A Physical ABC of Competitive Governance

[I am now juxtaposing my new social science with my new historical chronology, and gradually integrating assorted summary versions of previously published materials.]

Respected elders, especially male elders, traditionally performed important roles in initiating and coordinating group discussion in ancient societies. The legitimate influence of younger men in debates often depended on endorsement by older men. Given the constrained time budgets of prehistoric groups, routine assemblies were often held in the evenings around a campfire. One of the practical constraints on prehistoric group size was, therefore, the audibility of speakers in the context of assemblies. If the most influential elders included elder women, would those older women have addressed the whole group as effectively as their male counterparts?

Probably not. Studies have found that age-related acoustic deterioration in voices is significantly greater among women due to hormonal and menopausal changes. Older voices are less audible in the open air. Voice reach over distances typical for campfires would be stronger for low-pitched male voices than for high-pitched female voices.1 But the inequality between men and women in the strength of their voice projection affects younger females too. Pubertal increases in testosterone cause male voices to vibrate at lower frequencies than female voices, giving them a distinctly lower pitch.

Throughout life high Testosterone predicts lower voices. Deeper voice articulation affects people’s general perceptions of power and leadership potential. Men and women really do lower their voices when they sense that they are superior to another in status, and raise their voice pitch when they feel inferior. Men really do perceive a man with a lower voice pitch to be superior in physical strength and status. Women really do find lower pitched males more attractive when they are fertile.2 It has been demonstrated that a lower voice is more intimidating to rivals and attractive to mates. Lower voices act perceptually on our estimations of the physical size of the speaker. In both sexes low pitch conveys an impression of knowhow, leadership or competence.3

An insight to emerge from such research is that voice pitch has been most utilitarian in evolutionary contexts of intrasexual competition rather than of intersex relations. Males and females are attuned to the links between voice pitch and status among their own sex. They may find it difficult to perceive such differentials within the opposite sex. Many male-female personality advantages also translate directly into vocalised elements of ‘charisma’. Charisma is a personality trait, but it is interwoven with the physical ‘tonal’ capacities for human expression. There is a large literature reporting on the disadvantages women experience relative to men because their voices are less audible and assertive. They do not convey equal authority, competence, influence, or trustworthiness. Therefore women are more likely to be interrupted and talked-over.

“In the helmet-plate showing the Lombard King Agilulf enthroned between winged victories and suppliants emerging from towered cities, there is much beyond crude workmanship to announce a post-Roman world. Agilulf has flowing hair and beard and carries a sword, as emperors are rarely if ever seen to do. Yet this is still a Roman victory ritual. … Whatever its Roman roots, the warrior ethic had been thoroughly assimilated.” [Patrick Wormald, ‘Kings and Kingship’ in The New Cambridge Medieval History, Volume 1 c.500–c.700, edited by Paul Fouracre, Cambridge University Press 2005]

The huge average differences in physical size, weight, and muscular constitution between men and women is credibly explained in evolutionary terms as a result of an ‘arms race’ of sexual, natural and artificial selection which often took form as violent competition between males for dominance, for fertile females, and for superiority over rival human groups. Constant hostility was the standard. The instrumental purpose of sociational governance stems in large part from the evolutionary pressures to convert physical conflict into discursive conflict without weakening the instrumental function of competition, which is our primary vector of rationality and knowledge creation.

To this day, as comparative homicide statistics testify, men remain terrifyingly more violent than women. Because of continual evolution in activities involving physical confrontations, men’s skulls are more resilient against fractures. Men are also more tolerant of physical pain. Female rivalries are less likely to become physically violent, in part because children’s survival depends on their mother’s survival. The following examples illustrate comparative physique — Human females store more body fat than males. However, males are 20% heavier, 7% taller, and have 60% more muscle mass, 90% more upper-body strength and 65% greater lower body strength. In contemporary organisations senior men really do tend to be taller than lower-ranked men.4 These physical differences ensured that more physically imposing men carried more weight than women and men with slighter physiques in prehistoric political discussions.

On average, and at any given point in time, the social, political and economic roles of prehistoric men and women can be expected to have reflected obvious differences in physique. In the long run of evolution the reverse was also true. Differentiated roles produced the evolution of physical disparities. Significant differences reflected in e.g. vocal characteristics, menopause, puberty, pain tolerance, body fat distribution, robusticity of skulls, skeletal morphology, muscularity, upper body strength, and the fearsome beards (that we tend culturally to associate with dominance) can logically also be attributed to various divisions of labour that evolved over millions of years.

