From: RuneQuest-Request@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (RQ Digest Maintainer)
To: RuneQuest@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (Daily automated RQ-Digest)
Reply-To: RuneQuest@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (RuneQuest Daily)
Subject: RuneQuest Daily, Sat, 30 Apr 1994, part 4
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From: carlf@panix.com (Carl Fink)
Subject: biology lessons from two people who live by computing
Message-ID: <199404300321.AA29263@panix.com>
Date: 29 Apr 94 19:21:02 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 3858
sandyp@idcube.idsoftware.com (Sandy Petersen) writes in part:
Well, without quoting, I completely agree with Sandy that broo are not
primates. The "base" broo has *hooves*, for Ezelveztay's sake! No
primate has hooves.
R>Martin makes some comments about the biology of monogamy. As a
>biologist, I'd like to comment.
And as another, I'll metacomment.
>>Individuals in all kinds of animal species (including our own)
>>practice monogamy for its economic benefit.
R> Correct.
"All kinds", maybe, but not "all animals".
R>>Now to polygamy: if a woman is pretty sure that her husband
>>won't stop supporting her economically when he takes another
>>wife, she won't strongly object to it.
> However, polygamy is clearly not a natural strategy for the
>human male. (Note: before I'm bashed by pro-polygamists, let me state
>that I come from a polygamous culture -- Mormons. Hence know whereof
>I speak. My wife's great-grandfather had three wives.) Even among the
>few cultures that permit polygamy, normally less than 3% of the males
>practice it. Anyway, I believe that polygamy is a cultural, not a
>biological, phenomenon.
I come from a culture (Judaism) which allowed polygamy until
Christians made us stop. Okay, it was centuries before Mormonism
existed, but . . .
I don't think that there's a meaningful distinction between "cultural"
and "biological" behavior, whether describing human or leonine
behaviors.
R> Note also that EVEN if a husband doesn't stop supporting her
>economically when he takes another wife, her proportion of her
>husband's support is halved! This is a serious reduction, and her
>children are thus compromised.
Very valid point.
R> I submit that in a female-dominant culture, polyandry would
>be more common, and would support the females, rather than the normal
>polygamy (a result of male-dominated cultures).
Hard to say -- as has been hashed extensively in sci.skeptic, there
has never been a known female-dominated culture. As pure conjecture, I
concur.
R>>But the mirror-image situation rarely occurs. A man who let
>>his wife take another husband, even if there were no societal
>>cost to doing so, would lose reproductive success.
> The mirror-image situation does occur, because in the real
>world, reproductive success is measured by live children, not by
>total number of (possibly non-surviving) children. In very difficult
>climates, polyandry is a viable solution. Polyandry thrives in areas
>in which the greater size and strength of the male is needed to
>gather food, and which are very harsh. Usually one of two events
>stimulates the polyandry -- among the Eskimos infanticide (generally
>of females) is practiced -- to enhance total food for the family and
>eliminate excess children that would die anyway. An alternative is
>Tibet, where the problem is based on the fact that inheritance is
>normally divided equally among the heirs -- hence, after a generation
>or two, each heir has too small a piece of property to survive, and
>all are impoverished.
Also parts of India, FWIW. Same situation, very intensively-farmed
and overpopulated marginal farmland.
R> Anyway, the rarity of polyandry is more based on the scarcity
>of humans these marginal lands than it is anti-biology.
> The overall reproductive success of the fathers is HELPED by
>having multiple men in the family raising the comparatively few
>children, because those children have a much better chance of
>surviving to adulthood. In more equable lands, a single dad is plenty
>to ensure survival, so polyandry is not so great. Note also that in
>MOST polyandrous cultures, the most common form of marriage is for a
>group of brothers to marry one wife -- in this way, even if the kid's
>not yours, he's kin, and thus carries your genes.
Well argued. Polyandry, aside from extremely rare cases involving
legendary ruling queens, almost always involves closely-related men.
> To summarize my belief: polygamy is cultural, based on a male
>dominance. Monogamy is biological. Polyandry is biological, unless
>it's culturally based on a female dominance.
Polygamy (I think you want "polygyny", actually) is just as
biological, in that it serves the "purpose" (I'm wary of teleology) of
giving the male more living offspring in the next generation. Note that
polygny is quite common among other animals, while polyandry is
uncommon but known (some birds, bees, ants, mole rats).
> Actually, Glorantha defines Planet in the pre-Copernicus
>fashion -- a "Planet" is any object that wanders across the sky
>instead of following the Pole Star's dance. The "Moons" are a
>sub-category of Planet, though perhaps only pedants would know this.
>On pre-Copernicus Earth, the Moon was technically a Planet. I think
>the Sun, too, but I'm not sure on this.
Yup, the Moon and Sun were technically planets by pre-modern astronomy
definitions (that is, before Kepler, by my definition of "modern
astronomy).
> A deity's Secret Power is something that makes it unique and
>irreplacable. It is different for every deity. Sometimes a Secret
>Power can be wrested from one deity and given to another. Deities
>with Secret Powers, no matter how reviled, tend to pop up again and
>again in mythologies -- like Gorgorma. Deities without Secret Powers
>seem to come and go from nowhere, often sinking back into
>well-deserved obscurity -- like Sog.
I for one would like to get one example of a Secret Power to clarify
this. Some minor but significant god, say King Carmanos (revealed to
have one in the History of the Lunar Empire).
R>Just the fact that the Best females are better than the bulk of the
>male population indicates a low rate of such dimorphism. You don't
>find any overlap among sea lions, for instance, and mighty little
>among the great apes (except gibbons).
...And the pygmy chimps, which are about as dimorphic as we are. By
no coincidence, we, the gibbons, and the pygmies are the only regularly
monogamous apes. And have the largest penises, I believe.
R>One more biology note which has mildly rankled. Someone a while ago
>mentioned that the Great Apes are a separate family (Pongidae) from
>the human species (Hominidae), and went on to bewail this because
>humans share 98% of our genes with chimpanzees, so clearly this was
>Species-ism, putting just one species in our family.
Using the currently accepted method of taxonomy, cladism, the Pongidae
must be either invalidated or expanded to include the hominids, because
we are a clade with the chimps, and our common ancestor is a clade with
the gorillas. That is, we are more closely related to the chimps than
either we or chimps are to gorillas and the other apes. You can't split
close relatives and combine one with another group.
Pray, v.: to ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a
single petitioner confessedly unworthy.
--"The Devil's Dictionary" by Ambrose Bierce
Carl Fink carlf@panix.com CARL.FINK (GEnie)
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