Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality (8 page)

Please remember that when we describe the sexual practices in various societies around the world, we’re describing behavior that is
normal
to the people in question. In the common usage,
promiscuity
suggests immoral or amoral behavior, uncaring and unfeeling. But most of the people we’ll be describing are acting well within the bounds of what their society considers acceptable behavior. They’re not rebels, transgressors, or utopian idealists. Given that groups of foragers (either those still existing today or in prehistoric times) rarely number much over 100 to 150 people, each is likely to know every one of his or her partners deeply and intimately—probably to a much greater degree than a modern man or woman knows his or her casual lovers.

Morgan made this point in
Ancient Society,
writing, “This picture of savage life need not revolt the mind, because to them it was a form of the marriage relation, and therefore devoid of impropriety.”27

Biologist Alan F. Dixson, author of the most comprehensive survey of primate sexuality (called, unsurprisingly,
Primate
Sexuality),
makes a similar point concerning what he prefers to call “multimale-multifemale mating systems” typical of our closest primate relations: chimps and bonobos. He writes,

“Mating is rarely indiscriminate in multimale-multifemale primate groups. A variety of factors, including kinship ties, social rank, sexual attractiveness and individual sexual preferences might influence mate choice in both sexes. It is, therefore, incorrect to label such mating systems as
promiscuous.”28

So, if
promiscuity
suggests a number of ongoing, nonexclusive sexual relationships, then yes, our ancestors were far more promiscuous than all but the randiest among us. On the other hand, if we understand
promiscuity
to refer to a lack of discrimination in choosing partners or having sex with random strangers, then our ancestors were likely far
less
promiscuous than many modern humans. For this book,
promiscuity
refers only to having a number of ongoing sexual relationships at the same time. Given the contours of prehistoric life in small bands, it’s unlikely that many of these partners would have been strangers.

* Our use of the word “design” is purely metaphorical—not meant to imply any “designer” or intentionality underlying evolved human behavior or anatomy.

CHAPTER THREE

A

Closer

Look

at

the

Standard

Narrative

of

Human Sexual Evolution

We have good news and bad news. The good news is that the dismal vision of human sexuality reflected in the standard narrative is mistaken. Men have
not
evolved to be deceitful cads, nor have millions of years shaped women into lying, two-timing gold-diggers. But the bad news is that the amoral agencies of evolution have created in us a species with a secret it just can’t keep.
Homo sapiens
evolved to be shamelessly, undeniably, inescapably sexual. Lusty libertines.

Rakes, rogues, and roués. Tomcats and sex kittens. Horndogs.

Bitches in heat.1

True, some of us manage to rise above this aspect of our nature (or to sink below it). But these preconscious impulses remain our biological baseline, our reference point, the
zero
in our own personal number system. Our evolved tendencies are considered “normal” by the body each of us occupies.

Willpower fortified with plenty of guilt, fear, shame, and mutilation of body and soul may provide some control over these urges and impulses. Sometimes. Occasionally. Once in a blue moon. But even when controlled, they refuse to be ignored. As German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer pointed out,
Mensch kann tun was er will; er kann aber nicht
wollen was er will.
(One can choose what to do, but not what to want.)

Acknowledged or not, these evolved yearnings persist and clamor for our attention.

And there are costs involved in denying one’s evolved sexual nature, costs paid by individuals, couples, families, and societies every day and every night. They are paid in what E.

O. Wilson called “the less tangible currency of human happiness that must be spent to circumvent our natural predispositions.”2 Whether or not our society’s investment in sexual repression is a net gain or loss is a question for another time. For now, we’ll just suggest that trying to rise above nature is always a risky, exhausting endeavor, often resulting in spectacular collapse.

Any attempt to understand who we are, how we got to be this way, and what to do about it must begin by facing up to our evolved human sexual predispositions. Why do so many forces resist our sustained fulfillment? Why is conventional marriage so much damned work? How has the incessant, grinding campaign of socio-scientific insistence upon the
naturalness
of sexual monogamy combined with a couple thousand years of fire and brimstone failed to rid even the priests, preachers, politicians, and professors of their prohibited desires? To see ourselves as we are, we must begin by acknowledging that of all Earth’s creatures, none is as urgently, creatively, and constantly sexual as
Homo sapiens.

We don’t claim that men and women experience their eroticism in precisely the same ways, but as Tiresias noted, both women and men find considerable pleasure there. True, it may take most women a bit longer to get the sexual motor running than it does men, but once warmed up, most women are fully capable of leaving any man far behind. No doubt, males tend to be more concerned with a woman’s looks, while most women find a man’s character more compelling than his appearance (within limits, of course). And it’s true that women’s biology gives them a lot more to consider before a roll in the hay.

Comedian Jerry Seinfeld sums it up in terms of fire and firemen: “The basic conflict between men and women, sexually, is that men are like firemen. To men, sex is an emergency, and no matter what we’re doing we can be ready in two minutes. Women, on the other hand, are like fire.

They’re very exciting, but the conditions have to be exactly right for it to occur.”

Perhaps for many women libido is like the hunger of a gourmand. Unlike many men, such women don’t yearn to eat just to stop the hunger. They’re looking for particular satisfactions presented in certain ways. Where most men can and do hunger for sex in the abstract, women report wanting narrative, character, a
reason
for sex.* In other words, we agree with many of the
observations
central to evolutionary psychology—it’s

the

contorted,

internally

conflicted

explanations
for these observations that we find problematic.

