Friday, March 16, 2018

Sexual Choices Shaped Evolution

National Review has an article with an intriguing title: "Why Are Men Violent? What Evolution & Society Tell Us." Explaining masculinity, the author concludes:
Humans split from chimpanzees 6 million years ago and have been shaped in large part by what each sex found desirable in the other. Individuals with desirable traits were more likely to pass their genes on to the next generation, so those traits gradually spread through the population. As a result, there is no way to discuss what men are, biologically, without addressing what women choose, sexually.
Though the article doesn't mention it, vice versa is likewise true. Women became what they are because early men pursued females with those characteristics.

While we may not always like what men and women are today, the blame accrues to choices made by our hunter-gatherer ancestors. You have to love the irony.