trc@hou5a.UUCP (11/21/83)
RE common female ancestor: I've got it! Remember how ugly the cave-men/women were depicted in the museum field trips and grade school science magazines? So one day a mutation arises - and the first beautiful woman is born. Naturally she was in heavy demand, and had many children. Her daughters were just as good looking, and so were also in heavy demand. Daughters became a valuable trade commodity for a while, and were traded the world over. This theory has the added advantage of explaining the basis for the attitudes of men towards women as property in many societies. Of course, eventually, the good looking girls "froze out" most ugly ones, and the value of a normal good looking daughter dropped considerably - the market i was glutted, so to speak. In fact, fathers now had to give others money to take them off their hands. Thus the tradition of giving a dowry. :-) Tom Craver hou5a!trc