Aside from all these visible, tactile, or audible indications of differentiation between the sexes there were the hormones whose detection and study only became possible long after the pioneering nineteenth century treatises on biological differentiation in human evolution. The hormone with the most ubiquitous continual effect in fostering distinguishable behavioural differentiation between the two sexes is Testosterone. Its sociational, political and economic effects were manifested among males specifically in any of the variety of physical or mental activities that are amenable to competition.

Competition generated the energy for prehistoric governance. The urge to be the winner — to stand out from the rest, and to ask the right questions and give the right answers — was the motivation for excellence in governance. Competition featured in foraging, mate choice, building hardy shelters, providing the most effective safety-net welfare coverage, inventing superior tools, and making plans for the armed defence of the group. If modern scientists had been on hand to collect evidence from urine, hair, saliva and blood they would have found Testosterone as the first empirical indicator of competitive leadership influence in prehistoric societies. It is a ‘physical’ indicator of sex differentiation relative to governance activity, just as voice, hair, or muscle are.

The essential fact about Testosterone is that this hormone is strongly implicated in competitiveness, conflict, and aggression or assertiveness among men. Testosterone has relatively little effect on female behaviour. It provides the measurable within-body signal that a male’s outward behaviour is oriented toward competition with a peer or rival. The link between competitive situations and the presence and fluctuation of Testosterone appears to be incontrovertible. Although the most common context for its measurement is competitive contact sport, the very same hormonal correlations are found in political electoral competition, strategic gaming, and hunting prey.

Studies of Testosterone in relation to chess suggest indicators of relevant responses. Their results replicate the findings of Testosterone surges in sport contests. Chess is a strategic skills game that comes close to replicating the face-to-face verbal exchange that we might expect to have featured in a public prehistoric ‘campfire debate’ about group strategies for food, rules or security. Chess needs rational calculation, tactical reasoning and competitive manoeuvres that include bluffs and decoys. The recorded rise in Testosterone both before and after a chess competition is significantly higher among the winners. Moreover, the results correlate with the competitor’s recorded perception that a real effort was required in order to achieve the winning outcome.

These observations are sustained in all research into Testosterone-related behaviour. There appears to be a dynamic feedback loop in which Testosterone circulation rises and falls in response and activation to the impulses and expectations of competition. Testosterone is raised by engaging in or witnessing competition. Furthermore, the artificial administration of Testosterone causes individuals to become competitive. Testosterone influences behaviour. The behaviour influences the circulation of the hormone in the body. Although levels fluctuate over the course of a day or a lifetime, Testosterone also contracts and expands (like body muscles) to deal with competitive sudden encounters. A tightening of this hormonal ‘muscle-equivalent’ can be rapid.

Words commonly used to describe relationship between Testosterone and competitive human interactions include ‘promote’, ‘facilitate’, ‘organise’, ‘regulate’ or ‘mediate’. Its production variably ‘adjusts’ to contests won by healthy men who demonstrate their ‘toughness’, ‘leadership’ and ‘aggressive’ behaviour in competitive environments and types of interaction. In causal terms, the hormone ‘enhances’ perceptions of physical strength and sexual prowess. Its decrease among losers may be a safety mechanism promoting submissive behaviour, helping to prevent injury, shame and dishonour.

A similar relationship is found with the ‘stress hormone’ Cortisol, associated with submissiveness. Cortisol is frequently measurably raised among individuals who have recently lost a competition. It should also be noted that some of the male structural body-physical traits that would have facilitated the maximisation of political ‘clout’ in prehistoric settings — such as prominent brows, larger jaws, deeper voices, and more condensed muscle mass — have now been found to correlate with higher Testosterone.

None of the connections between hormones and causes or outcomes of competitive behaviour are inevitable. Variations within and between the personality traits might modulate the incentives and effects of competition, regardless of Testosterone effects.

I have focused in these sections only on the Physical potential of more or less young or old individuals of either sex to perform roles that often are really more affected by their Personality and Intelligence. We need to clearly distinguish between Physicality, Personality and Intelligence aspects of governance alongside Sex and Age. This will be easier to achieve once I have surveyed the material risks and routines of Coupled Labours, which are initially most directly impacted by differentiations of physique.

Up next: Negotiating Coupled-up Material Risk & Routine

My Theory & History of Society began chronologically on Substack in Sept 2025 with The Politics of Becoming Human. Research began in 2020. Extensive filings of all bibliographic academic material, draft proposals and new theoretical concepts are archived from 2022.

Reply to the email or HellerFiles@gmail.com. This publication is recorded for referencing and copyright under the ORCID publications ID https://orcid.org/0009-0006-0935-0826

Self-portrait by Tintoretto, Italy 1588