Patterns in history - explaining our past by evolved

personality types
Patterns in history - explaining our past by evolved personality types 1

Preface 1

The 10.000 Year Explosion and the evolution of personality 2

Patterns in history: hunter-gatherer migrations, farmer expansions and pastoralist

raids 4

Patterns in history: technological and scientific innovation 6

Patterns in history: hunter-gatherer rebellions and revolutions for a more egalitarian

society 9

Redhead origins: Eurasian hunter-gatherers 11

Modern love or love and marriage… 15

The reversal of the Flynn-Effect 19

21 signs from your life-history you have a hunter-gatherer mind 21

Preface
This book is the result of applying the hunter-gatherer vs farmer hypothesis to history and
explaining some of the patterns observable in history. It is very hypothetical as it tries to
understand the “bigger picture” behind historical patterns. I make use of the Myers-Brigg
personality types a lot. I am aware that this personality model is not accepted as scientific. It
is not essential if the reader does believe in the validity of the model or not. It serves as
illustration for those who do.

The book is a collection of blog posts which I have unified for the purpose of the topic.
However, some repetitions still occur. I apologize to the reader for the inconvenience. This
has made it possible to assemble the book quickly and at the lowest possible price at
Amazon. Unfortunately I can’t make the books completely free and I hope the reader will find
it worth more than the .99$ spent.

The book is only a sketch and the reader is invited to use this material as “food for thought”.
E.g. Why was it the Egyptians who built the pyramids? Why was it the Mongols who
dominated much of Eurasia and then failed to build a permanent state?
The 10.000 Year Explosion and the evolution of
personality

The 10,000 Year Explosion by Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending is definitely one of
the most intriguing books on human evolution I have ever read. Despite being more than 10
years old now, it has proven to be quite accurate in many of its hypotheses (e.g. our genetic
Neanderthal admixture).
While many people will be aware of the fact that the agricultural revolution has brought along
genetic changes regarding our diet, few will be aware of the fact that it also has brought
along psychological changes. The authors discuss the human serotonin system which might
have made humans “tamer”. This tameness would have made children more compliant in
helping with the chores (hunter-gatherer children are not forced to work) and being taught
the required skill. It also would have made adults more compliant to live in a more
hierarchical and less egalitarian society.
The authors make it clear that evolutionary psychologists got it wrong when they denied that
any significant evolutionary changes could have happened in the past 10.000 years since
the advent of agriculture, treating all people like hunter-gathers. In fact, the authors argue
that agriculture has led to Bourgeois virtues: being able to defer gratification, planning
ahead, being conscientious and hard-working. All these traits helped early farmers survive
and reproduce. On the flip side, they also had to become less egalitarian and became less
open to change (experience/ideas in the Big 5), as their work involved more routine than that
of hunter-gatherers (e.g. farmer types would be less open to trying new foods as adults).
With the advent of farming and pastoralism status could be acquired with the accumulation
of more material reproductive resources and be translated into more offspring. Of course,
the sharing-caring attitude of hunter-gatherers would have been an obstacle and also
reduced to a more in-group sociality. Conscientiousness, a love for routine and adherence to
tradition and community rules were advantageous traits of early farmers as these traits
increased their productivity.
Even though the majority of people in the past 10.000 years practised farming, I would argue
that not all of these humans had a farmer personality. A lot of hunter-gatherers and
pastoralists (the latter often through raids, like the Indo-Europeans who dispersed
throughout Eurasia from the Asian Steppe) were assimilated into the farming cultures, even
though these might have had a harder time living in a farmer society. Many hunter-gatherers
and pastoralists (e.g. gipsies with pastoralist origins) still refuse to integrate into modern
society, which with its 9-5 routine jobs and status-orientation (keeping up with the Joneses)
is mostly a farmer world.
Like Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending, I have argued that our recent environments
have shaped our psychology, in particular, our ancestral subsistence economies: hunting-
gathering, farming and herding. The resulting personality groups correspond to the Myers-
Briggs types as well as groups Helen Fisher has found analysing dating sites:

