"Incan men were not in the process of becoming conscious when Pizarro encountered them (whatever Jaynes says contrary)."
So interestingly, the Inca's had this belief that when the emperor died his mummy would still be wheeled out as an immortal (but not unable to speak) Lord. And it would be a female partner that would act as interpreter.
Similarly: "As the empire expanded, the role of the most powerful Inca mummies—known as illapa—grew beyond simple ancestor worship. When an Inca emperor died, his successor inherited his power, but not his worldly belongings; these were understood to follow the dead emperor into the afterlife. His family members would then tend to his mummified body, ensuring he was kept in luxurious style even in death.
When the illapa were taken out and assembled together, the new Inca emperor would sometimes show his own power by taking his place and sitting stone-like among his dead predecessors. But these powerful Inca mummies weren’t just male, Heaney emphasizes; instead, *they were often preserved in male-female pairs. In order to claim power, a would-be emperor had to marry a prominent Inca woman, sometimes even a relative*
“There was a duality in both Inca and Andean understanding of the universe—that it is male and female together, with their respective powers and abilities, that creates the empire,” he says."
That is a remarkably similar to Egyptian treatment of the pharaoh, thanks for sharing.
In the previous post I argued that Bicameral Breakdown (or The Fall) also required genetic change, or in other words it would not have been 0-1 in a single generation. One of my primary issues with Jaynes is he argues there was 0 introspection as late as Egyptians building pyramids. I think introspection led to recursion, which in turn led to our flexible thinking. I think it's likely we got to flexible thinking and started building megaliths before shedding parts of the bicameral mindset. I mean, many people still do hear voices (especially if you include childhood imaginary friends); we still have the imprint.
I'm on board with the idea of women leading the ritual shift into consciousness, but I have doubts it required Y chromosome changes to enact. I think what we're seeing here is effect, not causal.
The null hypothesis I see is that the Holocene involved warfare much like historical warfare, which tended to kill men disproportionately and reward their survivors with outsized opportunities to breed, but moreso because we were very new at it. The 6kya massive swing could still be triggered by a quasi-memetic shift to consciousness, as your snake theory posits. The tribes achieving consciousness would then typically win in violent warfare with non-conscious tribes, slaying their men and capturing their women.
That 6kya peak is certainly still dramatic evidence of a incredibly sharp change in a short period of time, which fits the young consciousness hypothesis from your snake theory well. Also fits the creationist narrative that the world started 6kya disturbingly tightly, in a way that implies maybe there's some poetic truth to that, too.
From a timing perspective, 6kya may work better as an effect, tbh. One problem with the effect model is that the bottleneck is so consistent, and my understanding of social organization is that it is quite path dependent. It seems there would be some regions that would avoid the bottleneck if it were due to changing social organization because there were so many different social organizations. Did they all include massive (and fairly short-lived) sex-linked reproductive differences? Looking forward to more papers on the subject, which I assume will come at some point. Was there a mid-Holocene bottleneck in Australia as well? (There is a somewhat related It would be interesting to correlate that with the spread of snake worship and the Pama-Nyungen language family, which can both be dated fairly well. If there is a bottleneck, does come before or after those cultural changes?
Also, wait for the piece on the Y chromosome and theory of mind :) A few lines of evidence says the two are related
So yeah, lots of uncertainty, and I hope other people (like yourself) provide input on whether this makes more sense as a cause or effect.
Reading this article had me wonder if the Y Chromosome selection bottleneck could be explained by the idea of "proactive aggression" discussed in The Goodness Paradox. Could be be an interesting synthesis. Perhaps it played out like the snake-venom cult gradually indoctrinates men. The ones who navigate the ritual and become more prosocial then band together and commit acts of planned murder against the more violent anti-social men. Perhaps they even use threats of violence to force the ritual on men, and the ones who fail to develop the "analogue I" as a result are then murdered. Kinda dovetails with the spread of the male rite-of-passage idea too. All wild speculation. Any thoughts?
