[ExI] The Great Culling

[Rafal Smigrodzki]

On Mon, Jun 14, 2021 at 7:13 AM Stuart LaForge via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
>
> In fact, all but three of the geographic region/culture on the graph
> experienced the Culling almost immediately after domesticating a
> specific animal. The East and South East Asians were culled right
> after they domesticated chickens and pigs. The Andean people in South
> America experienced the Culling right after they domesticated the
> llama and the alpaca. Chickens, pigs, and llamas have no obvious use
> in warfare, yet nonetheless presaged the Culling in their respective
> cultures.
>

### Animal domestication is a proxy for farming and high-density
settlements. A transition from hunting-gathering to farming and animal
husbandry will reduce genetic diversity in two ways: Firstly, the initially
small farmer founding population will explode in numbers thanks to being
able to harvest a much higher fraction of available biomass per square
mile, and their Y lineages will simply outnumber the hunter-gatherer
lineages (this is a relative reduction of lineage diversity due to founder
effects). Secondly, living in high-density settlements accelerates
evolution of cooperative behaviors, especially the ability to avoid
intragroup violence (elimination of jerks started long before agriculture
but high-density living accelerated it significantly because of the
significantly higher psychological stress associated with this lifestyle -
the calm ones survive relatively better when people are cooped-up). Such
highly cooperative and numerous farmers can wear the less organized and
less numerous hunter-gatherers down over time, but of course they will kill
only men, and keep women as property. This will be an absolute reduction in
Y lineage diversity.

Rafal
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