B) G.P. Murdock was one of the first anthropologists to approach the issue of cross-cultural evaluations, noting the absence of systematic methods within his field. An anthropologist or psychologist might pick a dozen or so different cultures to support or refute a given idea, but there would be hundreds more cultures not brought into discussion. So the question existed, of how to develop a data set reflecting a significant percentage of human cultures, worldwide, such that cross-cultural evaluations would reflect the total sum of human behavior and activity, and not merely those cultures which a researcher might be accused of "cherry-picking" merely because they were favorable to their theory. Towards this end, Murdock and his associates reviewed an incredible number of the published reports on human cultures, worldwide, identifying what was considered by his profession to be the most essential data-attributes from each culture, to compose his coded data-tables. It was a nearly life-long undertaking for him, as it required his personal oversight and review of the primary published sources on over a thousand different cultures. His work was systematically undertaken, with exceptional care, to provide a means for statistically-valid global cross-cultural study of human behavior and culture. He then published the data-tables in Ethnography, which allowed other scholars to critically review his codes and tabulations in an open manner. When Murdock finally compiled these data from 1170 different cultures all over the world, including whatever corrections were necessary by the peer-review process, he had no idea what cross-cultural correlations, or geographical patterns might exist within those data at the time when they were originally published. This overall procedure, of reading and extracting the data from published sources, translating it into coded tables and subjecting that to peer-review, constituted a second level of blinded use of the data where the compilation was undertaken by Murdock and his associates without knowledge of what cross-cultural correlations or geographical patterns might subsequently develop from use of those data.

C) Before undertaking my cross-cultural and later computer-mapping analysis with the Textor and Murdock data, I firstly hand-composed several maps of specific cultural variables using data gathered from my own extensive readings and literature-search, on variables such as Female Genital Mutilations, Contraceptive Plant Usage, and Infant Cranial Deformation and Swaddling. Some of these maps were the first ones to suggest a geographical pattern in behavior related to harsh deserts might exist. Over time, maps were also found by other scholars, on variables such as Regions Conquered by Arab/Islamic Armies since 640 CE, Regions Conquered by Turkish-Mongol Armies since 540 CE, and others on the Status of Women, Modern Contraceptive Use, Political-Social Freedoms and Press Freedoms. None of these variables appears within the large Textor or Murdock data bases, but all of them showed a very similar Saharasian geographical pattern. These added maps, from entirely different data sources, constituted an independent and outside verification of the Saharasian patterns discovered in the Murdock data.

D) When I learned about the Textor publication of 1967, I firstly went through it and searched for every possible and available variable which lent itself towards providing some information as regarding Wilhelm Reich's sex-economic theory. There were 63 such variables found in the Textor book. All other of the over 500 variables had little or nothing to do directly with human behavior, and so were excluded. From there, and without knowing in advance what those 63 variables might reveal, I searched for all possible statistically-significant correlations of either a positive or negative characteristic. This procedure produced a Correlation Table of Sex-Economic Factors, where each of the 63 variables was contrasted against all the other 63 variables. This procedure could have confirmed Reich's sex-economic hypothesis, or refuted it entirely with a raft of predominantly negative correlations. By Textor's mathematical computations, explicitly printed in his book, there were 520 such correlations found between my selection of 63 different variables. Importantly, only 20 of them turned out to be negative. The overwhelming majority, of 500 correlations, or 95% of them, were positive and supporting of Reich's sex-economic theory. That is a higher rate of positive support for any theory on human behavior I have ever read about in the published literature of cross-cultural psychology or anthropology, especially as using such a large number of variables and cultures. Subsequently I was able to explain why the 5% negative correlations appeared, due to how Murdock's variable "Segregation of Adolescent Boys" had no corresponding variable for the Islamic custom of Purdah, or the segregation of girls. When both segregation of boys and girls was considered together, it erased those negative correlations. Separate maps were made of this on page 135 of Saharasia. This standard cross-cultural correlation test was performed before I composed the computer-generated maps, as I did not wish to waste a lot of time making such maps if the standard cross-cultural correlations could not confirm the original hypothesis. If a high percentage of negative cross-cultural correlations had been found at that early stage in my research, it would have put a brake on the whole project. But the positive correlations won the day, and I proceeded. Furthermore: Using a single additional regional identification variable included in both the Textor and Murdock data, I had a rough continental-scale geographical location for each of the 400 tribal cultures. Each culture was then independently evaluated for those 63 variables, developing a percent-patrist determination for that culture which could then be identified as to its regional location. The first regional histograms of percent-patrist culture were thereby produced from the Textor data. A similar set of regional histograms was later produced using the larger 1170-culture Murdock data with 15 variables, also plotting those cultures on histograms based upon regional locations. The two sets of histograms, one from Textor, one from Murdock, matched up nearly identically. Both sets indicated the native tribal cultures of Africa, Asia, Europe and the circum-mediterranean had a generally higher percent-patrist determination than the cultures of Oceania and the Americas. The regions of Africa, Asia and the Circum-Mediterranean were occupied by cultural groups with averages of from 55% to 70% on the matrist-patrist scale (where 100% is extreme-patrist and 0% is extreme-matrist), while Oceania and the Americas were occupied by cultures averaging from 28% to 42%. The regional histograms can be seen on pages 72-73 of my Saharasia book. It was a first-step indication of an important geographical pattern in human behavior, and undertaken totally systematically, without any bias on my part save for the theoretical organization of the data according to Wilhelm Reich's sex-economic theory. It suggested, native peoples of Oceania and the New World were, generally speaking, far more matristically organized than those of the Old World. This also constituted another independent verification, that the data variables I had chosen, and the manner in which they were ordered and used, had logical consistency.

