How men attract women

The real natural environment of hominids was less the savanna than the social group. If you were a hominid male, and people paid attention to you, carved your approval, shut up and listened when you spoke, that meant you were a leader. Men who commanded attention commanded access to community support. That meant a good nest-maker. Humans compete less for territory than for rank. Territory and possessions are only symbols of rank. He who controls the attention is high status and sexually attractive. That’s why rock stars get more ass than CEOs.

The bullet points on your resume don’t elicit the same visceral Pleistocene reaction as fame. I don’t care whether you are a primate or a pipefish, all social systems among animal are hierarchical. Our ancestral tribal societies were economically unequal. A whole lot of hominids were competing for a small number of high-status positions in the tribe. This means only a few ended up on top, a few on the bottom and the rest somewhere in the middle. The human race is a race. The real Pleistocene currency by which a hunter was ranked was not cash but attention.