BoysToys

"However the fact that violence and violent crime for example is a predominately male problem in every culture and throughout history is pretty compelling evidence."

But evidence for what? Which came first, the patriarchy or the propensity/need/meme/whatever for violence? Just because it is old doesn't mean it is innate!

"THE EVOLUTIONARY ORIGINS OF PATRIARCHY" from 1995 by Barbara Smuts looks interesting, I confess I haven't read it all yet! OF course, Gerda Lerner, "The Creation of Patriarchy" doesn't blame it all on biology either.

The patriarchy is old, very old, because unfortunately bloody efficient at propagating itself and stopping women from altering things.

Slow, have you read anything by Cordelia Fine, Gina Rippon or Daphna Joel?

It doesn't suit your argument maybe slow, but people are perfectly entitled to be of the opinion that the current state of the study of evo-psych is bollocks without denying that the brain is evolved or being 'unscientific' whatever that means.
And we have established that you won't let your kids play with anything they like because you adhere to age guidelines. Don't see why that gives you any high ground over those of us who hold stronger opinions against the appropriateness of violence in play. We just have different limits.

Slow, I do think physical aggression is a plausible candidate for a sex specific difference. That's because it's clearly an attribute that could be useful to a man but detrimental to a woman based on the fundamental difference that women have children and men do not. Provoking people into fights who are bigger and stronger whilst physically vulnerable through pregnancy is not a good survival strategy.

My problem with a lot of evolutionary theories about sex differences is that they seem like illogical puesdo science mainly based on prejudice.

So for example at a party the other day some one told me that they had been to a conference and had been told that women are better at multi tasking that men because women used to be gatherers and men used to be hunters so women had to do lots of things at the same time but men only one.

I had a number of objections to this theory.

1. Are women actually better at mutitasking anyway? ( I suspect that they are not and this is used at an excuse to load them with dull tasks at work while their male colleagues get on with the important stuff)
2. Assuming it even exists why did the ability to multitask become sex specific? What was the survival detriment to men of being able to carry out multiple tasks?
3. How much do we know about sex roles on early societies and how they varied across time and culture anyway?

Sorry SlowFJH Perhaps I misread the thread then. I had understood from your posts that male children had a preference for mechanical toys, and that this is consistent with evolutionary psychology and that this discipline had valid explanations for it

I am not the only poster under that impression however

Are you saying something completely different? Could you please clarify

I was answering your questions about which tools were not developed by all cultures. Sorry to have confused you in so doing.

you seem to paint evolution as a steady march toward some exalted state- primates, then early hominids, then us as though these others are our predecessors, our less evolved relatives

this is a really weird way of looking at species diversity

Neanderthals had bigger craniums. There isn't much evidence to suggest that they had more cognitive abilities. And if you're going to discuss gender differences, reducing it to the two most typical sex genes is still unsound when there are several others that have and continue to exist especially when we as a society define it by body parts and few actually know for certain what sex chromosomes they have. If you want to bring evolution into it, you need to look at all sex gene types that can continue the species - which is far more than XX and XY - and somehow cut out our current social binary in how people beyond those two interact with the world.

All the evolutionary psyc talk reminds me of archaeological sciences about 50+ year ago (or any on TV now) where anything that couldn't be explain was explained as a 'ritual' because that's how they saw earlier people. As a concept it may have merit but in practice it -- and you - are taking fragments to fit a worldview which isn't really how good science is done. But then, science is only as good as the people doing it and interpreting it as anyone with any grasp of science history knows.

We have no idea why the male monkey babies preferred the mechanical toy over the plush. It could simply have been because it was shiny or harder feeling or anything. They could have been influenced by the workers - anyone who has done any research with people or other animals knows how easy we all are to being influenced. The very people wrote it as has been pointed out cautioned against using it as you and the media keep doing.

