Don't write men off: The history of humanity is the history of man, not of woman

Tyrael · #1 15th-December-2007

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Don't write men off: The history of humanity is the history of man, not of woman

By MICHAEL HANLON - Last updated at 23:28pm on 14th December 2007

Try to name history's top ten women artists, scientists, composers, dictators, heroines or explorers. You can probably trawl your mind and come up with a few examples - especially in those categories involving humane work.

I can think of Marie Curie, Rosamund "DNA" Franklin and the astronomer Jill Tarter (who runs an alien-detection institute and discovered dwarf stars). We've had Boudicca (vanquisher of the Romans) and Margaret Thatcher (who gave the Argentines an equally bloody nose). Also, arguably, our three greatest monarchs have been queens, not kings.

But, by and large, the inescapable conclusion is that the history of humanity is the history of man, not of woman.

For every great woman there have been 100 - even 1,000 - great men in the same field.

This is, of course, a contentious thesis, but a new book by anthropologist Desmond Morris attempts not only to explain why this is so, but also to contest that those reports of the death of masculinity (trumpeted by so many feminist thinkers) have almost certainly been exaggerated.

The Naked Man takes a (perhaps unfashionable) look at the triumph of the human male - and examines the wonder of evolution that is the male body.

Morris's study could not have come at a more opportune time, as the very concept of masculinity is being derided on so many fronts. Male traits such as aggression, singlemindedness, linear-thinking, devotion to facts and love of competition are under attack in today's femininised world.

Above all, Morris reminds us that much of what we consider the modern world could have come about only thanks to the talents of the male mind.

He starts by revisiting the thesis he first expounded back in 1967 with his seminal work The Naked Ape. While the reality of humanity's animal lineage and our kinship to the other primates had been clear for more than a century, it was this book that brought home to the public just how rooted in our Stone Age past and in the ways of life on the African savanna modern humans are.

Put simply, although our society has evolved tremendously since early humans were fighting for a living on the African planes, our bodies - and more importantly the way our brains are wired together - have not.

In every one of us - men and women - there lurks a fierce hunter-gatherer designed by evolution to survive on the semi-arid grasslands of East Africa, in direct competition with the great carnivores such as the lion and leopard.

Like the baboons, our monkey-cousins with whom we share an ecological link, the most crucial development in the evolution of homo sapiens was learning tribal living and co-operation. By working together, our ancestors could out-hunt even the fiercest predators and avoid being eaten.

Added to this, Man's superior intelligence put us at an evolutionary advantage, according to Morris. But the growth of a huge brain has its costs - our minds take a lot of energy to run. Even so, the benefits were immense.

Alongside big brains, we developed language and tools and mastered the use of fire. Man became the most effective and deadliest hunter the world had ever seen - far more deadly than the greatest Tyrannosaur or sabre-toothed tiger. Armed with a few spears, a group of human hunters could easily defeat any animal.

Next, Morris takes the argument further to explain the dominance of men over women.

Hunting, he argues, was a dangerous, high- octane pursuit. It made little sense for the females to put themselves in harm's way - they were far more valuable to the tribe's future than men because, of course, human survival depended upon their fertility,

So men, who were expendable, went out with the spears while the women stayed behind - a pattern that (minus the spears) has persisted long after our hunter-gatherer days were over.

As a result, the male brain became progressively more adventurous, more aggressive and more cunning.

Around 10,000 years ago, the human male was perhaps at the pinnacle of his powers. Totally in command, the alpha-hunter, with a quick mind and an athletic body to match, was the world's most powerful animal, dominant over all other species and over his fellow humans.

However, this supremacy started to change with the advent of farming. Once food could be grown to order, rather than chased or gathered, men lost their once-great raison d'etre.

The change to an agrarian society took place so quickly that the mental make-up of the male hunters could not evolve fast enough to keep up. Indeed, they have not caught up to this day.

But male humans are nothing if not adaptable. Sport-hunting was quickly invented to take the place of the real thing and to keep the male hunting brain occupied. The importance of the hunt to pre-industrial societies cannot be overestimated and this was reflected in the fact that some of the toughest laws and most severe punishments in feudal Britain were for trespassing and poaching on noble hunting grounds.

But for most men, the reality was that the thrill of the chase had become the drudgery of the farmyard. Now, the human male was faced with a new challenge - to find an alternative outlet for all that creativity, energy and aggression.