Due to assortative mating, the personality traits of each group may have remained
somewhat bundle, (e.g. hunter-gatherers: fiercely egalitarian, hyperfocus when interested,
perhaps even more monogamous and less likely to accentuate gender display. Here is a
table with likely genetic traits for hunter-gatherer and farmer personality types:

hunter-gatherer farmer

High on personality trait “openness”, High on personality trait

(often) low on “conscientiousness” “conscientiousness”, low on “openness”

Strongly (actively) egalitarian status-seeking

Tendency towards out-group sociality, Tendency towards in-group sociality

more accepting of diversity (e.g. different (identifies more strongly with a core group,
sexuality, refugees, etc.) like family, religious group or sports team)

More liberal ideology More conservative ideology

Less sexual dimorphism More (display of) sexual dimorphism

Later onset of puberty Earlier onset of puberty

More monogamous tendencies Less monogamous tendencies

 Tendency to wanting fewer children Tendency to wanting more children

Relaxed child-rearing attitude Authoritative child rearing, “helicopter

parenting”

more likely to become night owls Early risers

“Lazier” (when it comes to physical work More hard-working

and chores)

highly rebellious when feeling personal individualistic, but also more conformist
freedom and values are threatened and highly loyal to their core group

Less interest in small-talk and gossip Higher interest in small-talk and gossip

Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending also discuss possible genetic evolution leading to
the scientific revolution, leaving the question unanswered in the end, however. Anyone well
familiar with the Myers-Briggs test is well aware that most famous scientists from Galileo and
Newton to Darwin and Einstein were of the NT or Helen Fisher’s “director” type. So, the
scientific revolution was mainly a hunter-gatherer phenomenon. The reason can be found in
trait “high openness to ideas”, which correlates with intelligence. Why should hunter-gatherer
types be more intelligent than farmer types? The answer might lie in an evolutionary arms
race: being more egalitarian than the average person can be highly disadvantageous for
one’s reproductive potential, so higher intelligence and/or higher levels of social wariness
(neuroticism) might have evolved in hunter-gatherer types in the past 10.000 years.

Patterns in history: hunter-gatherer migrations, farmer

expansions and pastoralist raids
Our hunter-gatherer ancestors settled all five continents. What exactly caused their
migrations is not known. We know that hunter-gatherers tend to split up when conflicts start
to occur in their bands. So, their desire for social harmony might have been one of the main
drivers behind hunter-gatherer migrations beyond the need for subsistence.
Human hunter-gatherer migrations
Human history changed dramatically with farming. Farmers didn’t move much but tried to
increase their productivity by expansions. In Daniel Quinn’s famous novel “Ishmael” the
farmers are described as “takers” and the hunter-gatherers “leavers”. This description is
probably quite accurate from a historical point of view. Wherever farming appeared,
populations started to grow and their territory to expand: Mesopotamia, the Mediterranean,
China, Mesoamerica and Africa.

In less arable zones neighbouring farmer territory hunter-gatherer people often turned to
nomadic pastoralism as a mode of subsistence. Pastoralist societies tended to become very
tribal and bellicose, and often attacked their farmer neighbours who frequently were
technologically more advanced, but less martial.
The Huns attacking the Roman Empire are only one of the many examples of nomadic
pastoralists attacking from the Asian Steppe. Other pastoralist raiders in history included
Turkic peoples, Vikings, Mongols and many of the Indo-European tribes that spread across
Eurasia.
The pastoralist conquests usually didn’t establish permanent empires as pastoralist and
farmer DNA are quite different: sedentary farmers prefer routine and are more organized,
nomadic pastoralists are more spontaneous and tribalistic. Therefore their raids often were a
bit like shooting stars in history: shining bright for a moment and then dissipating.
After all these movements of peoples most human populations nowadays are a mix of the
three types. We can assume that evolution has left its marks in our genome and personality
traits.
So, what do those geographic movements look like nowadays?
Farmer types: business trips to expand the company and then relaxing at the usual seaside
resorts
Hunter-gatherer types: expanding their horizons by either taking a spiritual trip to India or
going on an educational year abroad
Pastoralist types: finding adventures, like a Safari or raiding the nightclubs of Ibiza