E) In this organizational procedure, I made an explicit division of Matrist versus Patrist attributes. The attribute categories were made a-priori to any subsequent cross-cultural evaluations, which added to the significance of the subsequent correlations observed. Too often, a researcher may firstly look for correlations here and there within the large cultural data bases, and then a-posteriori construct a theory from those observed correlations, trying to "explain them" after-the-fact. Typically, this latter method results in highly artificial social postulates which rest upon weak foundations. My own method was entirely different, to firstly openly state the postulated correlations which I anticipated would exist within the data, and then to actually test my theory, and see if it could be confirmed, or not. As noted, the results of my cross-cultural test could have refuted Reich's sex-economic theory just as easily as to confirm it. But it confirmed Reich. So while I anticipated Reich's theory might be confirmed, especially given James Prescott's prior cross-cultural study "Body Pleasure and the Origins of Violence", which used a smaller number of variables from the Textor data, my cross-cultural evaluations using both the Textor 400-sample and larger Murdock 1170-sample of cultures, constituted a third level of blinded use of the data. This approach provided such a high degree of statistical significance -- with 95%+ of all statistically-significant correlations between the 63 Patrist indicator variables being of a positive character -- that I can today state without hesitation, that Wilhelm Reich's sex-economic theory is the best-proven theory on human behavior, bar none. No other theory on human behavior has so far been subjected to such rigorous cross-cultural testing, to my knowledge, much less to come out with such a high level of positive support.

F) A fourth level of blinding of the data was in my plotting of each individual tribe or culture onto the world map according to more exacting latitude and longitude coordinates. Those coordinates were found for the 1170 cultures, and the mapping procedure undertaken by the computer, using a program which took around a year to write and de-bug. Regional percent-patrist behavior averages were computed within blocks of 5-degrees by 5-degrees of latitude and longitude. These were then printed out onto base-maps according to ten-percentiles. For simplicity, I also later developed a 3-tier categorization of extreme-matrist, intermediate, and extreme-patrist categories. The actual pattern which emerged was as given on my World Behavior Map, showing the regions with the most extreme-patrist cultures were predominantly within the most extremely harsh of world deserts, which is the Saharasian Desert Belt.

G) Additional independent verification of the Saharasia behavior patterns was demonstrated as follows: The highly structured geographical patterns which emerged from this use of the Murdock data firstly matched all the maps hand-composed from other data-sources and scholars, as mentioned above. They secondly also agreed with an extended Archaeological and Historical Review, constructed from standard sources for the different world regions. High Patrism regions on the map, determined from anthropology, generally matched with regions historically afflicted with high levels of social violence, great sexual repression, low women's status, and much child abuse and neglect, as determined from collections with skeletal injuries, massacre sites, destruction layers in habitations, and the presence of fortifications and war-weaponry. The Saharasian Desert Belt determined by climatic factors, was predominantly (but not exclusively) occupied by cultures with typical "Saharasian" armored character and social structures, and this could be shown to stretch back over thousands of years until the approximate starting-time of the large climate-change which converted Saharasia from its original lush grassland-forest conditions into harsh desert conditions. It was after, and only after this climate transition, that one begins to see abundant evidence for social violence and war. Before that climatic transition, such evidence is generally absent, or very isolated in character. This matching of the high-patrist regions based upon ethnography to regions of of high violence as determined from historical and archaeological materials, was particularly supported for the Americas, where in my subsequent 2002 Update on Saharasia article I produced a separate new map (Figure 7) on New World Ethnographical Data on Armored Patrism and Archeological Evidence for Violence: A Close Geographical Match. This kind of unanticipated new support, determined years after the original findings were published, is exactly what one anticipates from an accurate and predictively-useful theory, and this is only one such example provided in my "Update" article.

