{"id":102077,"date":"2026-07-25T01:00:06","date_gmt":"2026-07-25T05:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=102077"},"modified":"2026-07-24T10:45:49","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T14:45:49","slug":"qotd-the-major-evolutionary-pressure-is-other-humans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2026\/07\/25\/qotd-the-major-evolutionary-pressure-is-other-humans\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: &#8220;&#8230; the major evolutionary pressure is other humans&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right; padding: 0px 0px 10px 25px\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-48672\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png 400w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-50x50.png 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a>One of the grand joys of being ignorant on a subject is that it&#8217;s possible to project one&#8217;s own insistences onto the findings of others. This explains Gazza on wealth, Sir Lenworth on reparations and Spud on any aspect of economics. Given the fun they&#8217;re having why not <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/cremieuxrecueil\/status\/2044488209350987867\" target=\"_blank\">partake<\/a>?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>The Reich Lab article on genetic selection in Europe over the last 10,000 years is finally online, and it includes such interesting results as:<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>&mdash; Intelligence has increased<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>&mdash; People got lighter<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>&mdash; Mental disorders became less common<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Clearly, given Gazza, Sir Lenworth and Spud less common is not a synonym for does not happen. But to proceed to my own ignorance:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>In a sort-of confirmation of the Cochran-Harpending thesis, they also found that, for several traits, the intensity of selection appears higher more recently in time.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Specifically, selection intensity increased in the Bronze Age compared to the Neolithic, then it stabilized!<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>At which point I get to project my own mental wibbles onto the results of others.<\/p>\n<p>Now, think of that deep history. Up until agriculture &mdash; roughly that Bronze Age &mdash; the driver of human evolution was the wolves trying to eat us. OK, mebbe the <em>staphilococci<\/em>, the crocs, hippoes, Venus Human Traps and so on. We were, as with most species, not really competing against ourselves but against those who saw us as either food or as competitors for an ecological niche.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, yes, I know, this isn&#8217;t true but it&#8217;s a reasonable pencil sketch start to an argument.<\/p>\n<p>OK, so now Bronze Age. We&#8217;ve got agriculture. We also, at this exact same time, see human populations change quite a lot. There&#8217;s a massive expansion of certain Y chromosomes and much less of maternal mitochondria. You know, the blokes from over the hill come in, kill all the men and shag the birds. We&#8217;ve &mdash; perhaps through agriculture, perhaps through bronze, perhaps through the simple absence of any more <em>terra nullius<\/em> &mdash; made the major threat to human other humans.<\/p>\n<p>Or, of course, given the genetics here we could say that the major threat to male humans is now other male humans but that doesn&#8217;t make much difference to the argument &mdash; men, after all, the only ones who ever do anything.<\/p>\n<p>Well, if the major threat is now humans then that means that the major evolutionary pressure is other humans. And they&#8217;re fighting with the same weapons we are. Same basic DNA possibilities, roughly the same physique, about the same IQ and on and on. This is going to have much more pressure on that evolution than being chased by a hippo is &mdash; that&#8217;s a one time win or lose event. Whether your genes persist is now a permanent battle with others who share near all of your capabilities. The importance being that word &#8220;near&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, I do know that it&#8217;s possible to make much the same argument for any species and their access to breeding. But the thing we&#8217;re interested in explaining here is why did this speed up in humans at one point? I claim that&#8217;s it&#8217;s because of the above &mdash; the rough settlement of decent agricultural land, worldwide, (or in the case here, in Europe. This doesn&#8217;t apply to Wales, say, or Scotland, which explains both of them now neatly) means that the competitor is other humans, not the more general environment. We&#8217;ve changed the evolutionary pressure. We&#8217;re no longer trying to outhink a pig &mdash; something Gazza, Spud etc often don&#8217;t &mdash; but that other bastard with his eye on our field and our wife.<\/p>\n<p>So, that&#8217;s the thing. Human evolution sped up because it was the other bastard humans we were competing with, not the general environment. QED, I&#8217;m right and go boil your heads.<\/p>\n<p>Tim Worstall, <a href=\"https:\/\/timworstall.substack.com\/p\/human-beings-were-the-enemy-in-human\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Human Beings Were The Enemy In Human Evolution&#8221;, <em>It&#8217;s all obvious or trivial except &#8230;<\/em><\/a>, 2026-04-24.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the grand joys of being ignorant on a subject is that it&#8217;s possible to project one&#8217;s own insistences onto the findings of others. This explains Gazza on wealth, Sir Lenworth on reparations and Spud on any aspect of economics. Given the fun they&#8217;re having why not partake? The Reich Lab article on genetic [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7,57,41,16],"tags":[1139,130,827,513],"class_list":["post-102077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-humour","category-quotations","category-science","tag-bronzeage","tag-evolution","tag-genetics","tag-research"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-qyp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102077"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102077\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":103828,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102077\/revisions\/103828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}