Patterns in history: technological and scientific

innovation
The percentage of innovative individuals in a population is rather low, at around 2,5%. If you
look at famous inventors and innovators, you will find a lot of common psychological traits
among them, e.g. there is a tendency for them to be outsiders and to see the world with a
childlike curiosity.
In fact, high IQ and creativity are related to the traits “openness” and “low
conscientiousness” in the Big 5 inventory. These traits roughly translate to N (openness)
and P (explorativeness and flexibility) in the Myers-Briggs inventory (MBTI). The technical
part of innovation (vs.e.g innovation in art and social innovation) is due to higher
testosterone levels, i.e. T in MBTI or low agreeability in the Big 5 model.
In fact, when you look at technical innovators they more often than not have an NTP profile
in MBTI: Leonardo da Vinci (ENTP), Einstein (INTP), Edison (ENTP), Alexander Graham
Bell (ENTP), Marie Curie (INTP) and Feynman (ENTP). There are also many high
conscientious (high serotonin) people among the innovators, though: Newton (INTJ), Tesla
(INTJ) and Mark Zuckerberg (INTJ), just to name a few. The latter types tend to become
experts in one particular field rather than the more explorative P types, who tend to be more
explorative in width.
As an example: Google vs Facebook. The Google founders, Larry Page (INTP) and Sergey
Brin (INTP) have a wide variety of interests ranging from Search to self-driving cars and
extending human life-spans. Mark Zuckerberg, on the other hand, tends to stick with social
media, not only extending his own Facebook all the time, but also buying up the competition
like WhatsApp and Instagram.
I have argued that N-types have more hunter-gatherer genes than S-types in MBTI, who
have more genetic heritage from early farmers. How come, that hunter-gatherer types make
the majority of inventions when they didn’t invent much before the advent of farming? One
possibility is the admixture of Neanderthal genes, as the “Great Leap Forward” occurred
around the same time as the Neanderthal admixture, around 40.000 years ago.

However, the majority of human inventions still happened after the advent of farming and
some, like the domestication of fire, weapons and musical instruments (e.g. flutes) happened
before the neolithic. What is more likely: the patters of innovation we see in history are the
result of an arms race between farmers and hunter-gatherer types who lived in farmer
societies. Hunter-gatherer types are not cut-out for routine work like farmer minds.
Traditional schooling is such a routine activity and many famous inventors and scientist did
struggle in schools. Isaac Newton hated farming and did poorly in school. So did Edison and
many others. In fact, it seems there is hardly any Nobel-prize winner who didn’t hate school
(see here).
It can, therefore, be safely assumed that hunter-gatherer types did worse in farmer societies
than farmer minds. A lot of innovations in history might have been due simply to necessity. A
famous proverb says that necessity is the mother of invention. What kind of necessity? The
necessity not to be regarded as lazy or inferior human beings. The necessity to be respected
and loved and the necessity to live an authentic life according to one’s evolutionary
programme, aka self-actualization.
Looking at the technological innovation adoption life-cycle, we can make some interesting
inferences regarding the hunter-gatherer/farmer hypothesis.

Innovators are most likely INTP/ENTP types with INTJ/ENTJ types working out the details
and making the technology more usable for farmer types. The innovators are driven by their
need of self-actualization, their open-mindedness and playfulness (characteristic traits of
hunter-gatherer minds.