About American Indigenous nations, the over 600 nations we have records, most of which did not have wheels prior to European colonization is that the differences in tools and choices in technology created can suggest what is more effected by evolution, what is more effected by environment, and what is more effected by culture. Of the largest American Indigenous nations at the time of European colonization, the biggest technologies were mainly in foods (of which most popular parts of the Western diet now rely), landscape shaping, soil maintenance that we still cannot replicate, and many other non-mechanical technologies.

You began by stating that your sons were interested in wheels and not your daughter and that wheels, along with other technological advances, were created because of men's testosterone. Except several hundred nations for tens of thousands of years did not and most of their technological advances which many enjoy today aren't mechanically based as you described. They were not "primitive" [seriously?], at the time of European arrival they had some of the largest cities in the world and the Americas had large, long standing trade routes, there was just nothing that in the environment or culturally for such things -- and apparently nothing in evolution either. There is also no evidence that I know of that suggests that tool making anywhere, even in animals, is strictly a male thing and nothing to suggest that any of these early tool were originally invented by males. That is a leap you are choosing to make. We've already seen in the last decade or so many cases of well known early tombs or constructs attributed to men because of the weapons and armor and tools that turned out not to be so - the people then just assumed so because that is how they saw things and chose to make that leap. They were wrong.

Like archaeological sciences of old/TV, evolutionary psyc today suffers badly from echo chamber syndrome and some of them and especially the media have a lack of humility in admitting that they do not have a clue what something means or that they could be wrong. But then, some of the biggest research universities in this area are still funding research and doctorates into finding which race is "scientifically" smarter or more attractive so maybe it needs someone to unstick them from 50 years ago before it will make real progress. Until they can move beyond that, the evo-psyc that makes it to the general public is better viewed with a high amount of bollocks detection.

In my house, we have a box of nerf guns and crossbows - my partner and I collect them and keeps the ones we won't use or he wont paint in a box for the kids. It goes untouched except when another family who have four girls come over and make everyone play with them. None of my four have interest in wheeled toys except to decorate their block towns. All of my kids love dress up, and building, and electric experiments, and video games and swords. We have an extremely large plush toy collection. My 2 sons are less flexible about what they choose to watch than my 2 daughters - they have their favourites and nothing is going to change their mind without a sulk while the girls are more likely to experiment and try new shows but any of that could just be them rather than their assigned gender. Really, even with kids from 11 to 5, how many times I have to request they take their hands out of their pants is pretty much the same across gender. I notice people laugh and talk about it more if they catch me telling my sons compared to my daughters, but they all do it. Messing with genitals I can see the argument for evolution, but I find it harder with their TV watching habits or lack of interest in wheeled toys.

SlowFJH

It looks to me like you realised that you were having a hard time debating your point and decided to disingenuously infer a point you thought you could 'win'.

"With regard to the control of fire I personally believe that this was probably a major event in human development (rather just a new skill learned)."

Thanks for clarifying that,

So the evolutionary aspect there is ... what? That 99 cave people died in the attempt to control fire and the one who didn't lived to pass on the skill?

My history teacher once postulated that cave people might observe that dropped seeds grew better near soil with animal dung than without, and thereby draw conclusions about fertilisers...

Slow's determined I'd give him/her that...But I don't agree.

Tbh just skim read various points here but as usual and as someone up thread pointed out, read Cordelia Fine and none of the other nonsense...

It's funny how you can just read a tiny fragment of a post and immediately know you wouldn't get on with a person in RL, although I'm sure you're very nice but just a bit frustrated that you're not convincing others SlowFJH...

Sometimes you just have to agree to disagree but it looks like you're someone who needs to have the last word...

SlowFJH

Who actually said that?

And in addition to social constructs we should not discount those aspects of our being over which we might have less conscious influence than we think including our genetics, physiology, endocrinology, anthropology, brain structure and a whole bunch of other things.

Of course not (although we may have more control over brain organisation than we think) however there isn't much we can do about that is there?

The social stuff there is.