I've just discovered the Y-chromosome bottleneck

[GarlicAnything]

When reading that patriarchy's approximately 5,000 years old, I haven't found serious justifications for it. Arguments seemed mostly to be about men being buried with posher grave goods (but women have been buried with equally swanky goods after that) and a reduction in 'venus' icons (but we don't know what they were for, and goddess worship doesn't prove anything anyway).

It never occurred to me to look at DNA. Here it is, though it happened more like 7,000 years ago. Google says:

The Neolithic Y-chromosome bottleneck was a sharp drop in male genetic diversity that occurred globally between 7,000 and 5,000 years ago. 1, 2]

What Happened

• Genetic collapse: Diversity in the male Y-chromosome dropped so fast that it looked like only one man reproduced for every 17 women.
• Only men affected: Mitochondrial DNA (passed down through mothers) showed normal, steady growth. This rules out general disasters like famines, plagues, or climate change. 1, 2, ]

Why It Happened
Scientists link this event to the shift from hunter-gatherer groups to farming and agro-pastoralist cultures. Two main ideas explain the drop: 1, 2]

• Patrilineal warfare: Early research suggests that wealth and power grew in male-dominated clans. Competing clans fought wars where entire family lines of men were killed, wiping out their specific Y-chromosomes. 1, 2, 3]
• Peaceful social structures: Newer models show that strict patrilineal and patrilocal systems (where land and names stay with male kin groups) can naturally reduce Y-chromosome diversity over time through normal social fission and unequal reproductive success, without requiring massive violence. 1, 2, 3]

One man reproduced for every 17 women! No matter what narrative we superimpose on this, it's quite an unpleasant picture. 17 women getting pregnant for each impregnator. Men indisputably took control over women and dictated which men they could reproduce with.

I think the 'peaceful' patrilocal societies must've been established by force, since I can't imagine women all over the world cheerfully leaving their homes to join strangers' harems.

Y-chromosome diversity recovered in a rapid spate of 'star-shaped' explosions from 5,000 years ago, when cities and city-states became the norm. People from what had been discrete rural settlements moved to the cities and mingled, then the city-states started fighting each other and taking each other's populations as prisoners. This resulted in more men and genetic mixture, with the star shapes being patterns of Y diversity radiating out from the city centres.

Sadly, it doesn't look like the men gave up controlling women's reproductive options and living conditions, although far fewer of them had as many as 17 wombs at their disposal.

Women made a patchy comeback at times. Now archaeology's giving up its sexist assumptions and re-examining grave finds, it's becoming clear that many societies throughout history have been female-led and matrilocal. I'm happy to note that this seems especially the case in Britain - our Celts buried more 'warrior queens' than they did in mainland Europe, for instance, though of course there's still much more to be discovered.

No, these were the first things researchers looked at - alongside other external factors such as climate changes, geological events, etc.

It can't have been any of these things because mitochondrial DNA continued on a normal pattern of growth & diversity.

There are no infectious diseases that kill or sterilise only one sex.

The risk of inbreeding defects (Founder Effects) increases with reduced diversity. The more diverse composition pre-bottleneck would have meant fewer such effects. However, the female population remained diverse so founder effects would have been limited to Y-linked conditions in the main. There aren't many of these, though they can be serious.

No-one here thinks there was some kind of structured distribution of women.

The below kinda looked like that was being claimed.

17 women getting pregnant for each impregnator. Men indisputably took control over women and dictated which men they could reproduce with.

But I agree that genocide (menocide?) is probs the most likely cause. There are plenty of warring groups today that'd no doubt love to completely eradicate the other. Israel/Palestine being but one example.

Well, they obviously dictated which men they could reproduce with, if they'd killed all the other men!

Well, that's true! But I don't think it's a literal case of 17 impregnated for every man, although admittedly I haven't yet read the info - need to get in the shower really as I'm due in work at 6am. 😳

I'm not sure I'd call it a patriarchy though. It seems like it was bad for an awful lot of men (as is today's society tbf).

Tbh I'm not sure I even really believe in the patriarchy at all as many feminists posit it. There's a small number of extremely powerful men no doubt, but this isn't what patriarchy is usually defined as. Like, the women married to those men are likely to be far more privileged than the vast majority of males.

In fact, this is what I often see as 'the white feminist paradox' - forgive the expression as I know it's often a red rag to a bull on here lol. They bemoan straight white males but then choose to marry these men and benefit enormously from sharing their privilege - straight white women are arguably second only to SWM in terms of privilege.

