Book: Sex at Dawn

Interesting. Not all of it well supported by science.

Such statements are more useful if they are accompanied by specifics. Illustrative examples usually suffice for the lay audience.
 
Such statements are more useful if they are accompanied by specifics. Illustrative examples usually suffice for the lay audience.

I'm not koifish, but I'll throw one out there. I have a BA degree in evolutionary biology, and found that although the authors have a lot of interesting ideas so far (I'm only just beginning the book) they make a couple common mistakes in their understanding of the mechanisms behind natural selection.

One that rubbed me the wrong way is on page 54, refuting the common argument for male preoccupation with paternity. In the bullet points, they say that the theory presumes that a man must know which children are biologically his--that he must understand sex leads to babies and that his partner was faithful. Nonsense. There needs not be a conscience understanding of the mechanisms at play. Men who just happened to be sexually monogamous and expect the same of their partners would "waste" less of their time and resources on children who were not biologically theirs than men who were promiscuous.

However, I would still agree that the theory presumes pair bonding and a culture organized around biologically related families (not necessarily nuclear in my opinion--grandparents have a stake in their grandchildren's evolutionary success). If ancient humans lived in tribes where all resources were shared evenly among the group, there is little evolutionary pressure for enforced monogamy and male's preoccupation with paternity. However, it is very, very rare for resources to be so evenly split unless the group is evenly related (bees, ants, and naked mole rats are a few examples of this type of relation pattern).

Also, on the page before they take offense at defining "productive" as producing offspring who survive to reproduce, that this is somehow a religious/political tinged word. In the evolutionary sense, that IS the only definition of success. It has nothing to do with politics at all. It's simply the mathematical foundation of all natural selection.

So...I'm sticking with the book. It's an interesting read so far and I hope that they come up with more facts to defend the theories. However, as of page 55 the authors are making a lot of common mistakes around their understanding of the mechanics of evolution and I'd feel a lot more hopeful about the book if one of the authors had a degree in biology.
 
I'll admit that I don't fully understand evolutionary biology, but I'm not sure why producing offspring would be the only definition of success, or why you'd want to only care for your own offspring.
You can transmit other things than your genes, and from an evolutionary point of view it seems to me it certainly benefits the whole species when you take care of younglings that might grow to heal others, and so on. Obviously, for the species to survive, you need to carry on genes, but producing offsprings that survive to reproduce doesn't seem to me to be the only thing. Making sure people, whether your own offsprings or not, live to reproduce is also a good thing. Sometimes, having less offspring to give the ones who survive a better chance is good too.

I think there is a lot of benefit in social creatures to being there are a parent figure, with or without transmitting your genes. I'm speaking of both genders here, you have lots of stories about female animals who adopt and raise an orphan (sometimes of a different species, too), I think these provide advantages as well as they grow to help the rest of the tribe, as well as yourself when you're old. I think it carries the whole tribe and the whole species up.

There is much to survival of the species than sharing your genes is what I'm getting at. Sometimes, it might even be better to make sure you don't share them if you carry something that would endanger future generations or make them weaker. I don't think the species is as simple as each individual selfishly reproducing their own genes, I think there are also cooperative ways that we act naturally and that from an evolutionary point of view are useful to the species, yet have nothing to do with reproduction.
 
I'm not koifish, but I'll throw one out there. I have a BA degree in evolutionary biology, and found that although the authors have a lot of interesting ideas so far (I'm only just beginning the book) they make a couple common mistakes in their understanding of the mechanisms behind natural selection.

One that rubbed me the wrong way is on page 54, refuting the common argument for male preoccupation with paternity. In the bullet points, they say that the theory presumes that a man must know which children are biologically his--that he must understand sex leads to babies and that his partner was faithful. Nonsense. There needs not be a conscience understanding of the mechanisms at play. Men who just happened to be sexually monogamous and expect the same of their partners would "waste" less of their time and resources on children who were not biologically theirs than men who were promiscuous.

