The roots of Kzinti culture, language and history
(con't)
This is the case in humans, and human languages
drift and evolve rapidly. However in Kzinti we may conjecture
that the telempathic sense has effectively locked in the language
centres to its (still poorly understood) demands, which would
go far towards explaining both kzin linguistic homogeneity and
telepathic prowess. As a side note, hallucinatory experiences
are common in human telepathic adepts, which may be due to the
telempathic and other senses competing for the same brain processor
resources. Kzinti telepaths also suffer from numerous cognitive
difficulties and this may explain why telepathy evolves rarely
and is seldom a highly developed sense in any species despite
its obvious evolutionary advantages, its cognitive costs simply
outweigh its survival benefits. The largest exceptions to this
rule, the now extinct Slavers and the sessile Grogs, both show
clearly the cognitive drawbacks of a highly developed telempathic
sense.
Kzinti share with humans the ability to form
hierarchical mass societies, but they are orders of magnitude
less social. Any society can be seen as a series of opportunities
to co-operate or compete and in Kzinti the balance falls more
heavily on competition than in human society. This fact imposes
strict limits on the forms of society that the Kzinti can successfully
use, and in fact we can see that kzin culture shows much less
variation than human culture does in terms of structure. The
reasons for this are complex, but ultimately, for any evolved
organism, the final measure of success is the number of offspring
injected into future generations in relation to the number of
offspring injected by competitors. There are two basic strategies
available to achieve this, and we may categorize species as
K (named because the population total is characterized by K,
the carrying capacity of the environment) and r (named because
the population total is characterized by r, the reproductive
rate). K species are characterized by a small number of large
offspring, long lifetimes with late maturity, and high levels
of parental care. r species have a large number of small offspring,
short lifetimes with early maturity, and low or no parental
care.
In species with sexual reproduction we see
two strategies, individuals who produce a small number of large
gametes (females) and those who produce a large number of small
gametes (males). This tendency usually generalizes so that we
see females invest a large amount to ensure the success of a
small number of offspring and males invest a small amount in
any given offspring in order to maximize the total number of
offspring. Since the child bearing capacity of females is the
ultimate limit on the reproductive potential of any given generation
we see usually see a situation in which males compete for females.
In a species like the Wunderland gagrumpher, males invest no
parental care in their offspring, and as a result we see a large
sexual dimorphism, with males averaging five times the weight
of a female and possessing specialized neck dewlaps, which serve
both as an intimidation mechanism in male/male conflicts and
as a sexually selected attractant to females. There are exceptions
to this rule. In some bird species the male and female form
long term pair bonds and there is very little (although not
zero) mate competition. As a result males and females are nearly
identical in body plan and require an expert (or a con specific)
to differentiate them. In a few fish species the technical details
of reproduction dictate that males provide all or the bulk of
parental care, and in these cases females compete aggressively
for access to males, reversing the normal pattern.
In almost all mammalian species males compete
for females, but humans are an extreme case of the K strategy
and this changes the equation. Due to the limitations of the
female pelvis and the human specialization of large brain size,
human infants are born almost completely helpless and require
two decades to reach full maturity. This tremendous reproductive
burden requires the dedicated assistance of the male to ensure
the survival of the offspring in a primitive environment, and
the males best able to provide this assistance then become objects
of competition for females. Because of this almost unheard of
female competition the degree of male competition is reduced.
As a result male humans mass only about fifty percent more than
females and females possess secondary sexual attractant displays
which are almost universally confined to males in other mammals.
Under these conditions co-operative, coalitional behaviours
in both sexes are cost effective, and it is these behaviours
that make human society possible. Through this process intelligence
itself has become a sexually selected characteristic as well
as a naturally selected characteristic. At this point in human
evolutionary history it seems likely that sexual selection has
become the dominant driving force behind the development of
human intelligence, as witnessed by the tremendous costs involved
in bearing large brained infants (including a significant death-in-labour
and infant mortality rate under primitive conditions) and rearing
them to adulthood. Such high cost evolutionary features, like
peacocks tails and moose antlers, are generally only seen in
cases of runaway sexual selection, where a trait evolves until
the evolutionary cost of displaying it counterbalances the tremendous
reproductive advantage it confers.
The Kzinti are even more extreme K strategists
than humans. Kzinti kits are normally born as brother/sister
twins from a single egg, although there are rare cases of quadruplets
or single births, and are typically nursed for eight to twelve
(standard) years, during which time the female remains infertile.
A fertile female kzin may have only three or four oestrus cycles
in her lifetime. As a result kzin population growth is extremely
slow and kzin males compete strenuously both for females and
for the resources to support them. A high proportion of Kzinti
male deaths are due to challenge duels resulting from this competition,
and in the adult population females outnumber males in a ratio
of between two to one and three to one. In other words, between
fifty and seventy five percent of male kzin kits can expect
to die in combat. Of these most can expect to die at the hands
of older and more established kzin, although among those Great
Prides involved directly in the Man/Kzin wars almost fifty percent
are killed in combat with humans or other species. Combat death
among males begins in late adolescence and rises to a peak in
young adulthood, declining slowly but steadily thereafter. This
single fact dominates the entire Kzinti social structure, and
in fact the entire Patriarchy is built around the requirement
to redirect the aggression of young males outward to prevent
it from completely destabilizing the hierarchy. It is this high
death rate which allows the extended polygamous mating structure
which is the core of Kzinti social life. Paradoxically this
system has given the Kzinti fifty thousand years of cultural
stability and an interstellar empire unmatched in Known Space.
Unfortunately these achievements are little comfort to any particular
Kzinti adolescent who, regardless of station of birth, can only
look forward to a lifetime of status-driven combat with a better
than even chance of violent death.
Kefan Brasseur
Senior Fellow for Nonhuman Studies
Kardish University
Alpha Plateau Plateau
|
|
 |
| The War Starts in -916 Days |
|
 |
Cover Story:
Stephen Hickman
|
|
 |
 |
On the Wars:
Toni Weisskopf
|
|
|
|
|