Early adopters are most likely hunter-gatherer types too. They are open-minded and curious
about new technology, just like children are curious about new toys. For early adopters, the
technology doesn’t have to be perfectly developed or user-friendly, not even very practical
yet. Early adopters can see the future potential and are therefore interested in the
technology.
The majority are mostly farmer types who might have varying motives to adopt the new
technology. For the early majority, it is most likely status and prestige, whereas for the late
majority it is more likely the practical aspect of the technology. Farmer types are usually
more set in their routines and therefore slower to adopt new technology. What about the
laggards? One thing that is highly important in farmer societies is conformism, and it is most
likely conformism that drives the laggards to finally adopt the new technology.
The people who never adopt new technology are most likely to have hunter-gatherer minds
again. If they find no real use for the technology hunter-gatherer minds are not moved by
status and conformism to adopt it.
Patterns in history: hunter-gatherer rebellions and
revolutions for a more egalitarian society

Karl Marx defined revolution as a return to the “original” egalitarian social organization of
hunter-gatherers. I have argued that different subsistence economies have left their
evolutionary mark on human personality so that nowadays we have got mostly “farmer”
types, followed by “pastoralist” and “hunter-gatherer” types. We, therefore, live in a
predominantly materialistic farmer world. However, due to repeated hunter-gatherer
rebellions, we also have predominantly idealistic hunter-gatherer values when it comes to
social organization: egalitarian, democratic, tolerance of diversity. The Enlightenment and
the French Revolution were hunter-gatherer movements. Liberté, égalité, fraternité were not
only brought about by the French revolution but have been hunter-gatherer values for
millennia before the advent of farming.

Therefore it seems likely that Marx himself was a hunter-gatherer type (intuitive, or N in
Myers-Briggs). Indeed he is usually typed INTJ and it can be expected that other
communists are also N types. It seems they are so without exception: Lenin, Pol Pot (INTJ),
Stalin (ENTJ), Mao, Castro, Che (all ENFP), Engels (INTP). Many of these people turned
from well-intentioned leaders to evil dictators, though. How come? It is impossible to turn a
mixed society of farmer, herder and hunter-gatherer personalities into a communist utopia.
Even if society consisted only of hunter-gatherer types, such organisation would not possible
on a large scale. The communist leaders knew this intuitively and that is why they became
paranoid and started to see enemies everywhere.
Even before the French and communist revolutions, there were hunter-gatherer revolutions.
Many of them religious and fighting the inequalities that arose due to agriculture: Jesus
(INFJ), Muhammad (INTJ), Buddha (INTP) and later religious rebels when religions became
too “farmerized”, like Martin Luther (INTJ) and Jan Hus (INTP).
Going back to the times of early farming you find hunter-gatherer personalities fighting for a
more equal society. Hammurabi (INTJ) and his famous Codex come to mind.
The 20th century saw civil rights hunter-gatherer figures like Martin Luther King (ENFJ),
Malcolm X (ENTJ) and Gandhi (ENFJ), as well as protagonists for feminism (hunter-gatherer
egalitarianism also includes women), like Simone de Beauvoir (INFJ).
The 21th-century hunter-gatherer movements have mostly been about tolerance towards
diversity (Obama, ENTP has been a champion) and the discussion about universal basic
income. The list of advocates for basic income features some really big name hunter-
gatherer personalities: Elon Musk (INTJ), Mark Zuckerberg (INTJ) and many other Silicon
Valley tech billionaires.
What about the common folk? The era of hippie, punk and metal rebellions seemed to have
passed in popular culture. The protests have become much quieter now, but they are still
there and manifest themselves in phenomena like Greta Thunberg (INTJ), the green
movement, hipsters and purple and green-dyed hair.
Redhead origins: Eurasian hunter-gatherers
October 17, 2019

Redheads are special. They are said to have a very fiery temperament and to be
very rebellious and hard-headed (source). Recently I came across an article that
said that redheads are overrepresented in Math, Science, Philosophy, and comedy
(source) and one person on Quora asked: “Why are there so many redheads working
in media jobs?”.
All of the above traits are typical for a certain personality type, intuitives or “N” (in
Myers-Briggs), who I have hypothesized have more original “hunter-gatherer” genes
than other personality types (“farmers” and “pastoralists”). Plus I teach in a school
with media classes, and those classes have an extraordinarily high percentage of N
types (more than 50%, even though N types make up only around 25% of the
population).