However, I would still agree that the theory presumes pair bonding and a culture organized around biologically related families (not necessarily nuclear in my opinion--grandparents have a stake in their grandchildren's evolutionary success). If ancient humans lived in tribes where all resources were shared evenly among the group, there is little evolutionary pressure for enforced monogamy and male's preoccupation with paternity. However, it is very, very rare for resources to be so evenly split unless the group is evenly related (bees, ants, and naked mole rats are a few examples of this type of relation pattern).

Also, on the page before they take offense at defining "productive" as producing offspring who survive to reproduce, that this is somehow a religious/political tinged word. In the evolutionary sense, that IS the only definition of success. It has nothing to do with politics at all. It's simply the mathematical foundation of all natural selection.

So...I'm sticking with the book. It's an interesting read so far and I hope that they come up with more facts to defend the theories. However, as of page 55 the authors are making a lot of common mistakes around their understanding of the mechanics of evolution and I'd feel a lot more hopeful about the book if one of the authors had a degree in biology.

I think your mixing things up a bit. While working towards a Ph.D. in psychology (unfinished) David Buss was a star in the department. I spent a lot of time with the evolutionary psych folks partly because I had some intellectual interest in the subject matter. But, admittedly, also because David had the hottest grad students in the department (even the males were hot). Anyway, back to our topic.

In the passage you take issue with, Ryan and Jetha are talking about the evolutionary psychology theory of parternity certainty. As they explain, it hypothesizes that selection would favor men who acted to invest in their own children versus others because that investment is costly. It does not actively presume that this is a conscious psychological process that the more casual description in the book may seem suggest. Instead, evolutionary psych proposes that men evolved solutions to the problem of paternity certainty when they're engaged in long term mating strategies. Specifically, men were "evolved" to desire chastity, sexual fidelity, and abhorence for promiscuity in a long term mate. These long term "mating strategies" are hypothesized to be an evolved mechanism in men who have the challenge of paternity certainty.

Consciuos behavior, pre-conscious or unconscious desires are all involved here. Assuming that something has to be conscious to be driving behavior is a mis-understanding of psychological science.

They were simply describing the hypothesis around paternity certainty which is certaintly a cornerstone of theory of Evolutionary Psychology. Which is an area of research populated by both psychologists and biologists. With that further explanation, are you still convinced that they are misunderstanding natural selection?
 
Interesting tidbit in the book: many traditional cultures to this day (African, Amazonian, Indonesian) believe the fetus is formed from sperm and the woman must have frequent sex before and while pregnant to start and grow the baby. From several men. This reduces the chance that we deal with in "mono" cultures of having an infertile husband who can't reproduce. Also, all these men will provide meat for the mother and child, making her assured of food from not one man, but several.
 
I was looking for a quote to describe paternity certainty more fully, but didn't find one while I was writing above. Here's David Buss and David Schmitt's description...

"Given the tremendous effort that men sometimes expend for their children, we expect that natural selection would not produce men who dispensed it casuallly or indiscriminately... The sexes are asymmetrical in probability of parenthood. Because women, like all other mammals, conceive internally, theere is never any doubt about their parenthood. Maternity is 100% certain. Men can never be entirely sure. Because ovulation is concealed, or cryptic, in women, a man would have to sequester his mate for a period of months to be entirely sure. Even the, he has to sleep sometimes, and this opens the window of possibility of alien insemination."

From Buss & Schmitt (1992) Sexual Strategies Theory: An Evolutionary Perspective on Human Mating. Published in Psychological Review.
 
I think your mixing things up a bit. While working towards a Ph.D. in psychology (unfinished) David Buss was a star in the department. I spent a lot of time with the evolutionary psych folks partly because I had some intellectual interest in the subject matter. But, admittedly, also because David had the hottest grad students in the department (even the males were hot). Anyway, back to our topic.

In the passage you take issue with, Ryan and Jetha are talking about the evolutionary psychology theory of parternity certainty. As they explain, it hypothesizes that selection would favor men who acted to invest in their own children versus others because that investment is costly. It does not actively presume that this is a conscious psychological process that the more casual description in the book may seem suggest. Instead, evolutionary psych proposes that men evolved solutions to the problem of paternity certainty when they're engaged in long term mating strategies. Specifically, men were "evolved" to desire chastity, sexual fidelity, and abhorence for promiscuity in a long term mate. These long term "mating strategies" are hypothesized to be an evolved mechanism in men who have the challenge of paternity certainty.

