theme for a fantasy campaign

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I have the impression that gorillas are polygynous and have pronounced sexual dimorphism. Do they have a limited mating season, and if so, is there a compelling reason that the stranden can't? It's not jumping out at me, but that may just be because I'm not ingenious enough to work it out. Or do they have polygyny without restricted mating seasons?

I don't think they have restricted mating seasons, but what they do have is males in constant propinquity with their harems: male and female gorillas gather the same food in the same places and almost the same way. Stranden can't do that because the women can't take their babies along on the activity that gives them a niche in which to survive competition with the brocmen.

Now, if stranden women had a relatively short breeding season in which they hung together in groups, then men could contest for reproductive access to those groups, in something like the way that bull seals and bulls and stallions contest for reproductive control of herds. But they would have to supervise those groups constantly, which means no going off for fishing and diving trips. They could manage by stacking on the weight during the off season and running on reserves through the mating season. But they can't keep that up for very long, hence the need for a short season.

The problem is that stranden women don't face any of the incentives that keep mares, cows, and seal-cows together, nor (at least globally) the incentives that give them a co-ordinated breeding season. And it doesn't seem to be in the the women's reproductive interest to be controlled that way. The closest I can come in men displaying like larks or birds-of-paradise, and the women choosing among them. Now, if women only bonked one man per breeding season, or the men could tell which children were theirs that might be followed up with resource provision….

That general pattern is one I'm familiar with and might like to explore in more detail. And it's going to lead to matrilineages and political alliances based on them, which will be more stable when, later on, the men are far away at sea.

* Does it imply anything about relative male and female body size?

It implies a great freedom of women to choose they fathers of their children, with the "sexy son" strategy producing arbitrary selective pressures on men. I think elephant cows prefer large bulls, but the result at the moment is not dimorphism by both sexes getting larger in African national parks where the counter-pressures have been relieved.

* It seems as if males don't gain meaningful power over their mothers until they're old enough to participate in hunting and bringing home food. But by then most of their brothers (and sisters) will already be born, won't they? So male social control of older women's sexuality is going to have less of a payoff. I suppose if a man knows who his father is, he might be unhappy if his mother took up with another man, perhaps unhappy enough to go a-viking. . . .

"I'll tell Daddy!"

The most common pattern among men, and therefore less interesting because less exotic. Though I wouldn't flatly rule it out, if 2a has problems.

Humans having adopted both patterns under different circumstances, the difference might be cultural rather than biological.

One thing that occurs to me is that men are probably going to do more diving than women. Deep diving is high-risk, and men can be spared; and it gives access to more resources, and enables men to provide more usefully. Perhaps displays of good lung capacity, via singing, may be a useful form of sexual advertising. "Have my kids and your sons will be good providers!" I'd like to have musical ability be a common trait; it's so often attributed to merfolk and sirens and the like. A bit of sexual selection for vocalization riding on top of natural selection for breath control might fit.

"Any note you can hold I can hold longer! I can hold any note longer than you!"

Size itself might be a useful indicator of diving ability. Big men are less susceptible to chill.

The problem, as with the elephants, is not to get both sexes enlarging.