In the past, men were far more likely to die in war than today. I'm curious what that would mean in terms of evolutionary biology. Would Darwinism suggest that we self-selected a more peaceful human race by breeding men who stayed home, or a more aggressive human race by breeding men who were more successful at fighting wars and then returning?
I realize that evolution works over extremely long time periods and we've been fighting wars regularly for our entire recorded history, but only recently has technology really started to remove humans from the business of fighting.
I doubt either. Which men stayed home, historically? Pacifists? The sick? The old? Members of the wrong economic class or religion? Probably the answers vary widely from war to war and place to place.
And again, what traits helped you survive a war? Physical strength? Stamina? Keen eyesight? A healthy sense of fear? Being able to run quickly away? Being too wimpy to be put on the front lines? Being smart enough to become an officer? Again, it probably varied a lot.
The difficulty is that women usually aren't just looking to reproduce, they're looking for someone to support them and their potential children, thus the high level of selectivity.
As the blogger told us, it is increasingly becoming a non-issue as women are better able to earn money themselves.
Not everybody LIKES to work.
EXCERPT:
What percent of our ancestors were women?
It’s not a trick question, and it’s not 50%. True, about half the people who ever lived were women, but that’s not the question. We’re asking about all the people who ever lived who have a descendant living today. Or, put another way, yes, every baby has both a mother and a father, but some of those parents had multiple children.
Recent research using DNA analysis answered this question about two years ago. Today’s human population is descended from twice as many women as men.
I think this difference is the single most underappreciated fact about gender. To get that kind of difference, you had to have something like, throughout the entire history of the human race, maybe 80% of women but only 40% of men reproduced.
If I am not mistaken, that would also refute the argument that the differences would mostly be due to different circumstances in ancient times.
^ It's a joke, OK? Don't take it so seriously.
And unfortunately, men are also not needed much anymore. I read somewhere recently that people are descendants of many more women than men (meaning women have children more often than men - few men are fathers).
Women not needing the money of their spouses - will they really just be attracted to a wider variety of men? Another thing I read recently is that women are becoming more likely to care for physical attractiveness now. Good for them, but I can't really see the benefit for men gained from that.
Also what tires me is the assumption that women where held down by barriers we erected. I think in "former times" it simply wasn't possible to survive alone, and the traditional roles where one successful approach to managing life. Women were supposed to do the household chores because men were working at their jobs earning the money.
What really freed women therefore was not the destruction of barriers. It was the invention of dish washers, vacuum cleaners, washing machines and frozen food.