According to Morris, the solutions were twofold. First, Man invented war. Rival males were treated as prey to be hunted down and killed, much like animals were before them. This, says Morris, "gave the risk-hungry male all the dangers he could dream of, and as weapons became more and more sophisticated, far more dangerous than he had ever envisaged".

If war and sport hunting had become the only two ways in which the male brain could respond to the emasculation brought about by the farming era, then we would truly have been in trouble. But, happily, there is another side to the male brain.

That is its creativity combined with curiosity. The ability to concentrate and cooperate towards a long-term goal, an ability forged in the primeval chase, could be put to good use.

The result was the fascinating development of human society: buildings and roads, technology and art, music and literature, the whole of science and industry.

These are all, Morris argues, great fruits of the human male brain.

He says: "The human male has had the most impact on the planet than any other life form. Women are responsible and men are more playful and it is this playfulness that is our species' greatest achievement."

Even men who are not great scientists or artists can still put their male brains to good use. In the everyday environment of the modern workplace, it is men who tend to be more competitive, put in longer hours, get a bigger thrill out of success and getting one over on their colleagues.

The hunting pack of old even has its echo in modern bonding activities, such as drinking sessions after work and group attendance at football matches.

Equally the male habit of collecting items - from stamps to train numbers - harks back to men bringing home the kill.

Gambling is just a form of hunting, two or three times removed from the original physical reality.

Morris's central thesis is that an alternative, more feminine world, which is urged by many, may be safer and kinder, but it would also be a less creative, less interesting world.

Of course, this theory isn't new. Philosophers have pondered whether, if women had been in charge from the start, human history may not have been littered with wars. Also, more provocatively, it has been suggested that Mankind might never have got past the Stone Age.

But are these claims true? There are problems with this thesis. Not least, the sort of masculine thinking - the competitive, aggressive mindset that has made so many men great - is certainly not confined to men. Countless women possess quite "masculine" brains (and many men, straight or gay, have brains that are quite feminine).

The truth is that the relationship between sex (which is purely biological) and gender, which is psychological, is highly complex.

As for Morris's thesis about the superiority of the male, it is undoubtedly true that most of the great technical and artistic advances achieved by humanity have been made by men.

But this may not be because women are less creative than men. There are other reasons. Today, it is hard to understand what it must have been like in the world of even a century ago, a world where women could not vote, where they found it almost impossible to go to university, own property independently of their husbands or, even in most classes, to learn to read and write.

As a result, it is perhaps not surprising that the majority of the world's great artists, scientists and so on have been men.

Morris's thesis can only truly be tested in about 300 years' time, when a proper assessment of human history can be made based on three centuries of sexual equality.

But there is one issue for which Morris desrves credit: the demolition of the truly asinine idea that the male has had his day and is about to become extinct. As he says, where are all the men going to go? How will humans manage to reproduce without them? Sperm is still needed to fertilise eggs.

And although cloning has been suggested to create an all-female, all-lesbian humanity, the fact is that no one has yet cloned a human and even when they do, it will remain a difficult and expensive procedure and will never supplant the traditional fertilisation process.

No one can deny that men and women are different. There is also truth in Morris's idea that men tend towards the extremes of behaviour - to be either brilliant or dunces. More men gain firsts and thirds at university than women. Boys do better at exams while girls excel at "plodding" coursework.

Also, the rigours of child-care - in the main shouldered by women - explain a lot of the differences between the sexes.

But attempts to drive a barrier between men and women seem doomed to failure. Yes, we are different, but probably not by that much and certainly, I would argue, not by as much as Desmond Morris asserts.

• The Naked Man by Desmond Morris is published by Jonathan Cape at £18.99

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Link to the original article.

Some comments:

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But this may not be because women are less creative than men. There are other reasons. Today, it is hard to understand what it must have been like in the world of even a century ago, a world where women could not vote, where they found it almost impossible to go to university, own property independently of their husbands or, even in most classes, to learn to read and write.

About voting: during the time of i.e. the Roman Empire a huge amount of men could not vote either, unless they owned land (which was a minority). In America men got the vote in 1848 and women in 1944. Non-white men could not vote for a longer time then white-men.

You don't have to have a university education to be creative! As history proves many famous creative people have not been to university.

