Homosexuality is a disease that greatly reduces Darwinian fitness, and yet it afflicts somewhere between 1 to 10 percent of people in almost every population on earth.
For over 10 years Greg Cochran has been pushing his theory that homosexuality is caused by a pathogen as an explanation for the above observation.
But there are many other observations about homosexuality that collectively Cochran’s theory fails to explain.
One of these observations is that homosexuality does not occur in hunter-gatherer populations.
In this paper on the sexual behavior of Biaka, or Aka, pygmies, the authors write
Another reason we conducted a study of sexual behavior was that several years ago we asked Aka men about homosexuality and masturbation and were surprised that they were not aware of these practices, did not have terms for them and how difficult it was to explain both sexual practices. They laughed as we tried to explain and describe the sexual activities. We thought that maybe they were shy or embarrassed individuals, but this would have been uncharacteristic of the Aka we had known so long.
All Aka and Ngandu indicated that homosexuality (gay or lesbian) was unknown or rare. The Aka, in particular, had a difficult time understanding the concept and mechanics of same sex relationships. No word existed and it was necessary to repeatedly describe the sexual act.
The abstract of this paper reads
Predictions were tested using the Human Relations Area Files database that (a) homo-sexuality would be rarer in hunter-gatherer societies and (b) psychosocial stressors of women would predict its increased frequency. Homosexual frequency decreased as a function of amount of gathering practiced and increased with size of the local community, supporting the first prediction. Lack of control by women in sexual matters predicted increased homosexuality, supporting the second prediction. These data constitute the first quantitative cross-cultural evidence for (a) environmental mediation of homosexuality and (b) Domer’s theory that maternal stress causes homosexuality. The data suggest that homosexuality would have been rarer in our hunter-gatherer ancestors.
In this paper, the author writes
These results strongly support the idea that homosexuality is increasingly likely to be present as population pressure increases. The percentages demonstrating the presence of homosexuality: 0 (Low, hunting and gathering), 33 (Low, hunting, gathering, and fishing), 44 (Medium, Horticulture, etc.), 57 (High, Intensive agriculture) demonstrate a marked correlation between the presence of homosexuality and the intensity of a society’s adaptation to the environment. That none of the exclusively hunter-gatherer societies had any significant manifestations of homosexuality is particularly noteworthy, especially considering that over half of high population pressure societies have significant expressions of homosexuality in their culture.
Another observation is the one made in this comment. Homosexuality occurs at a rate of 8% in male domesticated sheep, but it does not occur in the wild ancestor of the sheep, the mouflon.
In this comment the observation was made that homosexuality occurs at a higher rate in Negroids and Mestizos than in Caucasoids and non-Amerindian Mongoloids.
And in this comment, Peter Frost observed that homosexuality occurs at a higher rate in Nordics than in Mediterraneans.
Cochran’s theory requires us to believe in a pathogen that has infected every agricultural and industrial population that has ever existed, and no hunter-gatherer population that has ever existed.
A pathogen that induces homosexuality in two domesticated species, sheep and modern man, but not in any wild species on earth.
A pathogen that does not infect Biaka pygmy hunter-gatherers or Bushmen hunter-gatherers, but that does infect all of the agricultural Negroid populations that surround them.
A pathogen that infects Negroids and Mestizos at a higher rate than Caucasoids and non-Amerindian Mongoloids, wherever they are on earth.
A pathogen that infects Nordics at a higher rate than Mediterraneans, wherever they are on earth.
It’s absurd.
The only explanation that accounts for all of the above observations is that homosexuality is caused by agricultural and industrial diets.
Humans and their domesticated animals are the only species on earth that consume large amounts of grain and grain-derived foods.
They are the only species on earth that consume food that can be stored indefinitely without rotting.
Hundreds of millions of years of evolution designed animals to consume one kind of food, and humans and their domesticated animals consume something quite different.
And they only started doing so in the past 11,000 years.
Agricultural and industrial diets cause all of the misnamed “diseases of longevity”, “diseases of civilization”, and “diseases of affluence”. These include gout, osteoporosis, obesity, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, atherosclerosis, heart disease, stroke, and cancer.
There is no doubt that what a pregnant mother consumes can have a profound effect on the development of her child. The number one cause of mental retardation in the Western world is fetal alcohol exposure.
Sheep are fed hay and grains, neither of which are eaten by mouflon.
The Wikipedia article on hay says that “when horses are fed low-quality hay, they may develop an unhealthy, obese, ‘hay belly’ due to over-consumption of ’empty’ calories”.
This is exactly analogous to the “wheat belly” caused by the consumption of wheat in humans.
The article then says that “If their type of feed is changed dramatically, or if they are fed moldy hay or hay containing toxic plants, they can become ill; colic is the leading cause of death in horses. Contaminated hay can also lead to respiratory problems in horses”.
This page on feeding sheep advises that “Average or poor quality hay should be fed during gestation, leaving the higher quality hay to be fed during lactation”.
It also says that “some producers feeding alfalfa hay to gestating ewes have experienced problems with vaginal prolapses, late term abortions, and milk fever”.
Mediterraneans in the Near East started practicing agriculture 11,000 years ago.
Mongoloids in China started practicing agriculture 9000 years ago.
Mediterraneans in southeastern Europe starting practicing agriculture 9000 years ago, but it took another 3000 years for agriculture to spread all the way to the Nordics in the northernmost parts of Europe.
Negroids and Amerindians didn’t start practicing agriculture until 5000 to 4000 years ago.
This means that Negroids and Amerindians have had 6000 to 7000 years less time to adapt to the harmful effects of an agricultural diet than Mediterraneans have had, 4000 to 5000 years less than non-Amerindian Mongoloids have had, and at least 1000 to 2000 years less than Nordics have had.
And it means that Nordics have had as much 5000 years less time to adapt to the harmful effects of an agricultural diet than Mediterraneans have had.
Another unnatural substance that started to be consumed as part of an agricultural diet is alcohol.
Humans are the only species on earth that drink alcohol.
It has been observed that Italians, Jews, Greeks, Portuguese, Spaniards, and the Chinese have high rates of alcohol consumption, and yet have very low rates of alcoholism.
On the other hand, the Irish, the English, Slavs, and Scandinavians have lower rates of alcohol consumption, and yet have much higher rates of alcoholism.
And Amerindians and Eskimos have some of the worst problems with alcoholism of any populations on earth.
The above pattern of observations is exactly what we would expect based on the amounts of time that Mediterraneans, non-Amerindian Mongoloids, Nordics, and Amerindians have had to adapt to an agricultural diet.
Homosexuality was rampant among the elite of ancient Greece and ancient Rome.
And this is exactly what we would expect.
The elite of ancient Greece and ancient Rome was comprised of the descendants of the Nordics who brought Indo-European languages to those areas, while the proletariat was comprised of the descendants of the earlier Mediterranean inhabitants of those areas.
And the Nordic elite of ancient Greece and ancient Rome had 1500 to 3000 years less time to adapt to an agricultural diet than Nordics of today.
We know that the ancient Jews had problems with homosexuality, because their writings contain numerous references to and injunctions against it.
For example, Leviticus 18:22:
Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable.
And Leviticus 20:13:
If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.
And of course there’s the story of Yahweh destroying Sodom and Gomorrah because the men there tried to homosexually rape some angels.
I predict that parents who eat a Paleolithic diet will have a much lower rate of homosexual children than the general population.
I can’t say that the rate will be zero, because there are now many unnatural substances in our environment, such as bisphenol A, that very likely also cause homosexuality.