The World’s First Race War Was K-selected

It is funny to read stuff in light of r/K Theory. Courtesy of a commenter:

Scientists are investigating what may be the oldest identified race war 13,000 years after it raged on the fringes of the Sahara.

French scientists working in collaboration with the British Museum have been examining dozens of skeletons, a majority of whom appear to have been killed by archers using flint-tipped arrows.

The bones – from Jebel Sahaba on the east bank of the Nile in northern Sudan – are from victims of the world’s oldest known relatively large-scale human armed conflict…

What’s more, the period in which they perished so violently was one of huge competition for resources – for they appear to have been killed during a severe climatic downturn in which many water sources dried up, especially in summer time.

The climatic downturn – known as the Younger Dryas period – had been preceded by much lusher, wetter and warmer conditions which had allowed populations to expand. But when climatic conditions temporarily worsened during the Younger Dryas, water holes dried up, vegetation wilted and animals died or moved to the only major year-round source of water still available – the Nile.

Humans of all ethnic groups in the area were forced to follow suit – and migrated to the banks (especially the eastern bank) of the great river. Competing for finite resources, human groups would have inevitably clashed – and the current investigation is demonstrating the apparent scale of this earliest known substantial human conflict.

You know how it played out. Resources were relatively free, women became less stressed, and less sexually restricted. Many began to need strange men to sexually excite their amygdala, which led to spreading bet. Men began to avoid fights and let things slide, as socially-posturing males slid up the social ladder on image rather than ability, and gained mating opportunities in return. Out-groups interacted and mixed, without significant violence, because it just wasn’t worth it.

Things were easy going, if irritating for the few remaining K-strategists. They really felt out of place and maladapted in this strange r-world, devoid of K-morals, and filled with a rapidly degenerating, increasingly imbecilic form of human, concerned only with avoiding danger and mating, while pretending to be superior for it.

Then resources grew scarce. Somebody had to die. Suddenly K-strategists began wantonly filling graves with less intelligent, less adapted, less practically capable r-strategists. The K-strategist’s world began to make more sense, as they began to feel more at home and at ease.

Stressed women sought safety by monopolizing the most capable men in monogamous relationships, and weirdness in potential mates piled so much on their amygdala it freaked them out. Morals within the group returned to those morals of the K-strategist, to foster group cohesion. Trust grew among compatriots. Things were harder, and failure had cost, but the K-strategists felt they were exactly as they should be. And as all of this occurred, the active selection for ability gradually produced a smarter, more capable, more intelligent form of human.

Thousands of years later, we are still digging up the bodies of the defectives they planted, even as we are about to begin our own K-shift.

There is an elegance to it. The more things change, the more they stay the same. The only difference is, this time we may come out of our K-shift with an understanding of the mechanism, which could, possibly, affect to what degree we continue this cycle.