It may be hard to imagine that some educated, well-groomed, metro-sexual males of today share these ancient skills with our ancestors, but they do. Much like the docile Golden Retriever whose outward good looks and friendly demeanor hide the savage traits of the grey wolf ancestor lying beneath its surface, the same is true for modern men. They may cleanup well and at times even seem awkward and harmless, but in their core they are very much the focused hunter, ruthless protector and resourceful provider whose primary goals are survival and ensuring the successful passing along of their genes to another generation.
This is an important fact to understand about men. If you are the type of person who refuses to accept this fact and instead feels that men "just make excuses" for their behaviors, you are a prime candidate for someone who will be unsuccessful at marriage. This ancestral programming is an undeniable and integral part of who men are and it is foolish to ignore its existence or how influential it is on a man's behavior. It is also fruitless to believe it can be trained out of a man, anymore than you can train an animal to ignore its basic instincts. It is true that men can choose a different behavior, but each of those choices will need to be a conscious and deliberate effort to compensate for his behaviors because it is rate his natural tendencies will ever be eliminated.
Here are some examples of how these four roles of our ancestors living in a man's subconscious manifest themselves in modern their behaviors.
The Hunter
Even if a man doesn't don camouflage clothes and grab a rifle to hunt deer and pheasant, his hunting skills are still very much evident in his every day behavior.
Single-Task / Highly Focused
- Try talking to a man who's watching sports on TV and you'll see how hard it is to distract his focus while he's so engrossed in that one activity. Men have a very narrow focus of attention.
- A man's ability to shut out distractions is helped by the fact men have poorer hearing than women.1 Plus, when men are concentrating on an activity, for example reading, scans of their brain show that during that time they are virtually deaf.2
- When a man is driving and listening to the radio and needs to make a critical decision about his route, notice how he turns down the radio so he can focus on that one decision. This is his compartmentalized thinking nature coming into play.3
- Watch a man go shopping. Using his hunting skills he heads directly to the object he wishes to purchase, then leaves the store once it's purchased.
- Men can compartmentalize their activities, isolating them from other parts of their brain so they can avoid any conflict between their inbred need to kill certain living creatures while working to protect other living beings.4
- Even nonviolent men manifest the thirst of "blood" in their daily lives when they show joy that their sports or business team beat another.
- Watch a man use a remote control and you'll see him killing stations as he quickly moves from one channel to the next.5
- Video games are another way men display their killing instincts.
- Vandalism and fireworks use are displays of a male's destructive nature.
- Men are typically not very talkative even in group situations. Fishing is a perfect example of this. Many men can sit together quietly, patiently waiting for the moment when they can capture and kill their prey. Our male ancestors had to also be patient as they quietly waited for an animal to meander within striking distance.
- When a man is resting he can shut down 70% of his brain's activity.6
- When men and women drive together, it is common for the woman in the passenger seat to accuse the man of getting to close to objects with the car. This is because their spatial judgment skills are different. Stalking prey helped our male ancestors to development judgment of precise distances in 3 dimensions so they knew exactly where to throw an object in order to kill a moving animal.7
- Men are often accused of being lazy because they want to lounge around. But take a look at other creatures who hunt down their prey and you'll see that all of them lay around conserving their energy before and after the kill. Remember, the core skills in men are in their subconscious so resting until critical activities are necessary is an unconscious trait.
A primary goal of primitive males was to make offspring who would carry their genes into the next generation. I emphasize their genes because this is an important aspect of the goal. If you look at male lions, when a new one enters a pride by driving off the former male leader, he proceeds to kill all infant lions. Then he mates with all females as they come into heat. This way the offspring he is protecting and providing for will be his own.8 This same breeder instinct can be found in human males.
Vanity
- To appeal to females who can bear his offspring, a man has to show that he has a genetic package worth carrying. This subconscious desire to gain acceptance by females is why men anguish over such traits as their height, weight, muscularity, hair thickness on their heads and face and physical performance on the dance floor.9
- Step-fathers are more likely to abuse or kill their step-children (offspring of another father).
- As distasteful as this idea may be, step-fathers see step-daughters as possible bearers of their offspring. Thus the presence of a stepfather in the home doubles the risk for girls being sexually abused.10
- Human females can only bear approximately one child per year. So to increase a male's chances for an offspring that is carried to term and survives into adolescence, males needed to impregnate as many women as he could possibly protect and provide for. That number was typically more than one. Despite today's monogamous lifestyles, the more fruitful polygamous lifestyle typical of most mammals, still runs deep in a man's genes.11
- Now-a-days males compete for the prize of dominance above other males in business, lifestyles and "hunting" type sporting activities. This attitude is a carry over from the original competition between our male ancestors to win the acceptance of childbearing females.12
- Men are famous for turning nonsexual comments and actions into something sexual whenever they can. This is their attempt to show a readiness for sexual activity just in case the possibility exists.
- Flirting is another favorite pastime of men because the breeder is constantly looking for feedback from females that his genetic package is desirable.
- Men are more interested in creating children than raising them. That is why a man will impregnate a wife, girlfriend or an easy mark and then be absent during the raising of the children. In our ancestor groups, the women raised the children and the men simply provided food and protection. Now-a-days, with governments providing welfare income and housing to single mothers, a man no longer needs to even worry about providing for or protecting their offspring.13
- The best offspring for a breeder is a healthy son. As they grow they can be trained to help with the providing and eventually replace the father (should he live long enough to lose his own abilities to provide). Even when man moved from hunters to farmers some 10,000 years ago, sons were still desired for the same reasons.
