Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality (56 page)

2. de Waal (1998), p. 5.

3. Some of these numbers are reported in McNeil et al. (2006) and Yoder et al. (2005). The hundred billion figure comes from

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/

la-fg-vienna-porn25-2009mar25,0,7189584.story.

4. See “Yes, dear. Tonight again.” Ralph Gardner, Jr.
The
New York Times
(June 9, 2008): http://www.nytimes.com/

2008/06/09/arts/09iht-08nights.13568273.html?_r=1

5. Full disclosure: Murdoch also owns HarperCollins, the publisher of this book.

6. Diamond (1987).

7. Such relationships would have been among many group-identity-boosting techniques, including participation in group bonding rituals still common to shamanistic religions characteristic of foraging people. Interestingly, such collective-identity-affirming rituals are often accompanied by music (which—like orgasm—releases oxytocin, the hormone most associated with forming emotional bonds). See Levitin (2009) for more on music and social identity.

8. The precise timing of this shift has recently been called into question. See White and Lovejoy (2009).

9. For more on the sharing-based economies of foragers, see Sahlins (1972), Hawkes (1993), Gowdy (1998), Boehm (1999), or Michael Finkel’s
National Geographic
article on the

Hadza,

available

here:

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/12/hadza/finkel-text.

10. Mithen (2007), p. 705.

11. Taylor (1996), pp. 142–143. Taylor’s book is an excellent archaeological account of human sexual origins.

Part I: On the Origin of the Specious
Chapter 1: Remember the Yucatán!

1. This account comes from Todorov (1984), but Todorov’s version of events is not universally accepted. See http://www.yucatantoday.com/culture/esp-yucatan-name.htm, for example, for a review of other etymologies (in Spanish).

2.

From

the

FDA’s

Macroanalytical

Procedures

Manual—Spice

Methods.

Accessed

online

at:

http://www.fda.gov/Food/ScienceResearch/

LaboratoryMethods/

MacroanalyticalProceduresManualMPM/ucm084394.htm.

Chapter 2: What Darwin Didn’t Know About Sex
1. Originally published in
Daedalus,
Spring 2007. Article can be

found

here:

http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/

931165/challenging_darwins_theory_of_

sexual_selection/

index.html. For more of her uniquely informed view of sexual diversity in nature, see Roughgarden (2004). For her deconstruction of self-interest as the engine of natural and sexual selection, see Roughgarden (2009). For more on homosexuality in the animal world, see Bagemihl (1999).

2. http://www.advicegoddess.com/ag-column-archives/2006/

05.

3. Not everyone would agree, of course. When Darwin’s brother Erasmus first read the book, he found Charles’s reasoning so compelling that he wasn’t bothered by the lack of evidence, writing, “If the facts won’t fit in, why so much the worse for the facts is my feeling.”

For a thorough (but reader-friendly) look at how Darwin’s Victorianism affected his own and subsequent science, see Hrdy (1996).

4. Darwin (1871/2007), p. 362.

5. Pinker (2002), p. 253.

6. Fowles (1969), pp. 211–212.

7. Houghton (1957). Quoted in Wright (1994), p. 224.

8. Quoted in Richards (1979), p. 1244.

9. Writing in
Scientific American Online
(February 2005, p.

30), science historian Londa Schiebinger explains: “Erasmus Darwin … did not limit sexual relations to the bonds of holy matrimony. In his
Loves of the Plants
(1789), Darwin’s plants freely expressed every imaginable form of heterosexual union. The fair
Collinsonia,
sighing with sweet concern, satisfied the love of two brothers by turns. The
Meadia
—an ordinary cowslip—bowed with ‘wanton air,’ rolled her dark eyes and waved her golden hair as she gratified each of her five beaux…. Darwin may well have been using the cover of botany to propagandize for the free love he practiced after the death of his first wife.”

10. From Hrdy (1999b).

11. Raverat (1991).

12. Desmond and Moore (1994), p. 257. Also, see Wright (1994) for excellent insights into Darwin’s thought process and family life.

13. Levine (1996) first used the term
Flintstonization. The
Flintstones
occupies a unique place in American cultural history. It was the first prime-time animated series for adults, the first prime-time animated series to last more than two seasons (not matched until
The Simpsons
in 1992), and the first animated program to show a man and woman in bed together.

