Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality by Christopher Ryan & Cacilda Jethá

Author:Christopher Ryan & Cacilda Jethá [Ryan, Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: History
ISBN: 0061707805
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Published: 2012-03-27T00:00:00+00:00

Without access to the skeletal data on body-size dimorphism we have today, Darwin speculated that early humans may have lived in a harem-based system. But we now know that if Darwin’s conjecture were correct, contemporary men would be twice the size of women, on average. And, as we’ll discuss in the next section, another sure sign of a gorilla-like human past would be an embarrassing case of genital shrinkage.

Still, some continue to insist that humans are naturally polygynous harem-builders, despite the paucity of evidence supporting this argument. For example, Alan S. Miller and Satoshi Kanazawa claim that, “We know that humans have been polygynous throughout most of history because men are taller than women.” These authors go on to conclude that because “human males are 10 percent taller and 20 percent heavier than females, this suggests that, throughout history, humans have been mildly polygynous.”5

Their analysis ignores the fact that the cultural conditions necessary for some males to accumulate sufficient political power and wealth to support multiple wives and their children simply did not exist before agriculture. And males being moderately taller and heavier than females indicates reduced competition among males, but not necessarily “mild polygyny.” After all, those promiscuous cousins of ours, chimps and bonobos, reflect precisely the same range of male/female size difference while shamelessly enjoying uncounted sexual encounters with as many partners as they can drum up. No one claims the 10 to 20 percent body-size dimorphism seen in chimps and bonobos is evidence of “mild polygyny.” The assertion that the same physical evidence correlates to promiscuity in chimps and bonobos but indicates mild polygyny or monogamy in humans shows just how shaky the standard model really is.

For various reasons, prehistoric harems were unlikely for our species. The famed sexual appetites of Ismail the Bloodthirsty, Genghis Khan, Brigham Young, and Wilt Chamberlain notwithstanding, our bodies argue strongly against it. Harems result from the common male hunger for sexual variety and the post-agricultural concentration of power in the hands of a few men combined with low levels of female autonomy typical of agricultural societies. Harems are a feature of militaristic, rigidly hierarchical agricultural and pastoral cultures oriented toward rapid population growth, territorial expansion, and accumulation of wealth. Captive harems have never been reported in any immediate-return foraging society.

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