Consciuos behavior, pre-conscious or unconscious desires are all involved here. Assuming that something has to be conscious to be driving behavior is a mis-understanding of psychological science.

They were simply describing the hypothesis around paternity certainty which is certaintly a cornerstone of theory of Evolutionary Psychology. Which is an area of research populated by both psychologists and biologists. With that further explanation, are you still convinced that they are misunderstanding natural selection?

The quote that bothered me seemed to imply that the desire for paternity certainty was conscious--but it's entirely possible that it was one of those shorthand ways of describing evolutionary processes that seem to indicate motivation or goals where there are none. I've only gotten to just that passage, so they may backfill with more details that satisfy me.
 
I'll admit that I don't fully understand evolutionary biology, but I'm not sure why producing offspring would be the only definition of success, or why you'd want to only care for your own offspring.
You can transmit other things than your genes, and from an evolutionary point of view it seems to me it certainly benefits the whole species when you take care of younglings that might grow to heal others, and so on. Obviously, for the species to survive, you need to carry on genes, but producing offsprings that survive to reproduce doesn't seem to me to be the only thing. Making sure people, whether your own offsprings or not, live to reproduce is also a good thing. Sometimes, having less offspring to give the ones who survive a better chance is good too.

I think there is a lot of benefit in social creatures to being there are a parent figure, with or without transmitting your genes. I'm speaking of both genders here, you have lots of stories about female animals who adopt and raise an orphan (sometimes of a different species, too), I think these provide advantages as well as they grow to help the rest of the tribe, as well as yourself when you're old. I think it carries the whole tribe and the whole species up.

There is much to survival of the species than sharing your genes is what I'm getting at. Sometimes, it might even be better to make sure you don't share them if you carry something that would endanger future generations or make them weaker. I don't think the species is as simple as each individual selfishly reproducing their own genes, I think there are also cooperative ways that we act naturally and that from an evolutionary point of view are useful to the species, yet have nothing to do with reproduction.


Actually, selection pressures don't act upon the species as a whole. Most research supports Dawkins' theory that evolution acts at the level of individual genes, although I think there are a number of biologists that disagree and believe it acts at the individual level. Basically, there is almost always a higher level of competition between individuals of the same species than there is between entire species or populations. Most kind acts that look selfless (caring for unrelated young, etc) have their basis in pretty selfish motivators (if I care for their young, they will return the favor later). If you are interested in learning more, I highly recommend Dawkins' Selfish Gene or Stephen Jay Gould's The Panda's Thumb.

That's not to say that we shouldn't be cooperative or kind. It's dangerous to take moral cues from evolutionary processes, it's just that I find them pretty fascinating.
 
I just finished Sex at Dawn and was happy to see the authors address current trends in contemporary life to deal with humans' natural need for sexual variety, in the last chapter. Polyamory, swinging and open relationships were all mentioned. So was the sad fact that most couples therapists today are not on the bangwagon, and try to enforce monogamy at all costs.
 
I just finished Sex at Dawn and was happy to see the authors address current trends in contemporary life to deal with humans' natural need for sexual variety, in the last chapter. Polyamory, swinging and open relationships were all mentioned. So was the sad fact that most couples therapists today are not on the bangwagon, and try to enforce monogamy at all costs.

haha... semi comical side point. Could it be because most people seemingly suck at regular monogamous relationships and having multiple relationships will just be that much more tumultuous. ;) Therapists might be more inclined to endorse non-monogamy if more people were better at being in a relationship with themselves first and then their lovers. ;)

If I were a therapist, and saw cases roll through where the primary relationship wasn't doing well and someone took on another lover.. I would not be endorsing it either. With how high the ratio is on these poly sites, I wonder how negative it all feels to the therapists. :)
 
Just like to chime in here a little.