14. Lovejoy (1981).

15. Fisher (1992), p. 72.

16. Ridley (2006), p. 35.

17. See, for example, Steven Pinker’s assertion that human societies have become progressively more peaceful through the generations (discussed in detail in Chapter 13).

18. Wilson (1978), pp. 1–2.

19. A view Steven Pinker resuscitated decades later, long after more nuanced positions had become prevalent.

20. See, for example, Thornhill and Palmer (2000).

21. “A Treatise on the Tyranny of Two,”
New York Times
Magazine,
October 14, 2001. You can read the essay online at http://www.english.ccsu.edu/barnetts/courses/vices/

kipnis.htm.

22. Quoted in Flanagan (2009).

23.
Real Time with Bill Maher
(March 21, 2008). Ironically, the panelist who suggested “moving on” was Jon Hamm who, at the time, played a serial womanizer on TV’s
Mad Men.

24. For more on Morgan’s life and thought, see Moses (2008).

25. Morgan (1877/1908), p. 418, 427.

26. Darwin (1871/2007), p. 360.

27. Morgan (1877/1908), p. 52.

28. Dixson (1998), p. 37.

Chapter 3: A Closer Look at the Standard
Narrative of Human Sexual Evolution

1. With apologies to John Perry Barlow, author of “A Ladies’

Man

and

Shameless.”

At:

http://www.nerve.com/

personalEssays/Barlow/shameless/index.asp?page=1.

2. Wilson (1978), p. 148

3. Pinker (2002), p. 252.

4. Barkow et al. (1992), p. 289.

5. Barkow et al. (1992), pp. 267–268.

6. Acton (1857/62), p. 162.

7. Symons (1979), p. vi.

8. Bateman (1948), p. 365.

9. Clark and Hatfield (1989).

10. Wright (1994), p. 298.

11. Buss (2000), p. 140.

12. Wright (1994), p. 57.

13. Birkhead (2000), p. 33.

14. Wright (1994), p. 63.

15. Henry Kissinger—just our opinion. Nothing personal.

16. Wright (1994), pp. 57–58.

17. Symons (1979), p. v.

18. Fisher (1992), p. 187.

Chapter 4: The Ape in the Mirror

1. See Caswell et al. (2008) and Won and Hey (2004). Rapid advances in genetic testing have reopened the debate over the timing of the chimp/bonobo split. We use the widely accepted estimate of 3 million years, though it may turn out to have occurred less than a million years ago.

2. This account from de Waal and Lanting (1998).

3. Harris (1989), p. 181.

4. Symons (1979), p. 108.

5. Wrangham and Peterson (1996), p. 63.

6. Sapolsky (2001), p. 174.

7. Table based on de Waal (2005a) and Dixson (1998).

8. Stanford (2001), p. 116.

9. Berman (2000), pp. 66–67.

10. Dawkins (1976), p. 3.

11.

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/woods_hare09/

woods_hare09_index.html.

12. de Waal (2005), p. 106.

13. Theroux (1989), p. 195.

14. Pusey (2001), p. 20.

15. Stanford (2001), p. 26.

16. McGrew and Feistner (1992), p. 232.

17. de Waal (1995).

18. de Waal and Lanting (1998), p. 73.

19. de Waal (2001a), p. 140.

20.

The

quote

appears

here:

http://primatediaries.blogspot.com/2009/03/

bonobos-in-garden-of-eden.html.

21. Fisher (1992), p. 129.

22. Fisher (1992), pp. 129–130.

23. Fisher (1992). These quotes are all taken from an endnote on page 329.

24. Fisher (1992), p. 92.

25. Fisher (1992), pp. 130–131.

26. de Waal (2001b), p. 47.

27. de Waal (2005), pp. 124–125.

28. A true man of science, de Waal was kind enough to review and critique parts of this book, including sections where we disagree with some of his views.

29. The information in this chart is taken from various sources (Blount, 1990; Kano, 1980 and 1992; de Waal and Lanting, 1998; Savage-Rumbaugh and Wilkerson, 1978; de Waal, 2001a; de Waal, 2001b).

Part II: Lust in Paradise (Solitary)

Chapter 5: Who Lost What in Paradise?

1. For readers interested in further understanding how and why the shift from foraging to cultivation happened, Fagan (2004) and Quinn (1995) are both great places to start.

2. Cochran and Harpending (2009) point out some of these parallels: “In both [domesticated] humans and domesticated animals,” they write, “we see a reduction in brain size, broader skulls, changes in hair color or coat color, and smaller teeth.” (p. 112.)

