Gracias, and macho was probably the wrong word. I really do mean those who dominate a social situation. I don't think it's particularly necessary to display desired strength etc.
Your hypothesis is a reasonable one, and fairly common. Let's keep in that realm of reasoning. Lets remember that agriculture beat hunting. Or in other words, 1,000 poorly fed, weak, small, sickly agriculturalists could destroy their hunter gatherer rivals. 70 well fed, strong, large, nearly-Olympian level athleticism in some tribes, just couldn't face the numbers. Numerical superiority of the united.
That's true, but the agricultural impact on human evolution has only had a couple thousand years to affect us. That's gotta have a bit of an influence on our biology, but not much.
We were primates living in forests, swinging around trees for millions of years, and then (and I'm not sure how long this went on for exactly but I think it was a significant amount of time) ventured out onto the savannah and began hunting and living in packs.
The dynamics changed then, when we abandoned living in the trees and eating fruit, and then we abandoned hunting in packs, and the dynamics changed again, but those 2 first periods, and all the ones before them, lasted millions of years. Agriculture and basic technology is fairly new compared to that and we must be very slowly moving away from those .. sorts of urges that our ancestors used to display, but I don't think enough time has passed for them to no longer play a major role in how we interact with eachother, members of the opposite gender, and how we mate. Cause really, that's why we're all here: to find a mate and get it on .. biologically speaking, that urge is one of the strongest we have
Neomega said:
It's kind of logical, but most animals cannot influence other animals' cognitive functions through mass media and culture.
You never see a monkey insisting on a diamond ring before doing monkey business.
Maybe my above response to Hydro helps explain my position a bit better. We are very unique as animals for sure, but that doesn't change the fact that in the end, we are animals.
Maybe our methods of studying animals then are flawed because we designed them to not fully include certain aspects of animal-ness that only humans exhibit.. and as such there is a bit of an artificial feeling distinction there. But either way I think that there hasn't been enough time for evolution to kick most of our animalistic urges out of us.. yet. It's slowly happening and already things like diamond rings add yet another layer over those basic animal instincts.. I think we will continue moving further away from them, but they will remain there in some capacity - like for example the centre of
our brain still clings to its reptilian origins and until we have the technology to alter humanity in crazy ways, it probably always will.
For those who disagree with my use of the term "Alpha Male", I was initially thinking of it in the context of that tribal group hunting in a pack - and the women waiting back home, tending to the kids. That sort of thing happened over and over and over, way more often than all of recorded human history. The word is a lot more complicated now and those terms might not apply, but I think a lot of the same basic dynamics are at play. It's just harder to see them because there are so many new layers added to the human experience.
I haven't really had much time to post lately - it's been really busy at work. I've missed huge chunks of conversation here.. I just haven't had time. It has given me lots of time to think about all this though, thus the rather.. elaborate seeming response to you guys above.
Maybe that's a bit too abstract for a "nice guy" conversation, but I really think the roots of some of the dynamics people see with that stem from some of the things I'm rambling on about
edit: This is pretty much my approach to OPs initial question (I haven't seen it in a while but I think I remember what it is):
Let's say that the "nice guy" vs "arse who gets girls" situation is thought to occur in some species of animal (not human). It might be happening, it might not, who knows. How would David Attenborough figure out if it's happening and what's causing it?
He would probably study the behaviour and say something like "And here we can see the human female attracting males by moving her voluptuous figure on the dance floor to the rhythm of the bass drum. The males will approach her carefully and take turns performing a ritual mating dance. The female has many variables to consider, but confidence, dance moves, and choice of garment play significant roles in this complex social interaction that is not yet fully understood"
And that's really the angle I'm getting at: What would David Attenborough say? How would he analyze us and the weird crap we do? Cause we're animals whether you like it or not. We're going to do "animal" things. We do other things too, but we poop, screw, eat, feel satisfied, etc. like most other animals as well. Obviously there are many different types of women as well, so I hope nobody thinks I am trying to say "All women are like this" or "All jocks are like that" or whatever. There's plenty of variety in our species, that's what makes it so amazing - but also much harder to study and figure out.
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