Monogamy stuck as a cultural norm because of patriarchal values established in Rome, but patriarchal non-monogamy was practiced long before hand.

Poly doesn't make sense naturally (either in humans or in animals) when looked at from a multiple-man scenario. Yes, from a fully educated perspective, mixing the male genes to make a more complex gene pool is in fact a positive thing. However, in regards to natures immediate and uneducated perspective, having multiple females makes perfect sense.

The mating cycle is always longer for the female of a species than for the male. In every species, the male is capable of reproducing hundreds of times in the time it takes for a female to complete one reproductive cycle. Also, the odds of a female in any species dieing in childbirth is significantly more than the male dieing in childbirth (since that only happens when the female kills him)

As for the rise of monogamy, it was first established as a method of control not in the days of the Romans (It was supported there for political reasons, such as marriages of convenience and stately reputation) but in the days of the Christians, who used each of the seven sacraments to keep track of everyone in their dominion (chief among these sacraments were baptism, due to the fact that it told the church you existed, marriage, because it told them when you were a certain age, and confession, because it allowed them to know where you were at least once a year)

Poly, or consentual non-monogamy, began to become acceptable again (I use this loosely, more to mean tolerated under the radar than actually accepted) in the 60's, among certain NR (New Religious) groups, and become openly identifiable around the late 80's (the 80's bit is rough, as there is no conclusive data to prove it wasn't earlier)

The way it developed, however, was intriguing. Due directly to the influence of monogamy in the Western World, women were viewed as a status symbol as much as anything, and so when those women realized that they were in every way equal to men, they realized that they had become a commodity in their society. An attractive female never had to give a man anything she didn't want to, but the man would often come running at her beck and call.

This interesting reversal from Patriarchal "Come over here woman I want you" to the modern day revelation of equality manifested poly in quite the opposite manner than it was once implemented.

Instead of following the basic natural cause and effect of multiple-women, one man non-monogamy, women would assert themselves into the situation, making (from the data I have collected, which is A. from a random sample, and B. subject to unlimited contestation and rebuke) 73% of polyamorous relationships in the 21st century matriarchal, that is to say that the woman was 73% more likely to discover that she was polyamorous than the man was.

Interesting how we profess this to be completely natural, but nature would imply that it would be a male-dominated lifestyle, and yet is not. I love the way our world works ^^
 
Interesting how we profess this to be completely natural, but nature would imply that it would be a male-dominated lifestyle, and yet is not. I love the way our world works ^^

Are you sure, though?
Nowadays the population is higher, and it could be that our natural drive is geared towards reproduction as much. Then it could be geared towards taking better care of the fewer children one does get. And for that, the more adults to take care of a child, the better. If there are more women, there is a potential of more children at the same time, dividing the resources and attention.

In my opinion, you can explain something AND its opposite with nature. And nowadays, the "more people to take care of fewer children" model makes more chance than the "let's have has many kids as we can" one, because each child costs more in our societies (due to schooling, etc) so people tend to have fewer of them than in less developed countries, and spend much more on them as well.

And then you have polyandry as a tradition in places where the population is already so high, which once again leads to conclusions that it could be a way to curb down natality.
 
And then you have polyandry as a tradition in places where the population is already so high, which once again leads to conclusions that it could be a way to curb down natality.

I've read an explanation to one Tibetan tribe's practice of polyandry as wanting to ensure agricultural success through increased 'man'-power in mountain areas that are hard to cultivate. Among this tribe, two brothers marry the same woman which would conceivably lower inter-male competition for females and lessen paternity issues. Considering the harsh environment, natality concerns are probably also present. Many island cultures have institutionalized male homosexuality and practice strict gender separation, taboos and abortions to maintain the population level.

A famous example of one Indian high-caste warrior community does illustrate that 'alternative lifestyle' can bring about a norm for sexual behavior that differs greatly from the surrounding society's. In that particular community, women have complete sexual freedom in that they take lovers at will. The society is centered around all-female households composed of mothers and their female children, who have children of their own with their lovers. Grown men are only marginally members of the community through their female lovers, otherwise they live with other men.

