The grandmother hypothesis
Quote:
Originally Posted by
AuntShecky
To some of us, God is a boldface exclamation point. To others, he's a huge question mark.
You may not think the following is unrelated, but I think it is: I heard on Dylan Ratigan's show this morning that scientists have discovered that the conventional wisdom of "survival of the fittest" isn't really true. Instead, what seems to have insured human survival as a species is "survival of
the kindest," a "compassion" gene intrinsic to every person at birth.
Hmmm, I wonder where that kindness gene ultimately came from.
Auntie,
You wonder where it came from
I wonder where it went
And if it's truly there at all
Was it heaven sent?
There is a not so new hypothesis called the Grandmother Hypothesis. It speculates, among other things, that human culture grew out of the relatively long post-menopausal lifetimes of our grandmothers. The idea being that, older more experienced women in the home/workplace of early hunter-gatherers provided a competitive edge to those families. It is altogether possible that this phenomenon has a genetic (or epigenetic) component. I prefer to think of it as purely a function of love.
When I first read about this hypothesis, I was reminded of my own grandmother. When she would tuck us in or say goodbye she always left us with a single word, "soft". I never knew exactly what it meant, but I did know how it felt. I like to think that it was passed down along thousands of generations from our one shared great-grandmother, and that it was an admonition about how we should treat one another.
Hack
In an aside, unlike God I have some difficulty with my commas, but then, the universe does not hinge on it.
Good write, Sweet Prince, and "soft"