01-29-2005, 01:57 PM
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#46 (permalink)
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Sky Piercer
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I just came across the following passage in the book that I am currently reading. It confirms the suspicions I stated in my previous posts.
Quote:
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In traditional societies genetic fitness of individuals is generally but not universally correlated with status. In chiefdoms and despotic states especially, dominant males have easy access to multiple women and produce more children, often in spectacular disproportion. Throughout history, despots (absolute rulers with arbitrary powers of life and death over their subjects) commanded access to hundreds or even thousands of women. Some states used explicit rules of distribution, as in Inea Peru, where by law petty chiefs were given seven women, governors of a hundred people eight, leaders of a thousand people fifteen, and lords and kings no fewer than seven hundred. Commoners took what was left over. The fathering of children was commensurately lopsided. In modern industrial states, the relationship between status and genetic fitness is more ambiguous. <I>The data show that high male status is correlated with greater longevity and copulation with more women, but not necessarily the fathering of more children.</I>
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- E. O. Wilson, Consilience (emphasis mine).
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