Interestingly enough, everyone's married. Marriage is very important and central to their lifestyle. All the women have husbands that are assigned at early childhood. Since the children are so young, the marriage is never actually consummated. However, the husband is considered the factual father of any of the children his wife might have with her lovers. It is the duty of those children to take care of the mourning and burial rituals of their mother's husband upon his death.

Anthropologists have explained this curious custom as being born of a situation where men were at constant war and had very high mortality compared to women. To ensure a favourable rebirth, every warrior needed male children to take care of his burial. One couldn't rely on actually siring some before their demise, so the business was taken care of by assigning wives to each man in childhood and then those wives trying their best to ensure male heirs would ensue by taking donations from whoever was available (alive) when they were fertile.

So a society that places a very high religious value on male heirs but where men are frequently away on campaigns for years at a time and risk death, has developed some pretty weird customs to ensure the religious and cultural continuation of the group.

As a comment to pheonixaise, poly is one flavour of non-monogamy, and tends to attract quite specific type of people. I imagine early human society of Homo Sapiens in Africa struggling to find a some sort of equilibrium between the sharing of resources and propagation of one's genetic line, and probably implementing various relationship strategies, all of whom at some point were a good fit with the environment and thus were enshrined in our genetic heritage. As to why polygyny for example is more common than polyandry although we are capable of both, the answer will probably have more to do with specific circumstances and groups trying to maintain their identity in changing environments than with one or the other being more 'natural' as it were.
 
As I am sure you know, BU, ancient Greece and Sparta were homosexually based societies. I guess you could call them non-monogamous, because each man would marry to produce heirs, but would typically have a "real" lover, another male, that he was more married to than his wife.

I found out recently that Spartan boys were taken from the women's quarters at age 7, to the men's barracks. There he would be taken as a protegee by an older man, and they would eventually become lovers.

When it was time for a man to marry, the wife chosen for or by him, after the wedding, would be put in a room, have her hair clipped short, be dressed in men's clothing and left alone in the dark. Her new husband, if he had the nerve, would come in and consummate. If he really didnt like women, this male drag requirement for sex could go on for months or years.
 
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When it was time for a man to marry, the wife chosen for or by him, after the wedding, would be put in a room, have her hair clipped short, be dressed in men's clothing and left alone in the dark. Her new husband, if he had the nerve, would come in and consummate. If he really didnt like women, this male drag requirement for sex could go on for months or years.

Wowza!!! That's hawt! I have things to get done & shouldn't even be on this forum now, but I got a rush just reading that.
 
So taking a child, throwing him in with some big burly men and forcing sexual action (I don't believe it was as nice and fluffy as is sometimes portrayed) on them... thats bound to make some serious fucked up individuals who believe being gay is the only way.

I am all over history, thats one of the more fucked up practices. You remove any future freedom of choice by creating what you want early. Its amazing what a lil boy can be molded into when raped and abused throughout his prevailing years... ptsd anyone? stockholm syndrom? etc etc. Lil anal slaves for the rich, powerful and strong...

I believe there is a slew of catholic priests somewhere that have done the same thing with boys and girls. Its rape now, and it was rape then.
 
I heard about a culture in which it was believed (apparently) that semen gave you more testosterone, so boys were supposed to drink it (from the source) throughout teenage. Once they were adult, it was their turn to share the testosterone.
I can't remember where and when that was, though.
(But man, if that's true, I'm going to have testicles any time soon now!)
 
categories

The thing that is fairly new to Western society (and I would argue most non-Western societies) is the idea that sex is an activity that happens between equals.

A free, high status Roman man generally did not have sex with an equal - his wife, slaves, younger boys or men, and lower status free men certainly did not qualify. In fact, sex between male equals was looked at askance. "Roman Homosexuality" by Craig A. Williams is a brilliant book on this topic - he argues that degrees of free, unfree, dominant and submissive (and not the consenting, negotiated bdsm versions) are the critical categories, not hetero- and homosexuality.