Here is what Nietzsche has to say in "Beyond Good and Evil" about women's creative abilities since they were tending the kitchen for thousands of years:

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Stupidity in the kitchen, woman as cook, the ghastly absence of intelligent thought in caring for the nourishment of the family and the man of the house! Woman understands nothing about what food means—and she wants to be cook! If woman were a thinking creature, then, as cook for thousands of years, she’d surely have found out the most important physiological facts, while at the same time she’d have had to take ownership of the art of healing! Because of bad cooks and the complete lack of reason in the kitchen, the development of human beings has been held up for the longest time and suffered the worst damage. Even today things are little better. A speech for young ladies.

Homemaking, taking care of the household, the children used to be a real full-time job! (feminists use the oftenly heard lie that it was only the kitchen as shaming language) There were no dishwashers, washing machines, microwaves, ovens, vacuum cleaners, electric powered lighting, heaters and so on.

All the amazing inventions, from small to large, of which the vast majority was invented by men, are oftenly taken for granted today.

They have made life unimaginably comfier and easier for men and women. This has also realistically given women the option to go outdoors and do things which in the past there was simply barely any time for (due to lack of fast, easy transportation, contraception, state protection such as police etc). It is because of men that women can do these things in the current advanced society which is a novelty in human history.

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But there is one issue for which Morris desrves credit: the demolition of the truly asinine idea that the male has had his day and is about to become extinct. As he says, where are all the men going to go? How will humans manage to reproduce without them? Sperm is still needed to fertilise eggs.

And although cloning has been suggested to create an all-female, all-lesbian humanity, the fact is that no one has yet cloned a human and even when they do, it will remain a difficult and expensive procedure and will never supplant the traditional fertilisation process.

He hasn't mentioned artificial womb, artificial uterus biotechnology which will make the natural womb, uterus inferior, expendable and obsolete. The PC (Politically Correct = Politically Censored) male author should've also put this in the equation.

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This is, of course, a contentious thesis, but a new book by anthropologist Desmond Morris attempts not only to explain why this is so, but also to contest that those reports of the death of masculinity (trumpeted by so many feminist thinkers) have almost certainly been exaggerated.

Desmond Morris is not an anthropologist but a zoologist and an Ethologist. The male apologist author of this article can not even distinguish between an anthropologist and a zoologist. Pretty pathetic because he wants to be a critic who does not even know what branch of science he is trying to critique. Here is how wikipedia defines the terms:

Zoology (from Greek: ζῴον, zoion, "animal"; and λόγος, logos, "knowledge") is the biological discipline which involves the study of animals.

Ethology (from Greek: ήθος, ethos, "custom"; and λόγος, logos, "knowledge") is the scientific study of animal behavior, and a branch of zoology.

Anthropology (from Greek: ἄνθρωπος, anthropos, "human being"; and λόγος, logos, "speech" lit. to talk about human beings) is the study of humanity. Anthropology has origins in the natural sciences, the humanities, and the social sciences.[1][2] The term was first used by François Péron when discussing his encounters with Tasmanian Aborigines.[3] Ethnography is both one of its primary methods, and the text that is written as a result of the practice of anthropology and its elements.

Dr David Banner · #2 15th-December-2007

After all the hundreds of thousands of injustices and insults and all the dissension fostered by the media against men. Its not surprising the tide is turning.Or perhaps Morris sees this and sees an oportunity, am I too cynical? As for "which is better man or woman" the feminists started this, its an absurd question.

Which is better apples or oranges rain or sunshine?
Women if they wanted have many qualities if they choose to use these, at home or out in a broken world, feminism has undermined these qualities and devalued them more then men ever would.
He touches on them;humanitarian concerns e.g. Mother Theresa and women like her who mend broken limbs and broken souls with endurance and great personal sacrifice -this is greatness in my book. These days the loss of the spiritual, and the materialist sirens of the media and the
serpentine state have lead women away from happiness.There are and always have been talented women who do art music or science without feminist whinging. Talent - real talent finds a way.

Rebadow · #3 15th-December-2007

Yet again, good find, Tyrael!

Anyway,

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Hunting, he argues, was a dangerous, high- octane pursuit. It made little sense for the females to put themselves in harm's way - they were far more valuable to the tribe's future than men because, of course, human survival depended upon their fertility

Now you see, in my opinion, this is the most common misconception about the importance of the each sex. It gives women too much importance, and too little to men.

What we're dealing with here is the so called "expendability theory" in anthropology, which says that men take on more dangerous jobs, go to war, etc., because they are simply more expendable than the female of the species, because in 9 months, one man can fertilize many women, while one woman can't be fertilized by more than one man in 9 months anyway. Therefore, women are more valuable, because that one man can do the job of reproducing instead of the ones that perish.

