[ExI] Strange mystery explained

[Keith Henson]

There is another more popular sort of article here:

https://www.futurity.org/neolithic-y-chromosome-bottleneck-1772632-2/?utm_source=quora&utm_medium=referral

Best wishes,

Keith


On Mon, Jun 4, 2018 at 1:12 PM, Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com> wrote:
> A few years ago there was considerable news about genetic studies that
> at first looked like 17 women were reproducing to every man who did
> so.  There was a lot of discussion but no consensus emerged.
>
> Now a couple of students at Stanford have published a potential
> solution.  How they reached this solution is fascinating in itself.
> However, to cut to the chase, it looks like patrilineal early farming
> groups were killing off each other's males.  This considerably
> diminished the variations of Y chromosomes since when one group got
> the upper hand, it was common for the winners to kill the losers to
> the last man (and boy) and take the young women as booty.  It seems
> this process started when the Neolithic agricultural revolution began
> and ended when violence between patrilineal clans was suppressed by
> Chieftains or a State.
>
> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-04375-6#article-comments
>
> It's not an easy article to read, but worth it.  It's a case where a
> social/cultural invention (agriculture) eventually resulted in a huge
> genetic change. I wonder if there is a signal in that data of how
> often war between the tribes broke out?  This would give us an idea of
> how fast the population reproduced in the early days of agriculture.
>
> The quote from Numbers seems to be backed up by genetics.
>
> Wow.
>
> Keith