You see it on here when women get really defensive about having given up working 'because it made sense due to his higher earning potential'. They ultimately choose quality of life over feminist ideals, which is their choice ofc, but you gotta recognise the effect this has on the pay gap/distribution of power surely.

Or course some families genuinely can't afford not to maximise household income, but many others do it as a conscious choice and could've likely got by ok with less holidays or a more humble house/sending kids to state schools etc.

I agree that they 'don't have to justify their family decisions to others' but when you see a workmate transition from grrrl power and glass ceiling smashing to a life of leisure and yoga classes funded by a bloke's big job it feels a wee bit hypocritical if I'm being completely honest.

I'm really not up for a patient exposition on the meaning of 'patriarchy' here, @GaIadriel. You've also touched on (actual) intersectional feminism, which is another big subject. Anyone who doesn't believe women have less overall power than men is an idiot in my book, and definitely unqualified to opine on feminist thought.

While I agree with the bones of what you seem to be saying about SAHM choices, there are many moving parts - and the family finances of a small proportion of 21st century 'Western' women are probably not the most significant factor in the global struggle for female liberation.

I hope you're asleep now! Have a good day at work.

Ukraine's fate is pinned on whoever can make the best drones - also a computerised form of war.

I'm unsure what you mean by "real truth", otherwise. European land-wars carry a huge risk of nuclear escalation, which is another reason why we haven't had one in a while.

It's a brave and strange new world. Muscle doesn't power it. No wonder so many men are angry and lost.

Vanishingly unlikely that men were killed off by women deliberately.

Disease and warfare - women have stronger immune systems, and for the men even a flesh wound in fighting other tribes could lead to death before antibiotics. The victors survived to breed, and so intensified increased patrilineal groupings.

The best measure of power isn't whether a person has access to money, or social status, relative to others. It's whether they have control over their own lives.

Looked at this way, it's clear that even the most serene of SAHMs has very little power where it really matters. Her husband earns all the money; she has to keep him happy. She has to do what he wants her to do. She can't yoga her way out of the position she'll be in if he starts to harm her, or (worse) harm their children.

In this sense, a lower-income couple, both working - who maybe both suffer at the hands of their bosses - have greater power relative to each other, and less relative to the rich people above them.

As such, we do women a disservice by trying to frame our predicament as a sex-class struggle. It's about a much bigger struggle than that: the struggle to stop super-powerful people treating everyone else as though they were food. Onward...

On the other hand, huge numbers of women died in childbirth.
Even in my family history to 100-150 years ago I had great x grandmothers dying in their 20s in childbirth.

@earlyr1ser, your last comment seems to be saying feminist issues aren't important?

There is also the Icelandic thing where (in general terms) the modern women are descended from medieval Irish women, but the men are not descended from the considerable population of Irish monks (both medieval Irish settler groups known from excavations).

Every time I read about that my confusion deepens.

Not at all. Feminist issues are far too important to be framed in terms of a class struggle.

If the oppressed class is in a position to exert force on the oppressors, then the story of struggle is a powerful tool. Colonised people rise up; factory workers strike; slaves run away, or burn down the plantation.

But once you have a dependent child, and you yourself are a dependent mother - the situation of many women - you can’t rebel. You have no force.

From here, a lot of people (and please, don’t get me started on the “reactionary feminists”) simply shrug and accept things as they are. Or perhaps as they used to be.

That’s not acceptable to me, which is why the focus of my argument is on giving mothers an income.

There are different ways of doing this - affordable childcare is one, but there are others. I’m fascinated to see how keen the leader-writers in the FT seem to be about UBI. When it’s men who want security in life, there’s never an argument about the downsides, or about how to fund it, is there? Funny, that.

ps, the Icelandic men are of Norse descent.

How much choice do we think all those Irish women had?

That's fascinating, @DeanElderberry!

Shades of the Spartans exposing male babies

I’m ill in bed and this has blown my mind. Fascinating!

