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"A controversial, idea-driven book that challenges everything you know about sex, marriage, family, and society"--Provided by publisher. Since Darwin's day, we've been told that sexual monogamy comes naturally to our species. But this narrative is collapsing. Here, renegade thinkers Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá, while debunking almost everything we "know" about sex, offer a bold alternative explanation. Ryan and Jethá's central contention is that human beings evolved in egalitarian groups that shared food, child care, and, often, sexual partners. Weaving together convergent, frequently overlooked evidence from anthropology, archaeology, primatology, anatomy, and psychosexuality, the authors show how far from human nature monogamy really is. With intelligence, humor, and wonder, Ryan and Jethá show how our promiscuous past haunts our struggles over monogamy, sexual orientation, and family dynamics. Human beings everywhere and in every era have confronted the same familiar, intimate situations in surprisingly different ways. The authors expose the ancient roots of human sexuality while pointing toward a more optimistic future illuminated by our innate capacities for love, cooperation, and generosity.--From publisher description.… (more)
User reviews
The basic argument is that evolutionary psychologists, anthropologists and palaeontologists are conspiring to propagate the ‘lie’ that human beings have evolved to be broadly monogamous. The few studies that ‘dare’ to question this narrative are hailed as revolutionary, while the rest of the scientific community is written off as ‘the clipboard-carrying crowd’, who ‘rigidly insist’ on the status quo. Unfortunately this blanket dismissal of an entire discipline succeeds only in fatally damaging the authors' own credibility.
The debate over prehistoric sexuality is one that I have followed amateurishly, but with some interest, so I was quite looking forward to seeing what kind of evidence was going to be brought forward. By about page 40 I had realised with a sinking feeling that there wasn't going to be any. Instead, their approach is simply to restate their opponents' arguments in the most ludicrously simplistic terms they can, and hope that will stand for a rebuttal.
For instance, there is a mountain of evidence suggesting that prehistoric females were in the habit of ‘bartering’ sex, consciously or otherwise, for access to protection and resources supplied by males. This is a complicated and sophisticated argument, which Ryan and Jethá summarise like so:
Darwin says your mother's a whore. Simple as that.
After reading that I gave up any hope of finding a serious argument in here.
Of the book's other stylistic tics, I will just highlight a few of the more irritating. There is a tendency to ask rhetorical questions as a substitute for actually making an argument: Could it be possible that…? Dare we ask whether…? ‘How many families are fractured by this common, tragic, undetected sequence of events?’ I don't know – do you?? If not, stop asking stupid questions and show me some evidence. (It reminds me of a tabloid headline like ARE IMMIGRANTS CAUSING CANCER?, where the rest of the article amounts to a long admission that the answer is ‘no’.)
A few other representative quotations: ‘Sexual monogamy itself may be shrinking men's balls’; ‘Homo sapiens: the great ape with the great penis!’; ‘ancestral females were shameless trollops’; ‘Who's your daddies?’; ‘We've no space for a comprehensive response to this’; ‘Yabba-dabba-doo’. Malthus is introduced, laughably, as ‘Wikipedia's eightieth Most Influential Person in History’.
If you're worried about missing the subtle message hidden in all this facile nudge-nudge-wink-winking, have no fear, because they will simply put entire sentences that they consider important in italics. Reading these passages feels like being talked down to by someone who doesn't even properly understand their own arguments. They also repeatedly make the infuriating implication that anyone who disagrees with them is doing so because they're morally offended or out of political expediency.
What makes it all so sad is that a book offering some new ideas on hot topics like male parental investment or female sexual receptivity would actually be very welcome. This is not that book. What it really is is a plea for a return to an imagined ‘ancient [sexual] egalitarianism’ where humans – especially men – had repercussion-free sex with multiple partners. I would be more than happy to read a book promoting the benefits of polyamory, but please, don't dress it up as science.
Sex at Dawn was condemned by most of the academic community, but it was widely promoted by people like Dan Savage and Peter Sagal, and ended up on the New York Times bestseller list. It doesn't deserve the attention, and I wish I'd done a bit more research on it before I bought a copy. Instead, my advice is to consider the response that a pseudonymous primatologist was moved to write, [book:Sex at Dusk: Lifting the Shiny Wrapping from Sex at Dawn|15892127]. Because my impression of this one is that it's a disastrous blend of wilful misrepresentations with very poor writing.
The authors of this book dispute that narrative, though. They contend that prehistoric human societies were extremely egalitarian, with communal food-sharing and child-raising as standard practices, and that in that situation there is very little advantage to men being strongly concerned about paternity or women being strongly concerned about pairing up with a "provider." They don't deny that these concerns (and the consequent messed-upedness) exist in modern humans, but believe that their origins are cultural, rather than genetic, that they only really came into play with the advent of agriculture, and that prehistoric humans were generally sexually promiscuous, being more concerned with community values than with "family values." And they believe that the reason for the prevalence of the conventional narrative lies firmly in the cultural biases of researchers.
