[Fis] Emergence of Human Sexual Behaviour

[Rainer Feistel (IOW)]

Dear Pedro,

Let me pick two aspects of your inspiring comment.

(i)    Exceptional speed and versatility of hominin evolution: From the 
perspective of Fisher’s law, hominin populations should have been 
characterised by significant phenotypic and genotypic variability within 
the hominin species at a given point of time. Evolution speed and 
property dispersion is a feedback loop; the one may be seen as a cause 
of the other. Without having any reasonable explanation for this, I may 
conclude that this phenomenon is consistent with the violent evolution 
of reproduction traits in my scenario. As a working idea, I would guess 
that the transition to bipedal gait could have played a central role, if 
we compare the apparently sluggish evolution of chimps with the 
helter-skelter progress of hominins.

(ii)    Art as evolved human culture: The question of art is 
interesting. As I see it, art consists of physical structures 
intentionally created by humans. Creation is activity, activity starts 
from decisions, decisions rely on mental or inherited prediction models, 
which in turn represent symbolic information processing. So, there is a 
causal link between art and information, even though these two appear 
only weakly related rather than being coincident.

Rainer

Am 12.02.2026 um 22:46 schrieb Pedro C. Marijuán:
> Dear Rainer,
>
> Thanks for the intriguing --and exciting-- text. In order to make more 
> complete a sense of your hypothesis, the paper in BioSystems (your 
> first ref. below) is highly recommended. We have had quite recently a 
> discussion on the Origins of Art ("Arts and the Cognitive": 
> https://listas.unizar.es/pipermail/fis/2026-January/004667.html ), and 
> one of the arguments raised was about aesthetic preference for visuaL 
> & sound forms related to the neotenic process of our species. I 
> referred to Manfred Clynes' sentic forms, and in my opinion they also 
> appear in the design of female breast and in the general more rounded 
> forms of feminine bodies. The panorama of human evolution involves so 
> many physical, cognitive, and behavioral processes of change, than one 
> is tempted to ask how was it possible at all with so few generations 
> involved --around 200.000?? If one contemplates in a rough count the 
> brain, hand, feet, knee, hip, tongue, larynx, spine, skin, face... 
> with most of the changes densely interrelated, the result appears as 
> an admirable almost impossible algorithmic economy. Could overall 
> processes of general change of timing (neoteny) facilitate the whole 
> genetic search? Concerning sex, the obscurity about one of the most 
> conspicuous traits of our species --the bust-- and the tug of war 
> female/male in reproductive terms has been substituted by ideological 
> narratives that contribute little to understand the underlying 
> processes/conflicts/complementarity between the sexes. Your paper is a 
> brave attempt in that regard. Hope it will achieve the attention & 
> recognition it deserves.
>
> Best --Pedro

-- 
Note: New Email Address: rainer.feistel at iow.de
Dr. rer. nat. habil. Rainer Feistel
Physicist (emeritus)
PS Gustav Hertz Prize, Berlin 1981
CITAC Best Paper Award, Paris 2011
IAPWS Honorary Fellow, London 2013
BIPM Metrologia Highlight Articles, Paris 2016
EGU Fridtjof Nansen Medal, Vienna 2018
LS Daniel Ernst Jablonski Medal, Berlin 2021
IAPWS Gibbs Award, Boulder, Co., 2024