"One man reproduced for every 17 women! No matter what narrative we superimpose on this, it's quite an unpleasant picture. 17 women getting pregnant for each impregnator."

one man mating with seventeen women in any one generation? Is this really what this data shows? This bottleneck - at least looking from the graph on YouTube appears to show the decline over a period from 10,000 to 5,000 years, at least one of the articles that are hyperlinked discuss a period more like 7,000 - 5,000 years, so if in Neolithic / early Agricultural period, the generation time is 15 years (I don't think that's unrealistic), then that is something in the region of 300-130 generations over which this "dramatic" bottleneck develops before diversity starts to rebuild again. And the graphs are measuring diversity of Y haplotypes NOT actual males individuals, aren't they? And the samples being found by archeologist is drawing conclusions about male effective size https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_population_size. (all very statistical - way over my head) So, over these 300-130 generations it doesn't follow that the there was ever a time when you had very different numbers of men compared with women - and if it ever did - the very next generation, you'd have more or less equal numbers of little baby boys born as little baby girls. It more likely means that the males only had a much reduced level of Y-chromosomes diversity over these hundreds of generations.

And another thing that I wonder about too, is where in this period of rebuilding Y-haplotypes diversity coming from? When the bottleneck ends, where do these other haplotypes coming from. After all, Y chromosomes don't undergo the usual cross-overs in meiosis that other chromosome do - so I'd have thought that the obvious place is inward migration of other males from beyond the rough geographical indicated on the graph. They have to come from somewhere barring a rapid period of spontaneous mutation.

I thought mumps infection sterilised only men. Happy to be proven wrong.

Oh, good point! Just looked this up:

• Before puberty, the chance of mumps causing sterility is close to zero (someone should've told my mum when my brothers caught it).
• Of adult males, approx 2.3% are affected in both testicles.
• It isn't known when the virus crossed over from animals (bats/rodents) to humans.
• The earliest definite record of mumps is from 640 BC.
• Current variants of mumps only split from the common ancestor ~100 years ago, so it might not be an ancient pathogen in humans.

In short, you're right that I was wrong, but it's extremely unlikely that a pathogen made 95% of men infertile. It might have made them unable to speak for a week or so, though, if it was around then!

Nice background work there, @sawdustformypony 🙂

The Y-chromosome bottleneck lasted for about 2,000 years. I'm not accepting could-haves when there's solid data on this from multiple points throughout Eurasia. You may choose to differ, but I don't know why you would.

Yes, Y inheritance is traced through haplotypes because the chromosome itself rapidly accumulates mutations. However, the Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA do not undergo recombination & shuffling. This allows us to identify certain gene clusters (haplotypes) on the Y chromosome and mitochondria. Scientists can see how long they remained unchanged because they understand the mutation patterns.

When a mutation happens in an ancient individual, it is passed down to all of their descendants. This branches the lineage, creating a cluster of similar haplotypes (a haplogroup).

Ancient populations are strongly linked to geographic regions. This allows researchers to track large migrations. In fact, modern haplotypes are still much more closely associated with locations than one might expect given our ease of mobility.

Here's Google's rather nice summary about the Yamnaya incursions:
... ... ...
The defining genetic feature of the Yamnaya is their near-total monopoly on the Y-chromosome haplogroup R1b, specifically the R1b-M269 lineage.

• The Population Bottleneck: Archeogenetic studies show that Yamnaya males fiercely guarded their clans and restricted external males. They experienced a severe population bottleneck where a very small group of survivors replicated rapidly, making their Y-DNA extremely uniform.
• The European Replacement: As they moved into Western Europe, they mixed overwhelmingly on a male-biased scale (Yamnaya males with local Neolithic farming females). Within a few centuries, they triggered a near 90% population turnover in places like Britain. Today, R1b-M269 is carried by over 100 million European men—roughly 1 in 2 men in Western Europe owe their direct paternal line to the Yamnaya.

While the Yamnaya flooded Europe with R1b, high-resolution genomic testing introduced a fascinating puzzle known as the "paternal haplogroup discrepancy":

• The Core Yamnaya Lineage: The vast majority of actual skeletons dug up from Yamnaya kurgans (burial mounds) belong to the specific subclade R1b-Z2103. Today, this specific variant is mostly concentrated in Southeastern Europe and parts of the Middle East, but is quite rare in Western Europe. 1]
• The Western European Lineage: The dominant lineage in modern Western Europeans and the later Bell Beaker culture is R1b-L51.
• The Connection: This indicates that while Western Europeans are deeply tied to Steppe ancestry, they did not descend directly from the eastern Yamnaya burials we have excavated. Instead, they likely split from a closely related sister group (like the Seredni Stih culture along the Dnieper River) right before or during the western migration waves.

