Clan Wars Blamed for Ancient Collapse of the Male Chromosome • Hacker News Board

Re: Clan Wars Blamed for Ancient Collapse of the Male Chromosome

#21

Post by vanderZwan » Wed, Jun 13, 2018, 1:05 PM UTC

nerdponx wrote: post #16

shawn wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For everyone having trouble accessing the article, here's a paste: https://pastebin.com/raw/S229NyJW Actually, it's interesting reading an article with just text and nothing else. It kind of makes me want a text-based browser mode that works on modern sites.

The "reader mode" in Safari and Firefox is pretty good.

Now if only we could directly open articles in text mode, and save ourselves the pain of loading (or at least rendering) all the crap first. Like a right-click menu option next to the "Open in new tab/window/private tab" options

Re: Clan Wars Blamed for Ancient Collapse of the Male Chromosome

#22

Post by dubhrosa » Wed, Jun 13, 2018, 1:11 PM UTC

Why is the war hypothesis considered more likely than say a widespread, long lived contagious disease that had significantly higher mortality in males than females? If there was a period of widespread warfare for sustained periods, it's hard to see how "clans" would continue to engage in warfare beyond say 50% loss of the fighting forces. Wouldn't some women have joined the clan fighting forces also if it was an existential struggle? Why wouldn't clans have submitted to their conquerors and joined forces against common enemies - which was the pattern in many historical accounts of widespread warfare.

Re: Clan Wars Blamed for Ancient Collapse of the Male Chromosome

#23

Post by soneca » Wed, Jun 13, 2018, 1:21 PM UTC

wcoenen wrote: post #3

Redirects to history.nl for me, with no article to be found. (I'm not even in the Netherlands, and my browser doesn't ask for Dutch via Accept-Language.)

Redirects to www.seuhistory.com for me (brazilian version of the History Channel's site). This site is terrible. I tried to read another article from US (i assume) version and it is impossible. It redirects to your localized site (where there are different articles and posts) and doesn't let you choose.

Horrible UX

Re: Clan Wars Blamed for Ancient Collapse of the Male Chromosome

#24

Post by debacle » Wed, Jun 13, 2018, 1:23 PM UTC

Those Y shaped chromosomes in the splash art made my eye twitch. For anyone curious, your Y chromosome is not Y shaped.

Re: Clan Wars Blamed for Ancient Collapse of the Male Chromosome

#25

Post by mazsa » Wed, Jun 13, 2018, 1:28 PM UTC

Original: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-04375-6

Re: Clan Wars Blamed for Ancient Collapse of the Male Chromosome

#26

Post by fifnir » Wed, Jun 13, 2018, 1:28 PM UTC

Great, I get redirected to "https://canalhistoria.es/" instead of the article.

Smart devs who can read IPs strike again...

Re: Clan Wars Blamed for Ancient Collapse of the Male Chromosome

#27

Post by hashkb » Wed, Jun 13, 2018, 1:28 PM UTC

debacle wrote: post #24

Those Y shaped chromosomes in the splash art made my eye twitch. For anyone curious, your Y chromosome is not Y shaped.

And the helix in the background...

At least the cave painting of the battle proves the research is valid.

Re: Clan Wars Blamed for Ancient Collapse of the Male Chromosome

#28

Post by hashkb » Wed, Jun 13, 2018, 1:29 PM UTC

dubhrosa wrote: post #22

Why is the war hypothesis considered more likely than say a widespread, long lived contagious disease that had significantly higher mortality in males than females? If there was a period of widespread warfare for sustained periods, it's hard to see how "clans" would continue to engage in warfare beyond say 50% loss of the fighting forces. Wouldn't some women have joined the clan fighting forces also if it was an exis…

Well, there are more wars than plagues in recorded history. Also, I'm not familiar with many male-only plagues.

Re: Clan Wars Blamed for Ancient Collapse of the Male Chromosome

#29

Post by Spooky23 » Wed, Jun 13, 2018, 1:31 PM UTC

kentosi wrote: post #12

I'm not an expert in this domain, but something seems a little off to me. Are we saying that all male populations around the planet 5000 to 7000 years ago were engaged in serious clan wars, or are we just focused on the Asian and/or African continents? What about populations in Australia, the Pacific Islands and other places?

I think the argument is more that primitive societies were, well, primitive, and the societies that didn’t advance were wiped out.

Remember that women had a shelf-life in those days due to childbirth mortality. They were a hot commodity (literally) and were taken as property to be married/raped.

The men were redundant, either put to the sword or put to work.

Re: Clan Wars Blamed for Ancient Collapse of the Male Chromosome

#30

Post by tom_ » Wed, Jun 13, 2018, 1:32 PM UTC

stonewhite wrote: post #2

While I do think this is an interesting argument, I fear that this may somehow be spinned into the toxic masculinity narrative. edit: I'm getting downvoted for adding to an argument with an unpopular opinion? It would be more educative of people responding to me to tell how I'm wrong, instead of just downvoting.

Perhaps people just don't believe you'll believe it when they tell you. Perhaps they instead suspect you will argue the toss, back and forth, endlessly, like the proverbial muddy pig fight (that only the pig enjoys).

This belief could be wrong, but would it better explain the behaviour?