Christopher Ryan - Sex at Dawn

SEX. THE PREHISTORIC ORIGINS AT

OF MODERN SEXUALITY DAWN

Christopher Ryan, PhD, and Cacilda Jetha, MD

To all our relations

Preface: A Primate Meets His Match (A note from one of the authors)

Introduction: Another Well-Intentioned Inquisition A Few Million Years in a Few Pages

PART I: On the Origin of the Specious CHAPTER ONE. Remember the Yucatan!

You Are What You Eat

CHAPTER TWO. What Darwin Didn’t Know About Sex The Flintstonization of Prehistory

What Is Evolutionary Psychology and Why Should You Care? Lewis Henry Morgan

CHAPTER THREE. A Closer Look at the Standard Narrative of Human Sexual Evolution

How Darwin Insults Your Mother (The Dismal Science of Sexual Economics)

The Famously Flaccid Female Libido

Male Parental Investment (MPI)

“Mixed Strategies ” in the War Between the Sexes Extended Sexual Receptivity and Concealed Ovulation CHAPTER FOUR. The Ape in the Mirror Primates and Human Nature Doubting the Chimpanzee Model In Search of Primate Continuity

PART II: Lust in Paradise (Solitary)

CHAPTER FIVE. Who Lost What in Paradise?

On Getting Funky and Rockin’ Round the Clock CHAPTER SIX. Who’s Your Daddies?

The Joy of S.E.Ex.

The Promise of Promiscuity Bonobo Beginnings

CHAPTER SEVEN. Mommies Dearest Nuclear Meltdown

CHAPTER EIGHT. Making a Mess of Marriage, Mating, and Monogamy

Marriage: The “Fundamental Condition” of the Human Species?

On Matrimonial Whoredom

CHAPTER NINE. Paternity Certainty: The Crumbling Cornerstone of the Standard Narrative

Love, Lust, and Liberty at Lugu Lake

On the Inevitability of Patriarchy

The March of the Monogamous

CHAPTER TEN. Jealousy: A Beginner’s Guide to Coveting Thy Neighbor’s Spouse

Zero-Sum Sex

How to Tell When a Man Loves a Woman

PART III: The Way We Weren’t

CHAPTER ELEVEN. “The Wealth of Nature” (Poor?)

Poor, Pitiful Me

The Despair of Millionaires

Finding Contentment “at the Bottom of the Scale of Human Beings”

CHAPTER TWELVE. The Selfish Meme (Nasty?)

Homo Economicus The Tragedy of the Commons Dreams of Perpetual Progress Ancient Poverty or Assumed Affluence?

On Paleolithic Politics

CHAPTER THIRTEEN. The Never-Ending Battle over Prehistoric War (Brutish?)

Professor Pinker, Red in Tooth and Claw

The Mysterious Disappearance of Margaret Power

The Spoils of War

The Napoleonic Invasion (The Yanomami Controversy)

The Desperate Search for Hippie Hypocrisy andBonobo Brutality

CHAPTER FOURTEEN. The Longevity Lie (Short?)

When Does Life Begin? When Does It End?

Is 80 the New 30?

Stressed to Death

Who You Calling a Starry-Eyed Romantic, Pal?

PART IV: Bodies in Motion

CHAPTER FIFTEEN. Little Big Man

All’s Fair in Love and Sperm War

CHAPTER SIXTEEN. The Truest Measure of a Man

Hard Core in the Stone Age

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. Sometimes a Penis Is Just a Penis CHAPTER EIGHTEEN. The Prehistory of O “What Horrid Extravagancies of Minde!”

Beware the Devil’s Teat

The Force Required to Suppress It

CHAPTER NINETEEN. When Girls Go Wild

Female Copulatory Vocalization

Sin Tetas, No Hay Paraiso

Come Again?

PART V: Men Are From Africa, Women Are from Africa CHAPTER TWENTY. On Mona Lisa’s Mind CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE. The Pervert’s Lament Just Say What?

Kellogg’s Guide to Child Abuse

The Curse of Calvin Coolidge

The Perils of Monotomy (Monogamy + Monotony)

A Few More Reasons I Need Somebody New (Just Like You) CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO. Confronting the Sky Together Everybody Out of the Closet The Marriage of the Sun and the Moon

REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED FURTHER READING INDEX

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS About the Authors Copyright About the Publisher

NOTES

Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we are put in this world to rise above.

KATHARINE HEPBURN,

as Miss Rose Sayer, in The African Queen

One muggy afternoon in 1988, some local men were selling peanuts at the entrance to the botanical gardens in Penang, Malaysia. I’d come with my girlfriend, Ana, to walk off a big lunch. Sensing our confusion, the men explained that the peanuts weren’t for us, but to feed irresistibly cute baby monkeys like those we hadn’t yet noticed rolling around on the grass nearby. We bought a few bags.

We soon came to a little guy hanging by his tail right over the path. His oh-so-human eyes focused imploringly on the bag of nuts in Ana’s hand. We were standing there cooing like teenage girls in a kitten shop when the underbrush exploded in a sudden simian strike. A full-grown monkey flashed past me, bounced off Ana, and was gone—along with the nuts. Ana’s hand was bleeding where he’d scratched her. We were stunned, trembling, silent. There’d been no time to scream.

After a few minutes, when the adrenaline had finally begun to ebb, my fear curdled into loathing. I felt betrayed in a way I never had before. Along with our nuts went precious assumptions about the purity of nature, of evil as a uniquely human affliction. A line had been crossed. I wasn’t just angry; I was philosophically offended.

I felt something changing inside me. My chest seemed to swell, my shoulders to broaden. My arms felt stronger; my eyesight sharpened. I felt like Popeye after a can of spinach. I glared into the underbrush like the heavyweight primate I now knew myself to be. I’d take no more abuse from these lightweights.

I’d been traveling in Asia long enough to know that monkeys there are nothing like their trombone-playing, tambourine-banging cousins I’d seen on TV as a kid. Free-living Asian primates possess a characteristic I found shocking and confusing the first time I saw it: self-respect. If you make the mistake of holding the gaze of a street monkey in India, Nepal, or Malaysia, you’ll find you’re facing a belligerently intelligent creature whose expression says, with a Robert DeNiro-like scowl, “What the hell are you looking at? You wanna piece of me?” Forget about putting one of these guys in a little red vest.

It wasn’t long before we came to another imploring, furry face hanging upside down from a tree in the middle of a clearing. Ana was ready to forgive and forget. Though I was fully hardened against cuteness of any kind, I agreed to give her the remaining bag of nuts. We seemed safely distant from underbrush from which an ambush could be launched. But as I pulled the bag out of my sweat-soaked pocket, its cellophane rustle must have rung through the jungle like a clanging dinner bell.

In a heartbeat, a large, arrogant-looking brute appeared at the edge of the clearing, about twenty yards away. He gazed at us, considering the situation, sizing me up. His exaggerated yawn seemed calculated to dismiss and threaten me simultaneously: a long, slow display of his fangs. Determined to fill any power vacuum without delay, I picked up a small branch and tossed it casually in his direction, making the point that these nuts were definitely not for him and that I was not to be trifled with. He watched the branch land a few feet in front of him, not moving a muscle. Then his forehead briefly crinkled in eerily emotional thought, as if I’d hurt his feelings. He looked up at me, straight into my eyes. His expression held no hint of fear, respect, or humor.