Still, there
are
simple, logical, consistent explanations for most of these standard observations concerning human sexuality—explanations that offer an alternative narrative of human sexual evolution that is both parsimonious and elegant; a revised model that requires none of the convoluted mixed strategies and Flintstonizing intrinsic to the currently accepted story.

The standard narrative paints a dark image of our species over a much brighter—albeit somewhat scandalous—truth. Before presenting our model in detail, let’s take a closer look at the standard narrative, focusing on the four major areas of research that incorporate the most widely accepted assumptions:

• The relatively weak female libido

• Male parental investment (MPI)

• Sexual jealousy and paternity certainty

• Extended receptivity and concealed (or cryptic) ovulation

How Darwin Insults Your Mother

(The

Dismal

Science

of

Sexual

Economics)

What does the winning male suitor supposedly get for all his preening and showing off? Sex. Well, not just sex, but
exclusive
access to a particular woman. The standard model posits that sexual exclusivity is crucial because in evolutionary times this was a man’s only way of ensuring his paternity. According to evolutionary psychology, this is the grudging agreement at the heart of the human family. Men offer goods and services (in prehistoric environments, primarily meat, shelter, protection, and status) in exchange for exclusive, relatively consistent sexual access. Helen Fisher called it
The Sex Contract.

Economics, often referred to as
the dismal science,
is never more dismal than when applied to human sexuality. The sex contract is often explained in terms of economic game theory in which she or he who has the most offspring surviving to reproduce wins—because her or his “return on investment” is highest. So, if a woman becomes pregnant by a guy who has no intention of helping her through pregnancy or guiding the child through the high-risk early years, she likely is squandering the time, energy, and risks of pregnancy.

According to this theory, without the help of the father, chances are much better that the child will die before reaching sexual maturity—not to mention the increased health risks to the pregnant or nursing mother. Prominent evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker calls this way of looking at human reproduction
the genetic economics of sex
: “The minimum investments of a man and a woman are … unequal,” explains Pinker, “because a child can be born to a single mother whose husband has fled but not to a single father whose wife has fled. But the investment of the man is greater than zero, which means that women are also predicted to compete in the marriage market, though they should compete over the males most likely to invest …”3

Conversely, if a guy invests all his time, energy, and resources in a woman who’s doing the nasty behind his back, he’s at risk of raising another man’s kids—a total loss if his sole purpose in life is getting his own genes into the future.

And make no mistake: according to the cold logic of standard evolutionary theory, leaving a genetic legacy
is
our sole purpose in life. This is why evolutionary psychologists Margo Wilson and Martin Daly argue that men take a decidedly
proprietary
view of women’s sexuality: “Men lay claim to particular women as songbirds lay claim to territories, as lions lay claim to a kill, or as people of both sexes lay claim to valuables,” they write. “Having located an individually recognizable and potentially defensible resource packet, the proprietary creature proceeds to advertise and exercise the intention of defending it from rivals.”4

“Baby, I love you like a lion loves his kill.” Surely, a less romantic description of marriage has never been written.

As attentive readers may have noted, the standard narrative of heterosexual interaction boils down to prostitution: a woman exchanges her sexual services for access to resources. Maybe mythic resonance explains part of the huge box-office appeal of a film like
Pretty Woman,
where Richard Gere’s character trades access to his wealth in exchange for what Julia Roberts’s character has to offer (she plays a hooker with a heart of gold, if you missed it). Please note that what she’s got to offer is limited to the aforementioned heart of gold, a smile as big as Texas, a pair of long, lovely legs, and the solemn promise that they’ll open only for him from now on. The genius of
Pretty Woman
lies in making explicit what’s been implicit in hundreds of films and books. According to this theory,

women

have

evolved

to

unthinkingly

and

unashamedly exchange erotic pleasure for access to a man’s wealth, protection, status, and other treasures likely to benefit her and her children.

Darwin says your mother’s a whore. Simple as that.

Lest you think we’re being flip, we assure you that the bartering of female fertility and fidelity in exchange for goods and services is one of the foundational premises of evolutionary psychology.
The Adapted Mind,
a book many consider to be the bible of the field, spells out the sex contract very clearly:

A man’s sexual attractiveness to women will be a function of traits that were correlated with high mate value in the natural environment…. The crucial question is, What traits would have been correlated with high mate value? Three possible answers are as follows:

• The willingness and ability of a man to provide for a woman and her children….

• The willingness and ability of a man to protect a woman and her children….

• The willingness and ability of a man to engage in direct parenting activities.5

Now let’s review some of the most prominent research founded upon these assumptions about men, women, family structure, and prehistoric life.

The Famously Flaccid Female Libido

The female… with the rarest exception, is less eager than the
male….

CHARLES DARWIN

Women have little interest in sex, right? Despite Tiresias’s observations,

until

very

recently,

that’s

been

the

near-universal consensus in Western popular culture, medicine, and evolutionary psychology. In recent years, popular culture has begun to question women’s relative lack of interest, but as far as the standard model is concerned, not much has changed since Dr. William Acton published his famous thoughts on the matter in 1875, assuring his readers,

“The best mothers, wives, and managers of households know little or nothing of sexual indulgences…. As a general rule, a modest woman seldom desires any sexual gratification for herself. She submits to her husband, but only to please him.”6

More recently, in his now classic work
The Evolution of
Human Sexuality,
psychologist Donald Symons confidently proclaimed that “among all peoples sexual intercourse is understood to be a service or favor that females render to males.”7 In a foundational paper published in 1948, geneticist A. J. Bateman wasn’t hesitant to extrapolate his findings concerning fruit fly behavior to humans, commenting that natural selection encourages “an undiscriminating eagerness in the males and a discriminating passivity in the females.”8