Peter Metcalfe says that the majority of peoples who may not have clued in to the necessity of males in procreation are non-pastoral hunter-gatherers. Probably true, though a keen observation of local animal life plus their own behaviour may well give the game away before domestication occurs. No real quibble with this one - it's very hard to prove anything now, given the possibility that local herding cultures may have given them the good news.
I take his second quibble to mean that he agrees that pairing of runes may well be pre-God Learners, but that they did their best to put their own stamp on them, and perhaps force other runes into previously unknown pairs. Fine, I'll happily go with that. The multiple meanings that can be read into almost any pair may well be pre-GL survivals, or later divergences from their too rigid system.
Sandy's post seems mostly an extension of mine, with some points that I had implied but not stated so elegantly and explicitly, and some new anthropological examples. The fact that divorce from the spirit is necessary for some cultures is a great point in favour of the importance of the Spirit rune. I'm glad to have heard of it. What the Andaman Islanders do isn't stated, but burying alive seems implied. Could you expand on that, and the reasons for it?
Nils is fishing for people's opinions on what the major non-human cultures view as fundamental qualities of the universe. I'll try to come up with something myself, as I specifically sidestepped that issue at first. My own limited imagination may be the worst obstacle here!
Lastly, Peter Michaels paid me the compliment of replying seriously with his own reasons why my biological imperative model of pairs dissatisfied him. I am aware of the bulk of the exceptions that he mentions, but didn't include them. While I usually add qualifiers for almost any argument, I deleted most of those in the piece that I put in so that it wouldn't sound too tentative. You can take for granted that I do not believe that what I am saying is without exceptions. There are always exceptions, it's just that it takes too long to list them all, and detracts from the flow of the argument.
However, the male/female duality is a fundamental natural truth for most species of life on Earth. Glorantha follows the same rules in most of the cases that I know. The fact that occasionally the pattern gets mixed up doesn't detract from the basic split. Thus, although he lists a large number of sexual anomalies where the chromosomal, hormonal and anatomical sexes are not congruent, these cases are not significant. Chromosomal and hormonal sexing was unknown until recently, anyway. Your anatomical sex was what counted. Which sex do you most look like? Can you have offspring? Can you engender them in a female? The answer to these practical questions is what you need to know to figure out where you belong in almost all species, including humans.
If one's hormones or upbringing influenced one to adopt the characteristic dress and occupations of the opposite sex, that might be fine, or incredibly deviant. These people might be categorised as various combinations of man and woman. Such refusal to fit into a neat role might cause you to become a healer or shaman, such as the berdache in Southwest American Indian tribes. In most cases, the person would just be considered an odd man or woman. Chromosomal men with anatomically female bodies are just barren women in such places. It didn't cause a true third category of sex to evolve.
I was not aware of the Santo Domingo cases - fascinating! They may well have a special sex category, though you'll notice that after puberty these apparent girl children are now treated as men, and not as true in-betweens.
Peter also criticises my life/death dichotomy, citing as an exception to the Western viewpoint a culture that considers a person sleeping until the funeral rites are performed. I admit that I haven't the faintest idea which one this is, and I haven't seen the program, but I strongly suspect that these people know that the body is dead, even if the funeral rituals are necessary to formalise this for the family, and perhaps for the spirit of the deceased. If you wish to argue that this is a transition state unrecognised by us, I'll cede that (though it's not unlike our feeling that the person doesn't 'seem' dead until we've been to the funeral).
However, after these examples, I think that we actually have some agreement. It is not that I think that all pairings are true, or that I don't think that the God Learners influenced them. I believe that since some pairings are true, the impetus is towards pairing up others. It fits with the real pairs, and makes things easier to remember. I am also certain that several, if not most of these predate the GL's, whatever influence they had later. As for the difference between experience and perception, since each colours the other, I accept your distinction, but think that you are trying to find too fine a line.
As always, I look forward to comments. Alison.
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