I haven't read The Goodness Paradox (though it looks great), but Antonio Benítez-Burraco has a 4-stage model of self-domestication (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0271530920300288), where proactive aggression only comes into play in the last 10,000 years. This fits really well with both the Y chromosome stuff, as well as the Snake Cult timeline. Essentially men come into their own, and their first order of business is to stage a coup to depose women, and kill any weak men. Myths reflect this as well. The Greeks have their 4 ages of man. The Golden Age is essentially Eden. No aging or death, and living at one with nature. Agriculture is introduced in the Silver Age. The men are idiots, dependent on women. Then comes the Bronze Age, which would correspond with organized violence. Then comes the Iron Age, with more of the same (but with better technology). Or take the Bible, the first generation after Adam and Eve you get Cain and Abel: the invention of murder. If you haven't read my two most recent posts on diffusion, which include a bunch of other examples of men staging a coup against women. On the right, you see that transition glorified to this day: https://twitter.com/NapoleonBonabot/status/1568753353748004866
Relating it to the Y chromosome, it's weird that the bottleneck is so early. Before the invention of the horse-raider pastoralist lifestyle, or bronze weapons. Before the spread of Proto-Indo-Europeans. These people came AFTER the bottleneck, which makes it so surprising. But maybe that is just the widescale stuff. Maybe violence increased locally (and everywhere) 10-5kya as men became better at planning for the future.
>Perhaps they even use threats of violence to force the ritual on men, and the ones who fail to develop the "analogue I" as a result are then murdered.
At least genetically, this isn't required. Those without an analogue I could just be 5% worse at gathering food and securing mates which would be a huge disadvantage over several generations.
I'm interested in connected the Y chromosome bottleneck to EToC for the same reason I went after the diffusion of pronouns: it's good to make predictions that can falsify or limit a model. Y chromosome selection in the last 10,000 years is the most extreme form of EToC; I agree that it doesn't necessarily have to be part of EToC
As for a change in temperature, it doesn't make sense because it applies to entire continents. The difference in temperature is greater between North Africa and Siberia than it is between the Ice Age and now. So if it had to do with end of ice age climate change, why aren't the effects more regional, or present when humans expanded from Africa to Siberia?
One of the hypothesis for agriculture being invented a bunch of times in the last 10,000 years is that the climate was relatively stable. Historically speaking, during the Neolithic, it was changing *less* than usual.
Selection wouldn't mean mass graves. Could have dramatic reduction in genetic diversity with just a 1% increased survival of those with Y chromosomes conducive to self-awareness, recursive language, or whatever else became important in the Neolithic. No need for mass violence. That is, however, what other models use to explain the bottleneck.
"Incan men were not in the process of becoming conscious when Pizarro encountered them (whatever Jaynes says contrary)."
So interestingly, the Inca's had this belief that when the emperor died his mummy would still be wheeled out as an immortal (but not unable to speak) Lord. And it would be a female partner that would act as interpreter.
Similarly: "As the empire expanded, the role of the most powerful Inca mummies—known as illapa—grew beyond simple ancestor worship. When an Inca emperor died, his successor inherited his power, but not his worldly belongings; these were understood to follow the dead emperor into the afterlife. His family members would then tend to his mummified body, ensuring he was kept in luxurious style even in death.
When the illapa were taken out and assembled together, the new Inca emperor would sometimes show his own power by taking his place and sitting stone-like among his dead predecessors. But these powerful Inca mummies weren’t just male, Heaney emphasizes; instead, *they were often preserved in male-female pairs. In order to claim power, a would-be emperor had to marry a prominent Inca woman, sometimes even a relative*
“There was a duality in both Inca and Andean understanding of the universe—that it is male and female together, with their respective powers and abilities, that creates the empire,” he says."
That is a remarkably similar to Egyptian treatment of the pharaoh, thanks for sharing.
In the previous post I argued that Bicameral Breakdown (or The Fall) also required genetic change, or in other words it would not have been 0-1 in a single generation. One of my primary issues with Jaynes is he argues there was 0 introspection as late as Egyptians building pyramids. I think introspection led to recursion, which in turn led to our flexible thinking. I think it's likely we got to flexible thinking and started building megaliths before shedding parts of the bicameral mindset. I mean, many people still do hear voices (especially if you include childhood imaginary friends); we still have the imprint.
I'm on board with the idea of women leading the ritual shift into consciousness, but I have doubts it required Y chromosome changes to enact. I think what we're seeing here is effect, not causal.
The null hypothesis I see is that the Holocene involved warfare much like historical warfare, which tended to kill men disproportionately and reward their survivors with outsized opportunities to breed, but moreso because we were very new at it. The 6kya massive swing could still be triggered by a quasi-memetic shift to consciousness, as your snake theory posits. The tribes achieving consciousness would then typically win in violent warfare with non-conscious tribes, slaying their men and capturing their women.
