A Genetic Take on History (regarding the French and American Revolutions)

This is a very complex article and will be difficult to follow, as it is an unusual thought process, that combines evolutionary biology and history in a new way.

I want to trace how evolutionary selected, genetic attributes, and their concentration in societies and in individual members, have affected some historical developments.

Hopefully you will capture the thought process. So just a warning that it is a complex theory!

The American Declaration of Independence states: “All men are created equal”, but as Yuval Harari in his book Sapiens mentions, we all know that the statement is only true in a philosophical sense and not in a biological sense.

From a biological perspective, people are born with highly varying physical and mental attributes that are genetically determined.

What would Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the author of the social contract, think about that?

Nowadays, most social contracts state that all men are equal before the law and in terms of their rights.

This as a social contract foundation seems to work better and lead to more societal progress, than the social contracts we had before the French and American revolutions, when society was divided into nobleman and non-nobleman (upper and lower class).

It also seems more fair and humane to treat everyone equally before the law.

I remember a while ago Peter Thiel stating in an interview that historically it is still unclear if the French Revolution was a positive development or not.

That is an unusual and contrarian thought, typical for someone like Peter Thiel.

In this article, I want to discuss a different but parallel thought, trying to scientifically anchor history in evolutionary, genetic biology.

Let’s say we go back several thousand years, when in most societies the first class structures were developing and the separation of nobleman and non-nobleman was occurring.

Clearly every society had that moment in time.

How did that moment occur?

Most likely certain groups of families were able to gain power, maintain power and eventually call themselves nobleman.

If we were to look at the process in different societies across the globe, would the outcome be a random process or a deterministic process?

There were most likely random factors and deterministic factors involved.

Which were the determining attributes of those families, who were able to gain power, maintain power and eventually call themselves nobleman?

The most likely scenario is that these families had some genetically determined physical and mental abilities, that gave them an advantage over others in this process of gaining power.

It was probably a competitive, evolution like, selection process that led to some families becoming winners.

Many outside factors like technology and lifestyle could have contributed to each outcome, but genetic attributes, that helped some people to outsmart, outcompete, out-plan, outmaneuver and maybe out-collaborate the rest, had a big effect on the outcome of some becoming winners and hence calling themselves nobleman.

For simplicity of statement I will call these different genetic attributes, that provided advantages in this competition, Genius-Parameters. (likely with a real genetic selection component to it)

It is difficult to say if the physical or mental attributes were more important in this process.

Depending how far back we go in history the importance of physical attributes will be higher, as brute force had more leverage further back in history. But overall both physical and mental attributes played a role. And later in history mental attributes became more important.

Yet interestingly, once this class separation occurred, the classes also separated their mating habits, and maintained these across state boundaries. They intermarried within their own class and therefore over time these genetically determined factors became more and more concentrated in the upper class.

This gave the upper class even more ability and an edge to maintain power.

Then if we fast forward to the brink of the revolutionary time period in France and America, these parameters must have been highly concentrated in the upper class, maybe to the point that they also gave rise to genetic diseases.

Because in genetics biology, just as in many other aspects of life, there are no benefits without costs. So if both chromosome pairs have a specific genetic parameter, the over-concentration and over-expression could lead to disease.

This occurred for example in the Austrian Habsburg family, which intermarried so much, that over time it developed a high concentration of genetic diseases in addition to genius parameters.

Something similar occurred in the Medici family, which was known to have predisposition for gout.

So let’s say the upper class, has a high concentration of these favorable genetic attributes, but also some diseases due to over-concentration, and the lower class has lower concentrations of these genetic attributes.

The reason the lower class also has some of these parameters is because of significant genetic leakage, because of out-of-wedlock sexual intercourse between the upper class and lower class (bastard children). And over time this leakage had created a significant distribution of genius parameters in the lower class as well, but at a lower individual concentration.

For example Voltaire was someone born out of wedlock between classes and ironically contributed significantly to the French revolution.

With the industrial revolution and an emerging merchant class, the lower class members with some genius parameters had also developed significant wealth and some power.

Then came the revolutionary time, when enough genius-parameters had leaked out of the upper class into the lower class, that the lower class could outsmart and out-power the upper class.

They also had the advantage of numbers. Some technological changes also had an effect in the trigger.

In addition, there was probably significant complacency in the upper class as it had been in power for so long and did not fully take advantage of its attributes.

And no matter how many genius parameters a lower class member had and how much wealth the member gathered, since class rigidity made it impossible for the lower class members to become part of the upper class, the lower class wanted change.

Therefor the lower class members, who had some genius attributes, showed more drive and desire, and hence advanced more.

For example, if we jump to post-revolutionary America, the time period of young Abraham Lincoln was a unique time period, because every American knew that since there were no more class boundaries, what one could achieve in life, was not limited by someone’s class anymore, but only determined by drive and genetic abilities.

This itself made America a more attractive destination for those, who had drive and genetic abilities, but no class status in the European countries.

The reason this phenomenon gave these new, class-less structures an advantage is because now every member of society could strive to reach its full potential and fully contributed to the overall societal progress.

In the old, class-dominated structures, many lower-class, society members did not strive, because they knew there was a glass ceiling, and many members of the upper class saw no reason to strive, because they were protected by their privileged status. Hence there was less overall societal progress.

This is likely one reason that over the long-run the class-less structure prevailed, although in the process the genius-parameters became overall more distributed and less concentrated in individual population members.

So that was one difference between the class-dominated and class-less structures.

In the class-dominated structures a small number of people had a high concentration of these genius parameters, yet less drive and more security, and in the class-less structures a much larger portion of society had these genius parameters, but at lower concentration, yet the members showed more drive and desire.

Are you able to follow the thought process?

To be continued…