Another piece of information that got me interested in redheads is that they (like
gifted and autistic people) tend to look younger than their age in childhood and their
teens. This fits well with my hypothesis of r/K selected personality types, with
“hunter-gatherers” being the last group to reach puberty. Moreover, redheads seem
to be more prone to ADHD, Tourette syndrome and ASD, all of which are not
untypical for hunter-gatherer personality types.
So I started to look for some famous redheads and it turned out that the majority of
the ones I found are indeed N types: Prince Harry (INFP like his wife and his late
mother), Ed Sheeran (ENFP), Nicole Kidman (INFP), Felicia Day (ENFP), etc.
I tried it with a random list from an interesting article:

● Socrates
● Galileo
● Darwin
● King David
● Vincent van Gogh
● Mark Twain
● Thomas Jefferson
● Queen Elizabeth I
● JK Rowling
● Jane Goodall

N types again: Van Gogh (INFP), Darwin (INTP), Galileo (INTP), Jefferson (INTJ),
Twain (ENTP), even King David (unusual redhead for the region) is commonly typed
INFP.
That is not to say that all red-haired people are “hunter-gatherer” personalities, but
such a high percentage of a rare personality type in redheads is quite remarkable.
Where does it come from?
We typically associate red hair with Celtic origins. The Celts were of Indo-European
origin and those were farmers and pastoralists. So, redheads should really be
descendants of farmers/pastoralists, then? Some more research revealed that red
hair is also found outside the Indo-European territory, among other the Udmurts in
Russia, who are completely unrelated to the Indo-Europeans. What Celtic redheads
and Udmurts have in common though is Y-haplogroup R1b, which shows a high
correlation with the distribution of red hair (and the respective MC1R gene).

© https://www.eupedia.com/genetics/origins_of_red_hair.shtml
If we compare the map with the Indo-European expansions (farmers from Anatolia,
pastoralists from the Russian Steppe), we find that there is actually not much
correspondence between the Indo-European expansions and red hair. On the
contrary, it seems there is actually a “hole” in the redhead map, wherever the early
farmers arrived in Europe.

Indo-European expansions (eradicating red hair?)

I asked myself, “What if it is actually the other way round?”. What if redheads were
endemic to Eurasia and common among European hunter-gatherers (like they were
in Neanderthals) and that it started to disappear with the arrival of farmers and
herders? What if the Indo-Europeans actually punched a hole in the redhead map of
Eurasian hunter-gatherers? The later early farmers and Indo-European pastoralists
arrived, the more redheads left. Of course, it is historically documented that at least
some Indo-Europeans (Celts and Thracians) were redheaded. However, they might
have been so due to admixture with Eurasian hunter-gatherers. The Yamnaya, the
population of Indo-European pastoralists that probably brought most of the Indo-
European languages to Europe, are thought to have had a 50% hunter-gatherer
admixture.
A European region that caught my particular interests: the Basque Country. The
Basques are among the people with the highest rate of R1b and Basque is most
likely and ancient hunter-gatherer language* that far predates the arrival of farming
even though the Basques are likely a mix of early farmers and hunter-gatherers. It
should be strange that one of the few non-Indo European people in Europe has such
a high rate of R1b, which supposedly migrated with the Celts. It is more likely IMHO
that it had been there long before the arrival of farming in Europe.

Why should redheads belong mostly to the “hunter-gatherer” personality type if these
ancestral populations all mixed up in the end? Perhaps they didn’t mix that well after
all. It could be that they preferred to mate with their own “kind”. Indeed, Helen Fisher
has found out that certain personality types tend to seek mates among their own
group:
It could, therefore, be that red hair has been mostly stuck with “hunter-gatherer”
types through sexual selection.
Wherever they came from, I (brown-haired) find redheads incredibly cool and
likeable and I hope they won’t ever disappear from the human gene pool.
Modern love or love and marriage…
don’t go together like a horse and carriage anymore, like Frank Sinatra once sang.
What has happened? As you can see from the statistic (English and Wales)
marriages have gone down since the 70s and divorce rates have gone up rapidly.
Divorce rates have been slightly decreasing recently, but only because people aren’t
getting married anymore. Accounting for this fact, divorce rates are probably at a
historic high.

