In 27 BCE, Augustus Caesar condemned childlessness in a speech to Rome’s equestrian class:
For you are committing murder in not begetting in the first place those who ought to be your descendants; you are committing sacrilege in putting an end to the names and honours of your ancestors; and you are guilty of impiety in that you are abolishing your families, which were instituted by the gods, and destroying the greatest of offerings to them — human life.
Cassius Dio, Roman History LVI, quoted by Peter Frost at Aporia.
Ancestors and Families were the thing. It makes me wonder whether ancestor-worship encourages fertility. A focus on family and lineage seems intuitively to do that, and reverence for ancestors seem related to those, but I don't know if the lego blocks quite snap together on the latter.
In our day the groups that have the most children don't express it that way. When I see parents with three or more children out on the Rail Trail, I am tempted to ask "Catholic or Evangelical?" (I am told that LDS and some other groups also have high fertility, but I don't tend to run into many. Orthodox Jews and Amish/Mennonite groups both have many children, but I'm not sure that's deeply connected to lineage per se.) It may be that these couples have a greater awareness of lineage and ancestors. But continuity for them is part of the continuity of the church, or the group, not the specific great-grandparents and farther back. Tracy and I have expanded and kept the ancestry records until about a decade ago, when cousins of mine started in on it, but we don't much talk about that continuity. We taught our children some Swedishness, but it is quite attenuated at this point. Continuity for us is about church, and culture/subculture of "readers, general knowledge, regional history and All Decent Folk."
Children and number of children correlate with personal optimism, and I believe with cultural optimism though less so. It's a bit of a stretch to relate that to ancestors and families, but I see how that could be: "There should be more of us in the future. It is important that the world has US going forward."
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Of note: Frost has an interesting argument contra Lewontin regarding the existence of races. The traditional view since Lewontin is that because there is greater genetic variation within a subgroup of a species than there is between groups - that is, that Great Danes are more different from each other genetically than the average Great Dane is from the average Poodle, that races cannot be said to exist. While technically nothing is regarded as a final argument in science, this one is regarded as very powerful and convincing. Frost's view is that these types of variation are not the same thing, and Lewontin is not comparing apples with apples.
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Okay, maybe I need to read a lot more of Peter Frost. I remember him from his Evo and Proud blog years ago, when I was reading heavily in the HBD sector, which was bringing forth evidence that I was sure must be incorrect, but gradually came to accept, kicking and screaming. He mentions that people who were children of masters and slave girls were called alumni - though any fostered child that the master had an affection for might be included in that category. I had never heard this, and have not found it entirely confirmed by DuckDuckGo. But my goodness the number of jokes and sardonic references that flow from that these days practically write themselves, don't they?
Still interesting stuff at Evo and Proud, such as Ashkenazi Jewish IQ peaking around 1970 and declining since then.
Trade selects for cognitive ability. The selection may act directly, through the cognitive demands of bargaining, calculating, writing, budgeting, and planning. It may also act indirectly, through a consequent increase in social complexity. For example, trade leads to use of written documents as a means to record transactions and contractual obligations, but the same skills of reading and writing also favor the development of literature in general.
I think the decline started earlier because of external causes. The Budapest Ashkenazim born between 1890 and 1920 may have been the distilled version of highest IQs ever, but many were killed in the Holocaust. Not all got out to work on the Manhattan Project.
Generally the end of the Spartans is assigned to the loss of numbers, as men trained to fight and therefore left the business end of things to women -- who found that they liked running business more than being pregnant or being mothers, so they increasingly gave that up. Eventually there weren't enough Spartans to keep the slaves in line or their foes cowed, and it all fell apart.
ReplyDeleteIt seems, as you say, "a bit of a stretch to relate that to ancestors and families." Certainly that didn't play a role for us. In a culture that recognized obligations to ancestors, it might not be acceptable to admit that this wasn't a motive, so it might be hard to tell.
ReplyDeleteIs a child more valuable than the effort required to raise him?
Does being more religious (Christian, Jewish, ancestor-worship) make you more likely to be willing to subordinate your desires to others' good (e.g. children)?
The distribution of lifetime number of children doesn't look Poissonian. Which makes sense--too many different populations involved.
Assistant Village Idiot: The traditional view since Lewontin is that because there is greater genetic variation within a subgroup of a species than there is between groups - that is, that Great Danes are more different from each other genetically than the average Great Dane is from the average Poodle, that races cannot be said to exist.
ReplyDeleteThat in itself doesn't mean races don't exist, though it suggests the differences may be less consequential. In nature, a limited number of traits can lead to reproductive isolation, while intraspecies diversity can remain. For instance, some birds speciate through song, so you end up with two species with all their original intraspecies diversity but only small differences between the species. The two novel species avoid interbreeding, but are much the same otherwise, at least at first.
Assistant Village Idiot: Frost's view is that these types of variation are not the same thing, and Lewontin is not comparing apples with apples.
Frost correctly notes that there is a great deal of genetic diversity which has no effect on phenotype. However, intraspecies diversity can have its own selective benefit, such as for disease hardiness or in fluctuating environments. For instance, the genetic tendency to obesity can be a disadvantage in times of plenty, with lower agility and requiring more energy to move. However, in times of famine, the obese person is at a great advantage, living while others starve. The result is balancing selection. In social animals, such as humans, the advantage of diversity is even more pronounced. Think Doc, Dopy, Sneezy, Grumpy, Bashful, Happy, and Sleepy. Or consider someone who is myopic in a stone age culture of hunting who becomes expert at napping spearheads.
Returning to the issue of race, there are clearly differences among human populations. However, the problem with defining race is the limited number of categories that don't necessarily correspond to biology, the very fuzzy edges, and the ever-changing social definitions over time. In science, the concept of sub-populations is more flexible and has supplanted race categorization. However, race is still a prominent social construct.