Sex at Dawn
So.
So this is a rather ballsy work. In varying depth, Ryan & Jethá aggressively attack several scientific consensuses, all orbiting within the broad ambit of human sexuality. A light-hearted writing style makes this a highly accessible work. Below, I focus on some of the key assertions and arguments of interest.
Primary amongst the traditional views attacked, and the books main target, is the idea that humans evolved from a monogamist prehistory – a period the authors peg as the 200,000 years immediately prior to agriculture and writing. (It is interesting to note how this disparate pair of technologies is often conjoined by use of this sense of the term). In strong contrast to todays western nuclear family, the authors posit that “the ‘natural’ family structure of our species” is one that enjoys “easy acceptance between adults and unrelated children, the diffuse nurturing found [...] where children refer to all men as father and all women as mother, [...] small and isolated enough to safely assume the kindness of strangers, where overlapping sexual relationships leave genetic paternity unknowable and of little consequence …”. The modern pair-bond is painted as a distortion brought about by recent transition to sedentary agriculture. » Continue reading “Sex at Dawn”
