive homosexuals?
If you have a gay son, repression could force him to marry a woman, or ostracizing him could direct your resources to fitter offspring. More generally, perhaps homophobia could reduce your odds of acquiring a causal microbe, if we postulate one.
If we postulate the advent of agricultural population densities and/or the domestication of the sheep as the date of origin for homosexuality, is it even plausible that homophobia would have time to evolve in the interim? I’m thinking yes if a microbe exists – otherwise the possible advantages of homophobia are less and I’m skeptical that there’s been enough time, but I guess in asking whether there was, I had already postulated the microbe anyway.
Lorenzo, Cochran discussed the “bell-curve” argument in his collection of rants. What we see is more of a bimodal distribution, with fewer bisexuals than exclusive homosexuals. There is no evolutionary benefit to obligate homosexuality and an obvious one for heterosexuality, so it is not surprising that the latter is far more common. In a certain reductionist sense though there must be some biological cause of heterosexuality and so its absence must be related to whatever mechanism causes it. In his rants he also points out that there are differing rates by population. People raised in urban areas have higher rates, while the Khoi-San can scarcely accept its existence when told by their agriculturalist neighbors.
Gee, Lorenzo, I do think evolution saw to it that *depositing* semen (rather than, as you phrased it, “exchanging” it) was a pretty effective way of seeing to it that there was a next generation. The thing is… that semen has to be deposited into something that can produce a new life. It’s called a woman and her uterus. Gay guys don’t seem much interested in the two.
So, the cause? Hey, sure, I would like to know what specific neurons, neurotransmitters, etc. “cause” attraction, heterosexual attraction. Find that and you can find out what isn’t functioning in the same way in the homosexual.
Evolution works hard at producing fertile, not infertile beings. Homosexuality is akin to infertility.
As for the hypothetical infection rate? We’ve no records to know if such rates have varied. Seems as if there are isolated places where homosexuality didn’t exist until people from the outside visited, perhaps bringing with them the pathogens. (Gee, I wonder about that isolated Brazilian tribe they found last year, the one who’d not let anyone close to them.)
I’ve always remembered Cochran’s point about the polio virus–a fairly common gut virus that in a small % of people made its way out of there and wreaked havoc. Could be the same kind of virus, a virus that lost its way? It could be common and seemingly harmless in most, but in a few people might make its way into the brain where it zaps crucial cells. Probably it dead ends there. Lots of infections leave behind collateral damage.
Same-sex orientation being a pathology? Well, yes, from nature’s point of view, a guy who isn’t turned on by a woman has something strange going on. From a fitness point of view, he might as well be w/out reproductive organs.
Would you think that evolution would work to produce people who were w/out reproductive organs? Would that evolutionary strategy be part of your normal or somewhat flattened bell curve?
Read some Greg Cochran and Paul Ewald. I woudn’t worry about them being influenced by monotheism.
“What about exploring homophobia as a possible biological trait? That sounds like a fun way to irritate the far left.”
Chuckle. I’ve seen this asked before, but really it does raise an interesting question, and that is, “Are we hard-wired to be put off by homosexuality?” And, “Is that what is going on with the incest taboo as well?”
While it’s true that the taboo of homosexuality is not what it once was in this country, I find that while people are more accepting of homosexuality as they have come to know gay people and as they have come to accept that it is not the result of a choice, the acceptance is of the people themselves. In the old days, many would have shunned gays as friends. Not so today..well, in most enlightened places, not so today.
However, let the topic of homosexuality come up when no gays are around, and even the most dyed-in the wool straight liberals often express their mortification about guys liking guys. It’s the old “Ewwwww, OMG ” factor, and such a reaction comes also from women who, it is often said, are more understanding than our male counterparts.
Someone once pointed out that it might have to do with our image that a man who is penetrated is not a man. I think for sure that’s part of it, but other images come to mind as well, so most straights try not to think of such things.
I don’t really think it’s fair to label this reaction “homophobia.” Perhaps we need a new word in the lexicon. There are, after all, just some thoughts that cause us naturally to recoil. So, yes, the idea of our feelings being hard-wired is interesting.
Also interesting is our reaction to incest, even when it occurs between consenting adults. If incest practitioners, little by little, began fighting for their “rights,”(they’d need a martyr or an event that garnered some sympathy), if they presented their desires as a result of “natural variation,” if they argued over the next few years that their attractions were natural or genetic or biologically caused, at least, not a choice, etc. would we come to view incest in the same way as we view homosexuality today?
I forgot to add the most likely argument of the incest practitioner– the very libertarian position of, “We’re adults, we’re consenting, and we’re not hurting anyone, so it’s nobody’s business what goes on in our bedroom.”
Lorenzo
Elaine is correct, homosexuality is a mental form of infertility. There is no reason to suspect that this is natural to humans or sheep for that matter. By comparison would you expect that a trait like sperm production would fall on a bell curve?
5% of men produce too much sperm to be useful
90% of men produce the correct amount of sperm
5% of men don’t produce enough sperm
That’s not how nature codes mission critical traits.
My best friend (42yo) is exclusively homosexual and has been since his early teens. Yet he’s the donor father of three children of lesbian parents.
Take that mother nature!
My best friend (42yo) is exclusively homosexual and has been since his early teens. Yet he’s the donor father of three children of lesbian parents.
Take that mother nature!
LOL. Stephen, it seems you proved the point of the other posters, at least in part– it took high tech aid to enable your friend to reproduce.
“Homophobia” (silly word, the issue is hatred of homosexuals and homosexuality not fear of it: though the original use made some sense in a specific context) can hardly be biological, since it is a feature of particular human cultures.
The tendency to universalise the parochial is a perennial trap in discussing human nature.
“Homophobia” [...] can hardly be biological, since it is a feature of particular human cultures.
That’s quite an invalid inference per se. You’re omitting the following:
1. different cultures can vary in a trait biologically
2. if all cultures have identical biological influences with respect to a certain trait, the value of the trait may still vary between cultures because of varying cultural or environmental influences on the same trait.
Even the Greeks may not all have felt full approbation of homosexuality – Aristophanes may have evinced some discomfiture in The Clouds, but I am far from qualified to interpret him. Obviously more than one Greek or Roman author did show strong approval, and the same applies to some other cultures. This does seem to quite significantly weaken the possibility of a genetic contribution to homophobia – but only when you consider that those cultures’ approbation was often quite robust (from what little I know, I would say that of the Greeks despite Aristophanes), and also that points 1 & 2 above don’t provide an obvious explanation for the variation.
While homosexuality reduces the reproductive success of those individuals who are homosexual, in the past parents have had the ability to coerce their offspring into reproducing even if they were homosexual. This would tend to reduce the cost of homosexuality in offspring.
The current enlightened attitudes towards homosexuality tends to increase the cost to those who have homosexual offspring.