Author: Christopher Ryan and Cacida Jetha
A good portion of this book is aimed at questioning conventional wisdom on whether monogamy came “naturally” to prehistoric humans. For the first several chapters, the authors quote numerous scientific works and poke holes in the claims there. Their primary targets are Darwin, Malthus and Hobbes, but there are several other respected names from the past that are quoted and then argued with. I was very impressed with the sheer number of these references and how the authors use a fine tooth comb to dissect their statements. While I commend them for their strong stance, the argumentative style gets to be grating after a while. Anyone suggesting that “war” or “fighting” comes naturally to humans is very quickly put to shame. One of their primary weapons in this debate is that our closest primate cousins, the bonobos are some of the most peaceful, cooperative and over-sexed animals.
Another theme that is consistent throughout the book is that agriculture is the root of all evil. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors, typically lived peaceful, cooperative lives and shared their kill with their clan. In contrast, early farmers needed to fight, to protect their property and crops and that is the underlying reason for all the strife that mankind faces today. The authors even question the research from Jane Goodall on chimpanzees, arguing that they too might have been peaceful, had she not presented them with bananas every day — something they felt the need to fight over!
To me it seems rather simple. Man was peaceful until he had something to fight for. Since this book is about sex, one interesting way to look at it would be to see if man fought for sex before the dawn of agriculture. This would definitely have made the material much more readable and clear. However, maybe the evidence to support this wasn’t readily available and so the authors chose to argue about it instead :-)
The authors refute common myths about our prehistoric ancestors. Their average lifespan is typically quoted as somewhere in the 40s. They contend that this is due to the confusion between average life expectancy and typical life span. The former is averaged over all adults and children. Since infant mortality was much higher in prehistoric times, this significantly reduced the average life expectancy. In contrast there is significant archaeological evidence that many prehistoric humans did live to the ripe old age of 80 years.
An interesting side-note is that the Heisenberg uncertainty principle applies to anthropologists studying primitive tribes. When they take residence with them, they are inherently altering their behavior. The author’s critique Chagnon’s research on the Yanomamo tribe, a society of indigenous Amazonians, saying that, "Chagnon fails to account for the effects of his own disruptive, rather Hemingwayesque presence among the people he studied".
It is only from chapter 15 and onwards, that the book stops arguing with dead and living scientists and starts getting down to making its own claims. They look at the human reproductive anatomy and use the Darwinian principle of Natural Selection to put forth a theory that early humans lived in packs and lived promiscuously. Apparently our human anatomy has evolved to select the survival of the fittest sperm! They do present convincing arguments on how co-habiting with someone for long can make them seem more like a “sibling” thereby killing any sexual libido. After spending the whole book on prehistoric sex, the last couple of chapters offer some good advice on how to look at modern day marriage. Maybe sex is over-rated after all!
This is a must-read for anyone looking to broaden their views on Marriage, Relationship and Sex.
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