From: Blunderov (squooker@mweb.co.za)
Date: Mon May 10 2004 - 04:38:50 MDT
Jonathan Davis
Sent: 10 May 2004 11:13 AM
Hi Blunderlov,
Regarding Neotony, did you even read The Eternal Child by Clive Bromhall?
Very interesting book even if the main thesis is somewhat controversial.
[Blunderov] No I never did read it but it looks tempting. I found a review
at
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bristol/content/readingroom/2004/01/12/eternalchild.sht
ml
<q>
Are we all just big kids?
Bristol University alumnus Dr Clive Bromhall is not one to shy away from
controversy.
In his new book, The Eternal Child, Bromhall advances a theory that:
"explains mysteries like homosexuality, the difference between races, the
need for religion and the true nature of relationships."
Chimps and humans share a lot of the same DNA
Bromhall's theory is that the human species has anatomically and
behaviourally regressed into a state of permanent childhood.
Humans are not mature primates - and by mature he means aggressive and
sexually active.
Instead, he says we are over-grown baby apes: we have been infantised
because without infant-like co-operation we would never have survived when
we came down from the trees during earlier stages of our evolution, and
banded together.
He told BBC Radio Bristol in a recent interview: "I am intrigued by the
human species. There is so much about us that doesn't make sense."
On this basis, Bromhall puts human beings into four types, depending on how
developed we are.
These range from the 'alpha' confrontational risk-taker to the 'ultra', the
playful, sociable individual still attracted to the same sex, and thus
homosexual.
In between, there is the 'bureau' - the office worker, family-man - and the
'neo', the insecure and childlike character.
</q>
similarly
http://interconnected.org/home/2003_09_14_archive.shtml
<q>
The question is: why do teenage boys look like monkeys?
The human species is highly neotenic. That is, a fully mature human is
actually still immature compared to what the genes could do -- an adult
person is much like a chimp child: hairless, playful. Like dogs are neotonic
too: a fully grown modern dog has unfolded its genes as much only as a puppy
wolf.
This implies that during some period of humanity's evolution, the species'
neoteny increased from nothing to where it is now. Say for example it took a
thousand years, it doesn't matter what the evolutionary pressure was. During
that thousand years, the mature adult of each generation would look more
like a younger chimp than the mature adult of the generation before.
Now. Consider that, to reproduce, men both young and old would prefer to
mate with young women: Women bear children best when they're younger, are
less likely to die and more likely to nourish the child properly, etc (the
grandparents are more likely to be alive when the mother is young).
Whereas women will prefer to go for older men: Having a child is a large
investment for a woman, and an older man has proven survival skills: The
fact that he's actually got older means he's intelligent, strong, canny and
so on.
So the older man has no trouble, but it's in the young man's interest to
trick the woman. He can't just evolve to look older when younger -- or
rather he can, but this isn't an evolutionarily stable state, because old
men and young men will get in an arms race to look older, which the old man
will always win, and so the race peters out.
However, the young man can take advantage of the fact that older men are
also of the generation before, who are less neotenic and look more like
apes. This won't actually mean the young man will genuinely become more
ape-like - this would leave him vulnerable to the evolutionary pressure
which is promoting neoteny to begin with - but it means he will attempt to
appear more like an ape.
The old man - who is old and apish - and the young man - who simply appears
apish - can now compete on equal ground to mate. As the young man gets
older, he competes with those of his own generation, so the
monkey-characteristics recede. Although the constant increase of neoteny has
now ceased, we're left with its effects.
That's why teenage boys look like monkeys. And what of the young woman?
Having lost an important discriminator between old and young men, she moves
on to secondary characteristics of age, such as: does he have a car, is he
old enough to get served in pubs.
</q>
Best Regards
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