You can see the potential for this to be a touchy subject. It's hard to get into this stuff without opening big cans of worms involving social issues. And at first, I wasn't terribly impressed with the authors' approach on this score. They're not exactly free of biases themselves, certainly, and in the opening chapters of the book, particularly, they use some very loaded language. (Actual quote describing the conventional point of view: "Darwin says your mother's a whore.") Now, in fairness, I think this was largely an attempt to be lively, amusing, and entertainingly provocative. But really, starting a supposedly scientific argument with appeals to emotion and wishful thinking instead of logic, along with intimations that your opponent's viewpoint ought to be considered personally insulting to your readers? Not good form, and it's even less so in a case where half your argument involves the idea that the other side are the ones blinded by bias.
Fortunately -- very fortunately -- it mostly settles down after the first fifty pages or so, as the authors actually get down to making their case. As is usual in this field, they mostly rely on studies of modern and historical hunter-gatherer societies as well as our primate relatives to draw their conclusions, though they also cite research on current human sexuality. Some of their arguments are stronger than others, and I do think there are a few places where they've significantly oversimplified the viewpoint they're arguing against. There's also a bit of "he said, she said" when it comes to some of the disputed evidence, which leaves me unsure quite who to believe on specific points. All that having been said, though, their argument as a whole is extremely interesting, highly readable, and entirely plausible. Even if it turns out to be incorrect, this kind of informed challenging of conventional wisdom is truly healthy in science, and if they're right, they have some potentially relevant things to say about the implications for modern human lives. So in the end, despite a rocky start, I did find it quite a worthwhile read. I'd be very interested to see these ideas addressed further by archaeologists, anthropologists or evolutionary scientists, whether supporting or disputing them.
Rating: Despite the flaws, I'm calling it 4/5.
I felt left dangling, though, with the invention of agriculture. I can not buy the repeated sentiment that this was the worst thing to happen to us humans. And the message that our prehistorical ancestors were likely 'promiscuous' falls flat when there is no discussion of how evolution and cultural influences since agriculture was 'invented' may have affected our sexual and bonding behaviors. I know the book is big and ambitious and post-agriculture was not the point, but I have to wonder how all of that plays out in our current attitudes towards sex and relationships.
It was like the book spent most of its time building up to this giant revelation...and then it fell short. In the end, all the reader gets is "I know this guy who cheated on his wife and it ended in divorce and misery for all involved." And that left me feeling like perhaps this was just some giant treatise on how men are born to not be monogamous and women should just deal with it. Until that point, the book felt quite egalitarian, but the ending was not. There's even an afterword addressing that point in the paperback version, so I'm guessing that I'm not the only reader who left feeling this way.
I work in a library, and watched three little girls waiting to check out their books with their guardian yesterday. They came together for a group hug - one that involved ostentatious and stylized kissing - and then, giggling, decided they liked it so much they wanted to do it again. The forthright enjoyment of human contact and expression of desire for that contact may seem like a simple and direct thing, but gods, I can't remember the last time I was touched. We are social creatures, and I wish we had more forthright acknowledgement of the fact that we need physical contact, sexual and platonic.
Maybe the work peeps will be interested in instituting voluntary group hug time in the schedule.
The author argues that monogamy is not innate to humans...Duh. Why you need a whole book to argue for this is beyond me but apparantly you do.
The whole monogamy trip is a side effect of the agriculture revolution and the rise of patriarchal
This is a revolutionary
To be fair, as sociology and biology are not my strong suits, perhaps I would have been over my head had it not been for the running comedic commentary. Perhaps I would have put it down before finishing it... but I doubt it. This is a topic that is near and dear to my heart and my libido, and I would have pushed through.
Perhaps the most interesting fact that I caught was that women's birth control has a tendency to make their bodies react differently, perhaps choosing a mate that they will not be happy with after the birth control leaves their system. Makes sense to this soon to be divorced woman who met her ex while on birth control, stopped using it at the time she realized he was no longer the right man for her...
The book is a bit
Definitely a thought and conversation provoking book, but I think it would've benefited from an editor toning down the hyperbole and qualifying the author's absolute claims.
ILLUMINATING
As somebody who has a great interest in evolutionary theory, I found this book fascinating. The ideas the author presents and the evidence that is presented in support are definately worth a read. It gave me new insights and perspectives on how human relationships have evolved through
It definitely didn't disappoint. I would higly recommend it for anybody interested in evolutionary theory of sex and relationships.
For Ryan to then use all of the above arguments to support his view of the naturalness of promiscuity in humans as a sort of licence to practice open marriage and polyamory seems a bit over the top. Monogamy, or at least polygyny, has been a feature of human societies for at least 10,000 years, and maybe more, so to say that such systems are not well adapted to humans misses quite a bit of support for monogamous systems. Even his physical anthropology reasoning is little better than taking the more controversial side of the argument being waged among primatologists. So, overall, this book leaves much to be desired, and represents a rather fringe view of human sexuality.
This book isn't advocating one lifestyle or another, it is simply giving proof to the lie that monogamy is the only way to true happiness.
Excellently written, enjoyable to read, and chock full of data. Highly recommended.