In contrast to the strict uniformity of their Y-DNA, Yamnaya maternal haplotypes (mtDNA) were incredibly diverse.
... ... ...
Each of these subclades relates back to ONE MAN at the beginning of the migrations. It's just like the Genghis Khan effect. Genghis didn't shag millions of women all by himself - but, altogether, his direct male descendants did.

I put "No matter what narrative we superimpose on this" in my OP to try and avoid this kind of argy-bargy. If a single male line accounts for 17 women's children on average over centuries, that male line has eliminated competitors and ensured maximum distribution of itself among the female population.

5,000 years later, 60% of European males carry R1b-M269.

where in this period of rebuilding Y-haplotypes diversity coming from?

Recombination. Males from other regions and remote settlements began to mingle with the prevailing DNA - probably through a combination of trade and enslavement - and the dominant gene-carriers lost their ability to murder all non-related men and/or shag all the women. No doubt this was for economic reasons, the growing city-states needed more people.

I don't think life expectancy was 15, by the way, at least once infancy was survived. It was probably more like 40 although there are lots of records of individuals living past 70.

... I was wrong to say the Y expansion resulted from recombination, sorry! It's more that men with other haplotypes - either from different regions or small areas that had escaped extinction - regained the ability to reproduce. This automatically increased the diversity within city-states, and from that point, more branches would emerge.

Two male haplogroups dominated the Near East going into the Bronze Age. They've experienced very different outcomes and distributions since then, but none are presently as dominant as the Yamnaya DNA has become. One of them, G2A, represents the Anatolian farmers. Having comprehensively dominated Europe and Turkey, it was whittled down to almost nothing by the Steppe pastoralists.

Oh absolutely muscle is kinda irrelevant now that men aren't swinging around warhammers. Being able to cover long distances with a backpack on has seemingly been much more important for a long time.

But I dont entirely agree that 'massed infantry' is irrelevant. There are lots of boots on the ground in Ukraine and we're not talking about some African civil war. Russia is one of the biggest military powers and should've steamrolled Ukraine in theory.

Agree with most of this.

However, I do think that power isn't always the best indicator of quality of life, even if it does become extremely important when the shit hits the proverbial fan.

To give an extreme example, a youth living off daddy's wealth/a trust fund doesn't really have any power yet still lives a really privileged life. People like the sons of rich sheiks or Paris Hilton (although she no doubt has plenty of her own money nowadays).

Choosing to rely on a man is of course a big risk but so are most things that offer potential rewards - e.g. starting a business, making investments. In fact, I think it'd be more odd if people expected to go part time, or give up work entirely, without the expectation of any risk whatsoever.

I think holding the power doesn't necessarily mean you have a more enjoyable day to day life if you're in a high stress job whilst your partner works part time in an easy non-career job and has loads more free time. I've certainly met a lot of middle class women who enjoy a standard of living they almost certainly wouldn't have attained on their own.

Of course, plenty of women are high achievers too, but I'm talking about how an attractive but not particularly smart woman can often do much better than an attractive but dim bloke. I feel like a successful man would have much less reservations about marrying a personal trainer than the reverse. Like, I work with a lot of pretty wealthy builders and I defo meet a fair few bimbo wives in range rovers. Orange tan and pumped up lips etc. But I don't really see successful women marrying Joey Essex types.

And there's always this assumption that women have a career to sacrifice, but somebody on minimum wage or with low prospects likely has much less to lose. I earn pretty well for somebody my age, yet I could easily stop working for a fair few years and return on my same salary or higher.

People don't really care about gaps in your CV in the construction sector. They care about finding somebody who can drive a particular machine/truck next week, and if you've got years of experience that's usually enough. Worst case scenario you could just do a month or two of agency work as they're usually so desperate they'll even take on new passes. All I'd need to do is seven hours online training a year at the cost of about £50 to keep my CPC up to date.

Sorry, bit of a ramble again. But I think people often try and analyse the world using social theory and in the process sometimes come to conclusions that don't necessarily reflect the clear observable reality (not referring to this discussion specifically, more in general).

I think if I met a big sexy viking who was happy to pay for me to be a lady of leisure I'd defo consider it. 🤣 As long as it wasn't in a controlling manner. Some men just like to be the provider and if they earn enough that their partner/wife doesnt need to work then they're often happy for them not to because they just want their loved ones to be happy.