Eusociality in Humans

Betzig, Laura

doi:10.1017/9781108131797.005

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 41 publications

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“…Instead there was unmarried, or celibate, help; court servants put off becoming parents, in order to help others reproduce . But across the Middle Ages, reproductive variance decreased ( Betzig, 1995 , 2020a , 2020b ).…”

Section: Sexmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Note on Religion

Betzig

2021

Evol Psychol

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At the beginning of our era, after a battle on the Ionian Sea, Antony and Cleopatra took their own lives in Egypt, and Augustus was made an imperator by his senators . Roman emperors had sexual access to those senators’ daughters and wives, and to thousands of slaves. But they ran governments with help from their cubicularii, castrated civil servants. And they enforced an Imperial Cult: subjects made sacrifices to the emperor's genius, or procreative spirit; or they got disemboweled by wild animals, or decapitated. Then Constantine moved off from the Tiber to the Bosporus, and Europe was ruled over by a few. Lords covered the countryside with bastards, but passed on estates on to their oldest sons. Daughters and younger sons were put away in the Church, where some became parents, but most were reproductively suppressed: they were ἄνανδρος or anandros, or without a husband, and ἄγαμος or agamos, or without a wife. Heretics who objected got burned at the stake. Then the Crusaders expanded Europe to the East, and Columbus went off to the West, and politics, sex and religion became more democratic. Power was more widely distributed; more men and women had families if they wanted them, and monasteries emptied out. The Reformation followed the Roman Church, which had followed the Imperial Cult.

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Section: Sexmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Note on Religion

Betzig

2021

Evol Psychol

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Natural Selection and Human Emotions

Betzig

2024

The Oxford Handbook of Evolution and the Emotions

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Natural selection is differential reproduction. Demographic and ethnographic, historical and genetic evidence suggest that, over the course of our evolutionary past, members of H. sapiens varied in reproductive success. Selection for emotions and other adaptations underlying intrasexual and intersexual competition should have been strong. In foragers across continents, from Africa to Australia, reproductive variance among women often was limited to single digits, though reproductive variance occasionally reached double digits among men. Those numbers were higher in more sedentary societies. In the first empires, from Asia to the Americas, emperors consistently left behind hundreds of sons; and genetic evidence suggests that the effective breeding population of women was greater than the effective breeding population of men, by a factor of 17 to 1. Adaptations have developed, and have been put to use, in order to promote reproductive success.

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Eusociality in Humans

Cited by 2 publications

References 41 publications

A Note on Religion

A Note on Religion

Natural Selection and Human Emotions

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