The fatal flaw of this theory, in my opinion (and I've yet to see it challenged in academia), is that it reduces the whole existance of homo sapiens to reproduction - as if bare reproduction would be the only dimension of our existence.

Sure, looking at it only from reproductive aspect, it holds true that women are more important than men (if we're talking about sheer numbers), but reality is far more complex; What about other aspects, which are absolutely crucial for the survival of the tribe - the most obvious quick example being defence from intruders, of course.

What good is it to have a tribe of 99 women and 1 man, who can fertilize all the women by himself, when the neigbour tribe has 50 men and 50 women. What chances has the first tribe, if the men in the second tribe decide to destroy the first tribe and expand their territory there? And it doesn't even have to be human intruders.

This is one of the points this theory completely overlooks (not to even mention others, such as providing the food for the tribe, etc.). So, who does the first tribe need more in order to increase it's survival chances as much as possible, 49 redundant women or 49 aditional men? Who really is more expendable in the first tribe?

So, like so many theories, the expendability theory, as popular as it is, is just too femicentric at it's core to be a good theory, because it only focuses on reproduction (maybe because females have a more important role there indeed), like it's the sole factor, existing in some kind of vacuum.

Too bad, that even in his attempt to make men look more important than they are deemed nowadays, Morris himself fell for it too.

paul parmenter · #4 16th-December-2007

[quote=Rebadow;53633]The fatal flaw of this theory, in my opinion (and I've yet to see it challenged in academia), is that it reduces the whole existance of homo sapiens to reproduction - as if bare reproduction would be the only dimension of our existence.]

Exactly so. Reproduction by itself is meaningless if there is no development of the species to accompany it. Observe an ant colony or a bee hive. They exist merely to continue their own existences. Everything each bee or ant does is totally subordinated to the continuing survival of the species; but that survival has no other aim. So there is no evolution, and the hive or colony continues exactly as its predecessors have continued for millions of years; going round and round but getting nowhere. The life of the bee and the ant have no meaning; other than, maybe, as food for other species that might live better existences. Is that what we want the human race to be?

Tyrael · #5 16th-December-2007

Thanks. I had put this in the Facts & Figures forum. Why can't we keep it there? Because this book of Desmond Morris is pretty important and useful. Or put a duplicate thread there.

Rebadow · #6 16th-December-2007

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Originally Posted by Tyrael

Thanks. I had put this in the Facts & Figures forum. Why can't we keep it there? Because this book of Desmond Morris is pretty important and useful. Or put a duplicate thread there.

Yes, Tyrael, I moved the thread, because the Facts and Figures forum is meant to be more of a place for studies - statistics (numbers, etc.).

However, I did leave a PERMANENT re-direct there, so there should be no problem?

Rebadow · #7 16th-December-2007

So, in short - men are more expendable when it comes to reproduction and women are more expendable when it comes to just about everything else (the latter is, of course, nowadays always "forgotten" to be mentioned, because it just isn't acceptable to state such an inconvenient fact).

That evens expendability of both sexes pretty good, methinks.

**Percy** · #8 16th-December-2007

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Hunting, he argues, was a dangerous, high- octane pursuit. It made little sense for the females to put themselves in harm's way - they were far more valuable to the tribe's future than men because, of course, human survival depended upon their fertility,
So men, who were expendable, went out with the spears while the women stayed behind - a pattern that (minus the spears) has persisted long after our hunter-gatherer days were over.

I am pretty sure that the guys who went out hunting didn't think of themselves as expendable. And I am just as pretty sure the gals never said "Hey, Ug, you lug, I 'm here to breed the future human race so go get the friggin' mamoth in". In fact I am willing to bet that the future of humanity rarely entered the conversations around the fire.

As for them knowing of fertility being essential for survival, well really. You have to be pretty friggin' dim to think that. Another tiny dependant was the last thing that they wanted. They were more likely to say "Where the fuck did THAT come from?" (bit like today in fact). The Cave chaps would say " and how the fuck are we going to feed it. Fat lot of use that squalling brat's going to be when I'm creeping up on the friggin' mamoths down the gully. Keep it indoors - oh, and invent a friggin' door while you in there!". The women didn't of course. It was yet another job for Ug.

Post hoc conclusions from ad hoc assumptions have led us down a fine old path, Ollie.