H) What can be said about outside peer-review of the Murdock data and my methodology, my other maps and the archaeological evidence I cited, my geographical methods? The original Saharasia study was my doctoral dissertation. My final dissertation procedures and manuscript were given peer-review oversight and approvals by my University of Kansas committee, which included both geographers and anthropologists. The findings were later peer-reviewed for academic journals where my summary papers were published: World Futures, World Cultures, Kyoto Review, and the Reichian journals Emotion (Germany), Pulse of the Planet and Journal of Orgonomy. Book chapters of the findings, with maps, now also appear in new compendium books such as Constructing Sexualities: Readings in Sexuality, Gender and Culture (Prentice-Hall 2003), The Rule of Mars: Readings on the Origins, History and Impact of Patriarchy (Ideas and Trends Publisher 2006), Unlearning the Language of Conquest, Scholars Expose Anti-Indianism in America (Univ. of Texas Press 2006), and Societies in Balance: First World Congress on Matriarchal Studies (German) (Editions Hagia-Winzer 2006). Each of these publications required added peer-review by trained anthropologists, geographers, clinicians and academics of various disciplines. The same materials were presented to many scholarly societies, such as the Association of American Geographers, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Congress on Matriarchal Studies with generally open receptions. Yes, there have been a few intensive discussions, even attacks along the way, but the majority of critical points have helped strengthen the work, not reduce it, and no serious weak points have been discovered. At my lectures, scholars often come up and inform me of entirely new connections which they can make based upon their own personal field of study. The Saharasian work is therefore somewhat unique among the research topics associated with Wilhelm Reich's name, in that it enjoys some positive acceptance within the scientific mainstream. But in fact, my Saharasia work has received and survived a more intensive critical peer-review and scrutiny than just about any other large theory on history, human behavior, migration and settlement that might be referenced, and the Saharasia book is occasionally used as a university text.

I) I wish also to address some irrational criticisms of the Murdock data. I have heard they cannot be trusted because they are "old data". This is relevant only if one wants information about the conditions today. For my study, I wanted the oldest-possible set of data, for several reasons. Firstly, I wanted to find out what behavior was like around the world prior to the era of intensive European colonialism and Western influences. A study on the Trobriand Islands of the early 1900s by Malinowski, for example, shows a quite different social condition than what modern reports suggest. Of course it is impossible to get anything that perfectly answers such a question about pre-European conditions, as it was the Europeans themselves who gathered the data in the period after colonial influences began. Nevertheless, basic cultural characteristics are often enduring, and the care of the anthropologists was sufficient to determine such basic factors as I extracted from the Murdock data, and from other sources. I have also heard the claim that the older generation of anthropologists who gathered these data were "biased", without saying exactly how except to imply racist or sexist motivations, in criticisms which I must point out often themselves sound very racist and sexist. Yes, one can go into the literature and find a few statements here or there by some of those older anthropologists which could never be justified by today's standards of publishing. But does this translate into bias in their field reports on such obvious factors as the presence or absence of slavery, or of genital mutilations, descent or inheritance rules, and other things which are hardly hidden or mysterious? One can go back into that older literature and review it for the basic reporting, and make a determination about those factors. That is what Murdock did, at a time when many of the original field anthropologists were still alive to be queried about things. The Murdock data were then published for peer-review, with corrections being made along the way as needed. I should also express a standard principle of geographical science, that one cannot find such a highly-structured pattern on world maps as given in my Saharasia, without there being some definite causal reason standing behind those spatial patterns. And the very large geographical correlation between the large Saharasia cultural region of extreme-patrism to the large Saharasian Desert Belt can be proven as a causal relationship, with logical arguments and facts, as done in my book. This negates any need to go seeking out "alternative explanations" resting upon unproven accusations about "bias". If the Murdock data contained systematic bias or random errors, then no cross-cultural correlations would have appeared, and only chaotic or nonsensical patterns would emerge when they were mapped. But the correlations existed, and the geographical pattern is highly structured, as described in my writings. This cannot be accidental. So if there is some kind of systematic bias or random error in those data, it now falls upon the shoulders of the critics to prove just what that bias or error might be, specifically and explicitly, with a significant number of examples extracted from the literature showing exactly how a given anthropologist made the wrong observations, and to show how that error and bias created the cross-cultural correlations and Saharasian patterns. Generalized dismissals are insufficient, and unproven claims that the "old data" are "racist" or "sexist" are simply too vague and unscientifically constructed to be taken seriously.