3. Anderson is quoted in “Hellhole,” by Atul Gawande in
The
New Yorker,
March 30, 2009. The article is very much worth reading for its examination of whether solitary confinement is so anti-human that it qualifies as torture. Gawande concludes it clearly does, writing, “Simply to exist as a normal human being requires interaction with other people.” 4. Jones et al. (1992), p. 123.

5. Although only humans and bonobos appear to have sex throughout the menstrual cycle, both chimps and some types of dolphins seem to share our predilection for engaging in sex for pleasure, as opposed to reproduction alone.

6. These tidbits come from Ventura’s wonderful essay on the origins of jazz and rock music, “Hear That Long Snake Moan,” published in Ventura (1986). The book is out of print, but you can access this essay and other writing at Ventura’s website: http://www.michaelventura. org/. The Thompson material can be found both in Ventura’s essay and in Thompson (1984).

Chapter 6: Who’s Your Daddies?

1. Harris (1989), p. 195.

2. Beckerman and Valentine (2002), p. 10.

3. Beckerman and Valentine (2002), p. 6.

4. Kim Hill is quoted in Hrdy (1999b), pp. 246–247.

5. Among the Bari people of Colombia and Venezuela, for example, researchers found that 80 percent of the children with two or more socially recognized fathers survived to adulthood, whereas only 64 percent of those with one official father made it that far. Hill and Hurtado (1996) reported that among their sample of 227 Aché children, 70 percent of those with only one recognized father survived to age ten, while 85

percent of those with both a primary and secondary father made it that far.

6. The quote is from an article by Sally Lehrman posted on AlterNet.org. Available at http://www.alternet.org/story/

13648/?page=entire.

7. Morris (1981), pp. 154–156.

8. In Beckerman and Valentine (2002), p. 128.

9. See Erikson’s chapter in Beckerman and Valentine (2002).

10. Williams (1988), p. 114.

11. Caesar (2008), p. 121.

12. Quoted in Sturma (2002), p. 17.

13. See Littlewood (2003).

14. At this point, naysayers will point out that Margaret Mead’s famous claims of South Seas libertines were debunked by Derek Freeman (1983). But Freeman’s debunking has been debunked as well, thus leaving Mead’s original claims, what,
rebunked
? Hiram Caton (1990) and others have argued, quite compellingly, that Freeman’s relentless attacks on Mead were likely motivated by a psychiatric disorder that also led to several paranoid outbursts of such intensity that he was forcibly removed from Sarawak by Australian diplomatic officials. The general consensus in the anthropological community seems to be that it’s unclear to what extent, if any, Mead’s findings were mistaken.

Freeman’s purported debunking took place after decades of Christian indoctrination of Samoans, so it should surprise no one if the stories he heard differed significantly from those told to Mead half a century earlier. For a brief review, we recommend Monaghan (2006).

15. Ford and Beach (1952), p. 118.

16. Small (1993), p. 153.

17. de Waal (2005), p. 101.

18. Morris (1967), p. 79.

19.

http://primatediaries.blogspot.com/2007/08/

forbidden-love.html.

20. Kinsey (1953), p. 415.

21. Sulloway (1998).

22. For a review of other mammals that practice sharing behavior, see Ridley (1996) and Stanford (2001).

23. Bogucki (1999), p. 124.

24. Knight (1995), p. 210.

25. The extent to which ovulation truly is hidden in humans is not as settled a matter as many authorities claim. There is good reason to believe that olfactory systems are still able to detect ovulation in women and that such systems are significantly atrophied when compared with those of ancestral humans. See, for example, Singh and Bronstad (2001).

Furthermore, there is reason to believe that women advertise their fertility status via visual cues such as jewelry and changes in facial attractiveness. See, for example, Roberts et al. (2004).

26. Daniels (1983), p. 69.

27. Gregor (1985), p. 37.

28. Crocker and Crocker (2003), pp. 125–126.

29. Wilson (1978), p. 144.

Chapter 7: Mommies Dearest

1. Pollock (2002), pp. 53–54.

2. The quote is taken from an interview by Sarah van Gelder,

“Remembering Our Purpose: An Interview with Malidoma Somé,”
In Context: A Quarterly of Humane Sustainable
Culture,
vol. 34, p. 30 (1993). Available online at http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC34/Some.htm.

3. Hrdy (1999), p. 498.

4. Darwin (1871), p. 610.