Let’s start our investigation in the 1960s when the contraceptive pill was started to be
used widely.
As you can see there is an almost perfect correlation between women using the pill
and rising divorce rates. There is a lag of approximately seven years, though. This is
the famous “Seven Year Itch”. There have been a lot of speculations about this
correlation. A common one I have read is that the pill makes women unattractive
(putting on weight). If even that makes sense to some people, I wouldn’t say that
most people would be so shallow to leave their partner because of a few more
pounds.

The real reason can be expressed in terms of evolutionary psychology: if a partner

hasn’t produced offspring after a longer period of time (studies show that on average
it is actually rather six years than seven years), it is the best strategy to leave the
partner and find a new mate.
Of course, the pill has had many upsides too, above all letting people choose when
to have children. It allowed women to choose long term careers, reduced abortion
rates and probably also reduced crime rates considerably (fewer unwanted children
means fewer children in danger of becoming delinquents).

The pill in combination with our capitalist economic system has made it possible that
people can postpone having children and pursue a career instead. This the average
age for the first child has jumped up to around 30 years compared to around 20
years in the 1950s.
For many people having children has become a luxury, which is absurd considering
how well off economically we are nowadays. If and how many children people want
to have nowadays is greatly determined by people’s personality. The more traditional
personality types still want to have children, they merely start a little bit later than
they used to because everybody wants to have a good education nowadays.

If you check the above table of distribution of personality types (MBTI), you will find
that the more traditional S types have a higher distribution. This simply means that
more traditionally minded S types have more children. Also, the more ambitious
types (TJ), who on average have higher incomes, have more children. A male
ISTJ/ESTJ female (ISFJ/ESFJ) pair would have the highest number of children
nowadays, say a hospital doctor and his stay-at-home wife.
The more traditional types have a certain genotype of the OXTR rs53576 gene. GG
types have been found to have more stable relationships and report higher marital
satisfaction than carriers of the AA/AG genotypes.

It has been interpreted that the AA/AG types are less social. However, I think those
types are frequently intuitives and have a different kind of sociality. Intuitives might have
lower social cognition (recognition of feelings, memory for names), however, they
have a “thinner skin”, when it comes to emotions. That’s probably one of the reasons
why intuitives are more prone to divorce. Personally, I know many intuitives who
don’t want to have children in the first place. My hypothesis is that intuitives were
programmed by evolution to survive during hard and unsettled times and a prone to
postponing settling down until more settled times. The problem is that the right time
might never arrive in these unsettled times. Intuitives are already programmed by
evolution to invest all their resources in fewer children. This would be the most
advantageous parental strategy in hard times.

In order to cement my hypothesis, I want to point out that contrary to traditional S

types the more ambitious types among intuitives (NJ) have in fact fewer children,
rather than more. How can this obvious paradox be explained? It does make sense
when you consider that NJ types are willing to postpone reproduction longer than NP
types and of course they want to have fewer children too, in order to optimise their
resources on even fewer offspring.

The consequences of these patterns of marriage and child-bearing is that we will see
an increase of SJ personality types in the near future and a (further) decrease of N
(in particular NJ) types.
The reversal of the Flynn-Effect
Several studies have confirmed a slight reversal of the famous Flynn-Effect. In the 1980s
James R. Flynn discovered that throughout the 20th century IQ scores had been increasing
by about 3 points per decade. This effect might have been due to increasingly stimulating
environments for toddlers and little children.

However, more and more studies tend to find a reversal of the Flynn-Effect (e.g. here).
There are many interesting hypotheses about its causes and I would like to add my own. IQ
is correlated with the personality trait “openness”. Markus Jokela (2012) has found in a study
that

Higher levels of openness to experience in both sexes and higher levels of

conscientiousness in women were associated with lower fertility [...]

