The Great Y Chromosome Bottleneck
About 7k to 5k years ago, there was a significant Y chromosome bottleneck. There was no die-off of men, but only a few men became progenitors of us. On average, 17 women 5k-7k years ago had children by the same father from a gene’s eye POV. Some 64% of modern European males can trace their paternal lineage back to just 3 male progenitors.
During the Indo-European expansion, on the leading edge, there were about 10 men to one Indo-European woman (hint, more than 90% of men were not monogamous — during the expansion. As new peoples were encountered they killed the men and bred their woman). With high-intensity agriculture needed to build empire, slavery became obligatory and male slaves didn’t get to breed the women — but somebody had to.
A Patriarch had ‘concubines’ perhaps organized to breed as a harem, and would have many sons who had to serve empire somehow, and those who did with enthusiasm knew reproductive success. When modern expansionist and patriarchal males conquer new domains or fight with other clans to build empire, the winners typically end up killing the adult males and breeding the females.
Initial expansionist spread within Africa may have noticeably begun 75k years ago with a small population (1k-10k) and could have originated anywhere in Africa (southern Africa is likely). Today, male genetic diversity remains low, about one third that of females.
The back to Africa agropastorialist expansion was, like the Old European expansion from the western Fertile Crescent, matrilineal which favored women with high fertility rates (fewer women having most of the children) resulting in female genetic diversity decline in Africa.
A Systems Sci-Fi Short
“The roots of this [our being context blind] are in the deepest core of MTI [Modern Techno-Industrial] cultures” and may go back longer than imagined. The context may be the potential for systems pathologies to arise, e.g. one metastatic cancer cell may have more like unto itself.
The two cultures are the MTI r-culture (‘r’=reproductive/expansionist/ growth culture) of the expansionist form of human whose worldview/mindset and monetary culture is antithetical to the K-culture of limits all prior K-strategist hominins knew and loved.
The Great Human Expansion of 50k to 60k years ago (beginning somewhere within Africa perhaps 75k years ago — the first 15k–25k years were not “great” — would be the origin, likely within one band of 20 to 50 pre-expansionist K-culture humans (a metastatic cancer begins with one wild cell before it is noticeable).
The worldview/mindset of r-acculturated humans had to arise as a mutation, and the originator would be the first r-culture storytelling animal who denied they were mere animals, and that anyone who agreed (truly believed them) wasn’t an animal either.
If the storyteller had access to those under seven years of age, then most members of the band would be true believers in the storyteller’s tales (verities) within a generation or two as the abelieving ones died off. This condition of a population of one band within which a belief in belief (equating one’s image, one’s narrative of the world with the world — previously viewed by all as insane), would be a memetic mutation, one everywhere present in MTI r-culture and all prior r-cultures (e.g. indigenous except San and Hadza) going back to Man the Hunter narratives.
Foundational to the r-culture narrative is human exceptionalism. At some point, perhaps centuries after the first r-culture storyteller arose to spread her (or his) memes among the first 20 to 50 bands, each having a chief storyteller, whose spread her tales of true beliefs to believers her band interacted with for mate and meme exchange, one storyteller began telling stories of the glory of conquest that united all the omniscient storytellers of almost all bands — stories of expansion, of rapacious taking being the best thing ever.
When internal resources became scarce, the solution was obvious to all. The subhumans in the next valley, who don’t even know what the proper feathers to wear in their hair are, had to be civilized, and so all the bands join together under the command of one glorious leader (an atavistic alpha-male) who looked beyond the horizon to see a valley for the taking (vini vidi vici).
The pattern repeated. Man the Hunter chiefdoms became settled agrarian chiefdoms that soon develop into nation-states (unless born on a transoceanic flight or ship, you were born in one). The succession of the expansionist form of human, a rogue primate, domesticated by technology and ideology, likely climaxes this century.
No modern human can Like or Share this story, especially if details are added at book length (all irrefutably solid/referenced) even among Ivy League university presidents. But there may be some value in telling it. I could write a book that, before being tossed on a fire to keep warm, one of the last humans holds it back for a future fire to read it, and thereby know why they are about to die.
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
Displacing the indigenous populations, e.g. the Man the Hunter Europeans who had been renormalizing for over 30k years (having acquired some Neanderthal genes and white skin) tookthe Old Europeans longer than male-driven (e.g. Indo-European) expansionism took, but also reduced female diversity.
Patrilineal expansion selects for a decrease in Y chromosome diversity which is strongly selected for on the leading edge of expansion. After the initial expansion of Man the Hunter, a period of partial renormalization begins. The 7k to 5k period of agrarian empire building again strongly selected for expansionist patrifocal genes and culture (memes). The last 5,000 years has selected for partial renormalization except among active expansionists, e.g. Austronesians (e.g. Māori), Bantu, Amerinds, Muslims, and Indo-Europeans.
The last 75k years of human r-culture metastatic expansion is the context of our modern techno-industrial form of civilization’s climax this century, which needs to be viewed within the context of 500 million years of K-strategist ancestry that defines what is normal for such evolvable animals we no longer are.
.