That 6kya peak is certainly still dramatic evidence of a incredibly sharp change in a short period of time, which fits the young consciousness hypothesis from your snake theory well. Also fits the creationist narrative that the world started 6kya disturbingly tightly, in a way that implies maybe there's some poetic truth to that, too.
From a timing perspective, 6kya may work better as an effect, tbh. One problem with the effect model is that the bottleneck is so consistent, and my understanding of social organization is that it is quite path dependent. It seems there would be some regions that would avoid the bottleneck if it were due to changing social organization because there were so many different social organizations. Did they all include massive (and fairly short-lived) sex-linked reproductive differences? Looking forward to more papers on the subject, which I assume will come at some point. Was there a mid-Holocene bottleneck in Australia as well? (There is a somewhat related It would be interesting to correlate that with the spread of snake worship and the Pama-Nyungen language family, which can both be dated fairly well. If there is a bottleneck, does come before or after those cultural changes?
Also, wait for the piece on the Y chromosome and theory of mind :) A few lines of evidence says the two are related
So yeah, lots of uncertainty, and I hope other people (like yourself) provide input on whether this makes more sense as a cause or effect.
Looking forward to it. Whether or not I fully agree with the conclusions, this is some fascinating thought-provoking stuff. Keep at it!
Reading this article had me wonder if the Y Chromosome selection bottleneck could be explained by the idea of "proactive aggression" discussed in The Goodness Paradox. Could be be an interesting synthesis. Perhaps it played out like the snake-venom cult gradually indoctrinates men. The ones who navigate the ritual and become more prosocial then band together and commit acts of planned murder against the more violent anti-social men. Perhaps they even use threats of violence to force the ritual on men, and the ones who fail to develop the "analogue I" as a result are then murdered. Kinda dovetails with the spread of the male rite-of-passage idea too. All wild speculation. Any thoughts?
I haven't read The Goodness Paradox (though it looks great), but Antonio Benítez-Burraco has a 4-stage model of self-domestication (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0271530920300288), where proactive aggression only comes into play in the last 10,000 years. This fits really well with both the Y chromosome stuff, as well as the Snake Cult timeline. Essentially men come into their own, and their first order of business is to stage a coup to depose women, and kill any weak men. Myths reflect this as well. The Greeks have their 4 ages of man. The Golden Age is essentially Eden. No aging or death, and living at one with nature. Agriculture is introduced in the Silver Age. The men are idiots, dependent on women. Then comes the Bronze Age, which would correspond with organized violence. Then comes the Iron Age, with more of the same (but with better technology). Or take the Bible, the first generation after Adam and Eve you get Cain and Abel: the invention of murder. If you haven't read my two most recent posts on diffusion, which include a bunch of other examples of men staging a coup against women. On the right, you see that transition glorified to this day: https://twitter.com/NapoleonBonabot/status/1568753353748004866
Relating it to the Y chromosome, it's weird that the bottleneck is so early. Before the invention of the horse-raider pastoralist lifestyle, or bronze weapons. Before the spread of Proto-Indo-Europeans. These people came AFTER the bottleneck, which makes it so surprising. But maybe that is just the widescale stuff. Maybe violence increased locally (and everywhere) 10-5kya as men became better at planning for the future.
>Perhaps they even use threats of violence to force the ritual on men, and the ones who fail to develop the "analogue I" as a result are then murdered.
At least genetically, this isn't required. Those without an analogue I could just be 5% worse at gathering food and securing mates which would be a huge disadvantage over several generations.
I'm interested in connected the Y chromosome bottleneck to EToC for the same reason I went after the diffusion of pronouns: it's good to make predictions that can falsify or limit a model. Y chromosome selection in the last 10,000 years is the most extreme form of EToC; I agree that it doesn't necessarily have to be part of EToC
As for a change in temperature, it doesn't make sense because it applies to entire continents. The difference in temperature is greater between North Africa and Siberia than it is between the Ice Age and now. So if it had to do with end of ice age climate change, why aren't the effects more regional, or present when humans expanded from Africa to Siberia?
One of the hypothesis for agriculture being invented a bunch of times in the last 10,000 years is that the climate was relatively stable. Historically speaking, during the Neolithic, it was changing *less* than usual.
Selection wouldn't mean mass graves. Could have dramatic reduction in genetic diversity with just a 1% increased survival of those with Y chromosomes conducive to self-awareness, recursive language, or whatever else became important in the Neolithic. No need for mass violence. That is, however, what other models use to explain the bottleneck.