This has been true before the 60s, but the effect has become stronger since the availability
of the contraception pill. High openness correlates with being on the fast end of the life-
history spectrum (openness to action) as well as the slow end (openness to ideas). It is the
latter that should be highest correlated to IQ. I have argued that the slow end of the life
history spectrum is populated with “hunter-gatherer” types, who (historically) had fewer
children than “farmer” or “pastoralist” types.

The reversal of the Flynn-Effect could, therefore, be explained by lower fertility among high
IQ hunter-gatherer types. As hunter-gatherers are collective breeders, hunter-gatherer types
might find it harder to raise children in a world with little support for child-rearing than farmer
types. Birth control allows them to make voluntary decisions about having children. Being
more conscientious would reinforce the choice to have few/no offspring as this would entail
an additional burden in child-rearing. If my hypothesis is correct it would follow that it is, in
particular, hunter-gatherer type women who suffer from post-partum depression due to lack
of social support.
Apart from reduced fertility, there may be additional factors that reduce trait openness in the
gene-pool. One of them is a higher incidence of autism among hunter-gatherer types.
Hunter-gatherer types have highly reactive amygdalas and are therefore less resilient than
other types. They were not born for highly competitive and socially stressful environments.
Schools and stressful modern work environments might, therefore, be additional factors that
might lead to high IQ hunter-gatherers not succeed in life due to increased mental problems
such as social anxiety and depression.
21 signs from your life-history you have a hunter-
gatherer mind
I have argued that life-history and personality are tightly connected. The rare hunter-gatherer
personalities are on the slow end of the life-history spectrum and have therefore personality
traits like being more cautious/fearful to ensure a longer life-span, which was necessary to
raise your offspring, who in turn took longer to become adults.
Here are some signs from different points in a life-history that are indicative of a hunter-
gatherer mind. In chronological order:

1. You were a preemie or born overdue to parents who were probably older than
the average parents when they had their first child.
2. You were a highly reactive, difficult baby with a lot of crying and irregular
sleeping patterns and very explorative
3. As a toddler, you threw more tantrums than your peers (e.g. for not wanting to
be buckled up in the kiddie seat)
4. You were a picky eater
5. You were highly sensitive to noises, itchy textiles, etc.
6. You drove your parents crazy with your “why”-questions.
7. You had difficulties connecting to other kids or you were hypersocial trying to
connect to all kids
8. You found the world was an unjust place (why do people not help the beggar
in the street? etc.)
9. You were frequently sad or melancholic without apparent cause
10. You found elementary school boring and were dreamy or hyperactive; you
might have been gifted, twice-exceptional (e.g. dyslexic and great at math) or
a special education student
11. Puberty came later for you
12. You often didn’t understand the other teens' obsessions with brands,
celebrities, fast cars, wrestling, certain TV shows, etc. and you were
definitely not the one who owned the latest iPhone model.
13. You were a loner in your teens, suffered from social anxiety and/or
depression and might have been anarchistic, nihilistic or even suicidal, feeling
you didn't belong our even that you live in the "Matrix".
14. In your late teens, you found it easier to have friendships with people of the
opposite sex than your own sex (too aggressive, competitive, bitchy, etc.),
even as an adult you might still have a lot of opposite-sex friends
15. You didn’t have your first romantic partner before the end of high school
16. You were confused by relationships (too complicated, irrational, one-sided,
not honest enough, etc.)
17. Once you were grown up a lot of grown-ups continued to treat you like a child
and didn’t take your ideas seriously. Even later in life you often feel
misunderstood by others.
18. You got frequently asked for an ID when ordering alcohol because you looked
younger
19. By your mid-20s, you thought your life had been an odyssey so far.
20. You didn’t find the partner for life before your 30s (if ever)
21. Your friends tend to live much further away from you than your neighbour’s
who mostly live nearby.