The epigenetic effect of trauma
Aug. 10th, 2020 01:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anna_wingAgain, from something on Andrew Ducker's DW.
https://www.borgenmagazine.com/the-epigenetics-of-hunger/
If, as a fair amount of research appears to indicate, traumatic events have an effect of the descendants of the victims of the traumatic situation via an epigenetic pathway, this should have major consequences for the study of human behaviour (not to mention their physical and mental health)
Because considering just the history of the 20th century alone, never mind the millennia before, it is likely that the vast majority of people alive today are the children or grandchildren of someone who survived (at least long enough to reproduce) a war, a famine, a natural disaster or simply a horrible, horrible life, like being an life-indentured labourer, or (the same thing in many places) a woman.
If we assume that every human being who has ever lived was, one way or the other, suffering from built-in PTSD (in addition to the suffering attendant upon their own life), it would explain a lot of things about the way people behave.
https://www.borgenmagazine.com/the-epigenetics-of-hunger/
If, as a fair amount of research appears to indicate, traumatic events have an effect of the descendants of the victims of the traumatic situation via an epigenetic pathway, this should have major consequences for the study of human behaviour (not to mention their physical and mental health)
Because considering just the history of the 20th century alone, never mind the millennia before, it is likely that the vast majority of people alive today are the children or grandchildren of someone who survived (at least long enough to reproduce) a war, a famine, a natural disaster or simply a horrible, horrible life, like being an life-indentured labourer, or (the same thing in many places) a woman.
If we assume that every human being who has ever lived was, one way or the other, suffering from built-in PTSD (in addition to the suffering attendant upon their own life), it would explain a lot of things about the way people behave.