*Now removing historian of sexuality hat*
 
When it was time for a man to marry, the wife chosen for or by him, after the wedding, would be put in a room, have her hair clipped short, be dressed in men's clothing and left alone in the dark. Her new husband, if he had the nerve, would come in and consummate. If he really didnt like women, this male drag requirement for sex could go on for months or years.

What I find funky about the Spartans is that they were supposedly under huge pressure to produce more high-class warriors to keep the numerous slaves under check and keep on doing what they did best - quarreling with Athens. So why not encourage high nativity practices? Maybe for them, male bonding was such crucial part of the military institution that high nativity could be sacrificed to upkeep that.

Or it might be that there were warring goals between different classes of society, i.e. the leaders wanted a lot more soldiers pronto, and the aristocracy wanted to ensure high class privileges by having as few heirs as possible to split family fortunes among, which is the explanation I've heard for rapidly sinking nativity among the Roman aristocracy in the beginning of the Imperial Era.

I heard about a culture in which it was believed (apparently) that semen gave you more testosterone, so boys were supposed to drink it (from the source) throughout teenage. Once they were adult, it was their turn to share the testosterone.
I can't remember where and when that was, though.

I think it's the Maasai.

The thing that is fairly new to Western society (and I would argue most non-Western societies) is the idea that sex is an activity that happens between equals.

A free, high status Roman man generally did not have sex with an equal - his wife, slaves, younger boys or men, and lower status free men certainly did not qualify. In fact, sex between male equals was looked at askance. "Roman Homosexuality" by Craig A. Williams is a brilliant book on this topic - he argues that degrees of free, unfree, dominant and submissive (and not the consenting, negotiated bdsm versions) are the critical categories, not hetero- and homosexuality.

Many people have read Foucault's History of Sexuality and said it argues with many of the same points. I think his central argument was that 'male homosexuality' was a diagnosis owing its birth to the birth of the modern science of sexology. Eve Kosofsky Sedwick and Lillian Faderman have argued similar points.

For a man, being a 'bottom' in homosexual sex has been considered damning, whereas male tops were natural and acted according to their gender role. Similarly, 'active' female homosexuals were considered to be the real misfits and perverts, whereas 'passive' (I'm guessing the one being penetrated) females in woman-to-woman sex did not lose status. In ancient India (as with the Romans), oral sex was considered so beyond the pale that no prostitute, let alone a wife, would consent to such a foul practice with their male partners. Male prostitutes were thus specifically kept to provide fellatio to upper class men.
 
I'm looking forward to reading this book.

I don't want to highjack this thread, but since there might be some general interest in ground-breaking anthropological books among people who check in here, I want to mention 2 others that I find excellent:

"The Descent Of Woman" by Elaine Morgan. She is (was? Will be 90 this year if she's still alive.) a journalist who adopted a theory by biologist Sir Alister Clavering Hardy that proto-humans had - after coming down out of the trees - returned to an aquatic stage (or at least beach-based with a lot of time actually spent in the water). Her book is very readable and made a lot of sense to me. She scoffs at the "Tarzan" school of evolutionists, who, when they can't think of any other reason for a particular evolutionary feature, throw it into a big bag labelled "for sexual attraction". She supplies much more believable reasons for those adaptations. The title of her book comes from the fact that she believes that most evolutionary change happens more because of the female's (and child's) needs than because of the male's needs.

Fascinating reading and I strongly feel that it should be taught - at least as a plausible theory - in schools, but it has been pooh-poohed by Desmond Morris and company. (Morgan wrote a reply to their reaction, which I've just found out about on her Wikipedia page, entitled "The Naked Darwinist (2008)".

I actually read Morris' "The Naked Ape" after (and because of) reading "The Descent Of Woman"... and had to put it down quickly because I found - like Morgan - some of its theories so ridiculous.

+++

"Cows, Pigs, Wars and Witches" by Marvin Harris. This is more on a cultural level: convincingly explains - among much more - why eating pork is forbidden to Jews and Muslims, cows are sacred in India, and the common image of the witch riding a broomstick. (That last explanation is amazing!)
 
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