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Comment by DaniFong | Hacker News Reader

A women, on the other hand, can likely have 10 children whether or not she is successful

Surely you are joking... Miscarriages, even a century ago, claimed so many women. You would be lucky to live past your third, much less your tenth!

Without some network to provided for her (either by her family, or the village, or her mate, all of which are strongly effected by status), the likelihood of surviving a pregnancy becomes much lower.

Women couldn't just flip a switch and get pregnant to satisfy a biological urge. Pregnancy represents both an enormous investment in time, effort, and energy, and a gamble on life. Status structure reflects this.

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Families with nine or ten children weren't all that uncommon in my grandparents' generation here in Taiwan.

Even today, there are ten different countries in which the fertility rate is currently above 6 and a couple above 7. I don't think 10 children would be unreasonable as an upper bound for the exceptionally successful.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_territori...

Oh, and the 10 was an upper bound. If it's 3 that's even better - women are even more of a limiting reagent and they have less of a evolutionary need for massive amounts of wealth.

My theory is that there are two types of fundamental 'evolutionary units' that are important when discussing humans. Memes, and genes. I agree that, when memes were unimportant, the genetic influence, for females, of an outstanding capability to provide, would be largely wasted.

However, massive wealth only became possible once human culture grew, and then, for reasons I outlined below, memes became far more sticky, more influential, and more important, by comparison. In this, women have a greater evolutionary incentive to gain wealth or prestige or spread memes, but not a greater genetic incentive.

fair enough. Let me rephrase to say that a moderately successful women (on the par of a low level aristocrat) could easily support 10 children. It still supports my contention that men had more to gain from being hugely successful (king level) than a women.

> Miscarriages, even a century ago, claimed so many women

s/Miscarriages/Childbirth

That's why wide hips are important.

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