sex and culture

[randomc]

Is it plausible that humans have evolved to alternate between monogamy and an effective polygonous system?

 

Recent research seems to me to be building toward an association of schizotypal 'disorders' and autism with sexual selection, either of which would potentially be detrimental under feedback loop conditions.

 

Monogamy would tend to fix autism spectrum traits in a population, which traits have been suggested to involve low mating effort and high paternal investment, whereas effective polygyny would tend to fix schizotypal traits, which conversely have been suggested to involve high mating effort and low paternal investment.

 

There seems to be a trade off in this; a long-term monogamous population with a high representation of autism spectrum traits stands to gain increased social cohesion resulting from relatively low mate competition, but discriminates less about the quality of genes passing to subsequent generations. A long-term effective polygonous population with a high representation of schitzotypal traits gains in genetic fitness, but stands to lose out in social cohesion.

 

So assuming the key variables to be paternal investment (social cohesion) and mating effort (genetic quality), neither monogamy nor effective polygyny make sense over the long term; either on it's own would be detrimental.

 

If these feedback loops significantly affected oUr distant ancestors, an adaption in a population to alternate between mating systems would be a significant advantage over populations that did not alternate.

 

I suppose the most likely adaption would be some response to environmental cues, e.g. maybe female sexual selection preferences vary with observed environmental cues.

 

Or (much) less likely (but quite interesting!) we've evolved a two-cycle in which our mating system is a function of time or age or generations, or something.

 

Anyway, my conjecture is that the current 'sex positive' movement is not an artifact of culture, but a consequence of a natural cyclical adaption that mitigates poor overall genetic quality in a population.

[ecoli]

There are some interesting models showing how socioeconomic variables lead to polygamy/monogamy, with foraging economics leading to the former and agriculture to the later. Modern society is more like foraging societies that have inherited farming cultural attitudes.

 

However, how you're fitting autism into this is beyond me.

[randomc]

My source for the autism link with mating systems is this paper. While the authors aknowledge that it is speculative, it does appear to give a really good explanation for the increasingly documented population variations in the epidemiology of autism and psychosis.

 

I know i'm piling wild speculation on reasonable speculation by claiming our dynamic mating system is integral to our species rather than a product of culture, but i just wanted to see what people made of it. Is it implausible, highly improbable, fatally flawed in some way?

 

It's fascinating that the renaissance period in Italy was characterized not just by it's art, but also by an appaernt surge in promiscuity. Schizotypal 'disorders' have been (strongly?) linked wiith creativity, and also mating intelligence. The correlation is striking in light of the paper i linked.

 

Also, the enlightenment period and all it's scientific output correlates with the spread of puritanism, and if the sexual selection hypothesis of the epidemiology of autism is correct, it all amounts to an explanation of how these golden periods of culture come about.

 

I thought a species innate balancing principle between these strongly schizotypal and autistic cultures (if that's what they were) made sense.

Edited March 22, 2012 by randomc