Maybe I'm misunderstanding the article - but it sounds like there was a drop of 95% in the population of males living in Europe / Africa / Asia?
What kind of World War Zero could possibly explain this? I really can't picture how a state of sustained (for thousands of years?) high-intensity warfare over an area spanning three entire continents could have worked. How many historical instances are there of a population decreasing to 1/20th of previous levels? The 20th century had a couple of instances but that required totalitarianism and modern communication, logistics, and industrial capabilities.
The other historical instance I know of is the decimation of New World populations after contact with Europe (through disease). I don't know what other evidence they've assembled, but disease feels like a much better way to explain this population drop than warfare.
But what diseases only target males? Dunno. Maybe the early domestication of livestock introduced some kind of chickenpox or dogpox that killed (or sterilized!) males dramatically more frequently than females.
> But what diseases only target males? Dunno. Maybe the early domestication of livestock introduced some kind of chickenpox or dogpox that killed (or sterilized!) males dramatically more frequently than females.
Wolbachia is a parasite that, as I understand it, kills male infected at a very young age. Now, this only affects insects, but it does show that something this level of sex-selective is possible.
It wasn’t a 95% drop in male population. The population expanded rapidly but which men reproduced was very lopsided. Some men left no descendants because their folk didn’t stop hunter gathering and were eventually killed or starved. Some left many, kings and warlords. In between were everyone else.
One common feature of all the theories I've seen is that the warfare isn't all that high intensity. On the other hand, it does seem strangely sustained, widespread, and in a narrow time span.
What kind of World War Zero could possibly explain this? I really can't picture how a state of sustained (for thousands of years?) high-intensity warfare over an area spanning three entire continents could have worked. How many historical instances are there of a population decreasing to 1/20th of previous levels? The 20th century had a couple of instances but that required totalitarianism and modern communication, logistics, and industrial capabilities.
The other historical instance I know of is the decimation of New World populations after contact with Europe (through disease). I don't know what other evidence they've assembled, but disease feels like a much better way to explain this population drop than warfare.
But what diseases only target males? Dunno. Maybe the early domestication of livestock introduced some kind of chickenpox or dogpox that killed (or sterilized!) males dramatically more frequently than females.