- Female bodies give indications of breeding readiness (e.g. breasts that become swollen around ovulation) and sexual readiness (e.g. erect nipples or labia lips that become swollen, reddened and moist) . So males look for these signs when scanning a woman's body.
- Nature also provides genital echos or self-mimicry in mammals. In the female Gelada baboon, her pink, drooping, flattened breasts closely mimic vagina lips so that she can display sexuality while sitting down14 (because her reddened rump is hidden from view). Human females have similar body parts (e.g. mouth lips, navel, buttocks and breast cleavage) that appear to mimic the genitals. That is why a male's gaze becomes magnetically drawn to such body displays as breast cleavage, "Angeline Jolie" lips and rounded breasts or buttocks. To a man, these all appear as a woman displaying her genitals and are interpreted as an offering of breeding readiness.
The Protector
Our male ancestors had to earn the ability to impregnate a female. If he was going to take a female out of breeding circulation for almost a year in order to create his offspring, he needed to demonstrate he was capable of protecting her and her unborn during that period and into his child's adolescence. While females were able to protect themselves and their offspring, it was ultimately the male's duty to ensure their safety.
Physical Health
- Men have to stay in great shape to demonstrate their health and strength during courtship.
- Tall men give the impression they enjoy better health. Studies have shown that height also helps men be more successful in business, finding a mate and breeding.15 A man who can tower over others gives the impression that he is an able bodied protector.
- Men purchase homes with gates or security guards to show a woman that she will be living in safety and security.
- Men also need to demonstrate a stable personality and associate with non-threatening acquaintances to give a woman a sense of safety.
- Men are criticized for not putting away their clothes and things, but this trait is a carry over from our ancestors living in the wild. Should an intruder enter the camp during the middle of the night, a man needed to be able to quickly locate his weapon so he could grab it and use it against the intruder. That is why a man leaves his things out in the open.
- This expectation that objects should be easily locatable with only a quick glance to find them is why men have such difficulty looking for things around the house. This plus the fact that a man's line of sight is more narrow than a woman's.16 They expect that whatever they need should be in an obvious place versus tucked away behind or underneath other things.
- Displays of strength are rooted in a man's need to show himself as a powerful protector. These displays include gun collections, muscle cars, power boats, private aircraft and on a larger scale governmental fire power.
The Provider
Being able to provide for the female and his offspring was a more important task than protecting (because living in a community offered some natural protection of its own). But when food was scarce it was up to the male to ensure his offspring and their mother were getting the food necessary for their survival.
Appearance of Success
- The appearance of a successful life and career is a good way to attract a mate because it indicates a man's resourcefulness and ability to provide for her and his offspring.
- Expensive gifts, like a diamond ring, show a woman that a man has enough resources that he can afford to spend a large amount of money on non-essentials.17 Other ways men do this is by spending money on large or multiple homes, cars, boats and other big ticket items.
- Height isn't something a person can control, but it does give the impression that a man is healthier and more capable of being successful in business, finding a mate and breeding. (The greater success of tall men as compared to shorter men has be confirmed in multiple studies.)
- Providing food for offspring and their mothers was an intensely physical and emotional activity. It involved tracking the prey, hunting it down, physically killing it, carrying it back to the group, tearing apart the carcass, competing with other hunters for a portion of the spoils, eating it, then remaining a vigilant protector18 while resting up to do it all again. This daily activity was a large contribution to the survival of the group. Because of this, the attitude of the ancestral provider still unconsciously drives modern men to believe that anything beyond hunting, providing and protecting is "woman's work".
- Men want to be seen as able bodied providers which is why adult males will pick up the tab at a restaurant or entertainment event, even when other adults attending have the resources to pay their own way. Also, age does not stop men from wanting to be seen as a provider. It is not uncommon for a father on a fixed income to pay for meals and other gifts for adult children and spouses who certainly have the ability to provide for themselves.
1. Deborah Blum, Sex on the Brain, pg 68
2.Mark Gungor, Laugh Your Way To A Better Marriage pg 43
3.Daniel Amen, Sex on the Brain, pg 78
4. Barbara & Allan Pease, Why Men Don't Have A Clue and Women Always Need More Shoes, pg 124-125
5.Rob Becker, Defending the Caveman
6.Mark Gungor, Laugh Your Way To A Better Marriage pg 44
7.Barbara & Allan Pease, Why Men Don't Listen & Women Can't Read Maps, pg 199
8. Helen Fisher, The Sex Contract, pg 114
9. Desmond Morris, Manwatching pg 246
10. Mullen et al (1993) Childhood sexual abuse and mental health in adult life, Br. J. Psychaiatry 163:721-732
11. Barbara & Allan Pease, Why Men Don't Listen & Women Can't Read Maps, pg 199
12. Deborah Blum, Sex on the Brain, pg 267
13.Transcript of Rush Linbaugh's Address at CPAC, 2009
14. Desmond Morris, Manwatching pg 239
15.Bobbi Low, Why Sex Matters
16. Barbara & Allan Pease, Why Men Don't Listen & Women Can't Read Maps, pg 23
17.Helen Fisher, The Anatomy of Love, pg 26
18.Deborah Blum, Sex on the Brain, pg 61
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