That title … the way it is written, sounds like the only accurate answer is … 0 . […] average age at conception […] I’m a programmer. I guess I’m used to literal interpretation.
-9 months since it's conception and not being born
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Study reveals average age at conception for men vs. women over past 250k years
111–120 of 166 posts
Re: Study reveals average age at conception for men vs. women over past 250k years
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
Biased age disparity in marriage is hardly a "fantasy" or even "taboo". I suspect if you looked at e.g. the top quintile of male earners, or those who married more than once, you're liable to see an even more pronounced gap over the aggregate median. Equally as interesting, how do wealthy divorced/widowed women marry afterwards? Poking at US presidents that stood out (i.e. more than 5 years): | President | Born | Spo…
Well yes, there is this image, that the successful older men, has a younger wife (and even younger affairs). But the average men has not. Hence serving the "fantasy" of the target audience. But as far as I observe, this is frowned upon today. It still exists of course, many of the hollywood heros regulary change their 20 year old models for partner, but there is increasing criticism about it. I mean, my partner is 7…
I’m pretty sure the Leonardo DiCaprio’s of the world don’t care about the opinions of chattering spinsters and cat ladies.
Re: Study reveals average age at conception for men vs. women over past 250k years
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
A fundamental tenet of much modern science (and, especially, punditry) is that humans have completed the evolutionary process.
There are no modern scientists who understand evolution and think it can be "completed" or that humans have done so. If you stand by your assertion, please provide evidence.
It is indeed an unusual assertion, but it does bring up some interesting ideas - it seems obvious that the speed of evolutionary change in species is highest whenever the environment changes (especially after various great extinction events associated with drastic change) but in any particular place would settle up in some local optimum (or Nash equilibrium between the related species) after some time of no significant change, so in some way one might say that the evolution is "completed" at that point.
Of course, even for this definition human evolution is absolutely not "completed" at the moment, since however fit/adapted homo sapiens were to the conditions of Africa 200 000 years ago, the last few thousand years have seen enormous changes in our environment to which we definitely haven't adapted yet in the insignificantly small span of 100 or so generations; If the major changes in our social and physical environment would stop today, perhaps we might reach some evolutionary "stable spot" in a 100 000 years (or much more), but right now we haven't even fully adapted to agriculture, much less modern conditions.
Re: Study reveals average age at conception for men vs. women over past 250k years
#114A lot to unpack (read - wildly speculate about) here. 10,000 generations ago. Like the next one but less of a "solved game". 1000 generations ago - Old men coupling with young women reads as small-scale tribal society to me. Polygamy, pride-of-lions. Groups are small enough that village elders control the, uh, means of production. The bottleneck on food is natural stocks. 200-300 generations ago lines up with the daw…
I watch a lot of old movies (30s-40s-50s). A ton of them have a 40s-50s man marrying a 20s woman. No idea if that was societal norm, mens fantasy, or whatever. I have to kind of believe movie execs would want the largest audience and so if 40s-50s men dating 20s women was not appealing to women of the time they'd been losing 1/2 the market. But, maybe these particular movies were the male equivalent of romance novels…
Those are all before birth control and before the maturation of fields like sports, entertainment and computers where young men could command as much money and influence as old industrialists. That probably shifted cultural ideals.
Also those movies are from the days where only a handful of movies were made every year, so the lack of competition meant you could write anything and jam it down people's throats, rather than needing to follow demand.
Re: Study reveals average age at conception for men vs. women over past 250k years
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
Men with harems perfectly explains history's obsession with virgins. 1. No man wanted to raise another's child (as far as evolution is concerned, that doesn't lead to replication of ones own genetic material) 2. Less risk of VD, which would seriously affect your ability to utilise the harem
The number one reason is the same reason women do post birth pelvic floor therapy...
I think that's a secondary benefit
Re: Study reveals average age at conception for men vs. women over past 250k years
#116It seems they used modern human mutation rates, which vary by ~300%, to predict age at reproduction. Since the relationship between this rate in parents and the offspring even a few generations back does not seem to be particularly well understood, it seems they would have a hard time reaching back very far into history with this analysis and claiming any accuracy at all. To me it reads like someone bought a cheap e.…
This point was already addressed in the research. It is tiring to see this low effort comments on every research thread, thinking that the researchers are idiots and there is no need to read the article to reject it.
Not everyone subscribes to Science Advances. I can't even get their page to load. Humor us and try to explain your thoughts instead of complaining about the "effort" of the GP, please.
The answer to GP's objection is not explained in the linked article, as far as I can tell.
The writers of a research paper have a vested interest in seeming smart and displaying their findings as a novel contribution to the greater corpus of research. It's better to think skeptically and critically about any new research paper than to accept it as fact.
Re: Study reveals average age at conception for men vs. women over past 250k years
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
If a woman bears many children throughout her life, you can still have a situation where the first pregnancy occurs much earlier than today's average yet the overall conception average is roughly same as nowadays.
Even 200 years ago, it was common for women to give birth 10 times. I bet 100k years ago, some women were pregnant yearly, from teenage to menopause.
If you can survive to menopause.
The average of 24+ years old appears way too high, as it was common in the old extant cultures to bear from age 14 or even less.
Re: Study reveals average age at conception for men vs. women over past 250k years
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
This point was already addressed in the research. It is tiring to see this low effort comments on every research thread, thinking that the researchers are idiots and there is no need to read the article to reject it.
Can you point to the text that addresses this? The closest thing I see in the article is this paragraph: Children's DNA inherited from their parents contains roughly 25 to 75 new mutations, which allows scientists to compare the parents and offspring, and then to classify the kind of mutation that occurred. When looking at mutations in thousands of children, IU researchers noticed a pattern: The kinds of mutations th…
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Re: Study reveals average age at conception for men vs. women over past 250k years
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even 200 years ago, it was common for women to give birth 10 times. I bet 100k years ago, some women were pregnant yearly, from teenage to menopause.
If you can survive to menopause. The average of 24+ years old appears way too high, as it was common in the old extant cultures to bear from age 14 or even less.
In the past the age of female fertility was higher than today, mostly due to nutrition. Age of 14 was more of an exception than a rule, it used to be 16 or more. Also even 24 is a right average for 14 and 34, most women even today can have children at 34.
Re: Study reveals average age at conception for men vs. women over past 250k years
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not parent commenter, but what can be argued is that evolutions “rules” are way different to us then to any other animal (except the ones we closely handle ourselves). E.g. healing people, far smaller infant death rates, no basically no food scarcity from natural causes, etc. Our selection process is societal, not “natural”.
> Our selection process is societal, not “natural” That's culture, not evolution. It's absolutely natural (in every sense of the word) and there are biological components. Outside of that, though, there is also physical natural selection that occurs. Human "hardware" is evolving along with the "software".
That argument will quickly devolve into just https://xkcd.com/435/ , though.
But the point is, evolution is not a “thing”, it is an observation explained by selection pressures, an emergent property if you will. The characteristics/statistics for people are way different than any other wild animal, so I think it is fair to attribute that to society vs nature.