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I realize that figure is shocking, but bear with me. It’s been born out by study after study. The studies compared male reactions to females under 13 with reactions to females 16+. Whenever anything is that common, there is probably a genetic tendency for it. Also, age preference in males cannot be corrected by any experimental means. Things that cannot be corrected in the lab are usually thought to be hardwired and biologically based. So why are 20
It appears that there is a genetic preference for pubertal age girls that has been encoded in males and is present in a sizeable minority of them. The reasons for this are up for grabs, but among the Yanonamo Indians of Venezuela, men usually grab a wife at age 12 and often fight other men for girls that age. Sex may not take place for a few years later, but at least they nab them very young. Perhaps there was a preference to select pubertal girls and sequester them away from other men for a bit until they became fully fertile at age 16, at which time she would be locked into that man and all of her children would be his. Historically, early life was indeed short, nasty, and brutish, and perhaps primitive life still is. By age 40, every Yanonamo man has committed at least one homicide of another man. If you’re a pacifist you simply don’t make it to age 40. You die young, killed by other men. Kill or be killed. The law of the jungle.
Well, the truth is that a certain amount of pedophilic attraction is normal for men and makes biological sense. Because what matters is the amount of offspring a female can give a man over the long-term, men have evolved to prefer young, nulliparous females that have all their fertile years ahead of them.
In primitive societies it’s common for men to pursue little girls for marriage. It makes more biological sense for men to chase after 8 yo girls who have all their fertile years ahead of them than 30 yr olds who have used up half of their fertility.
We see a similar thing in Hamadryas baboons. When the males come up to maturity they become interested in the juvenile females and want to take them into their harems. They often kidnap them from neighbouring communities. Men in hunter-gatherer societies do the same thing. This practice is often called “woman theft” which makes it sound like the men are kidnapping 25yr olds, but they’re usually much younger than that.
Chagnon saw men in the Yanomamo often kidnap “unripe” girls from neighbouring villages. Native American tribes would often kidnap little girls from other tribes. A famous case of this is Cynthia Parker, who was kidnapped at about age 10 and lived with the Comanche tribe for over 20 years, having 3 kids with the chief.
Hamadryas baboons are very interesting as the modern human mating may have evolved something like the generalized polygyny system they use.
The whole topic of pedophilia is so taboo that evolutionary psychologists won’t touch it. It just *has* to be completely evolutionarily maladaptive and abnormal!
Bonus stuff:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIgI0amZF1w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxgquwsxtew (0.21 – 0.28)
https://s20.directupload.net/images/210524/6j523d7k.jpg
Among the Irish Travelers, it is common for an adult man to take a 12-year-old girl’s hand in marriage. Then again, it has been reported that the average lifespan for a male Irish Traveler is 39 years of age.
Therefore, it would explain why adult men in that culture gravitate towards pubescent and adolescent girls in their search for a wife. That is, they have to breed faster than most other cultures to keep their people from dying out, and underage boys simply cannot take care of these young brides. In other words, there would be no advantage for them to encourage 12-year-old girls to marry boys their own age.