NOTES
Please visit sexatdawn.com for the latest news, further discussion, and updates on the issues raised in this book, or to contact the authors.
Introduction
1. Maybe as recently as 4.5 million years ago. For a recent review of the genetic evidence, see Siepel (2009).
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.
5. Leacock (1981), p. 50.
6. http://www.slate.com/id/2204451/.
7. Erikson (2002), p. 131.
8. Chernela (2002), p. 163.
9. Lea (2002), p. 113.
10. Chernela (2002), p. 173.
11. Morris (1998), p. 262.
12. Malinowski (1962), pp. 156–157.
13. See Sapolsky (2005).
14. Drucker (2004).
15. Even Jean-Jacques Rousseau, poster-boy for the Romantic ideal of the Noble Savage, made use of these baby disposals. In 1785, Benjamin Franklin visited the hospital where Rousseau had deposited his five illegitimate children and discovered a mortality rate of 85 percent among the babies there (“Baby Food,” by Jill Lepore, in The New Yorker, January 19, 2009).
16. McElvaine (2001), p. 45.
17. Betzig (1989), p. 654.
Chapter 8: Making a Mess of Marriage, Mating, and Monogamy
1. As we write this, Tiger Woods is being accused of having “slept with” more than a dozen women in cars, parking lots, on sofas…. Are we to think he’s a narcoleptic?
2. de Waal (2005), p. 108.
3. Trivers’s paper is seen as the foundational text in establishing the importance of male provisioning (investment) as a crucial factor in female sexual selection, among other things. It’s well worth a read if you want a deeper understanding of the overall development of evolutionary psychology.
4. Ghiglieri (1999), p. 150.
5. Small (1993), p. 135.
6. Roughgarden (2007). Available online: http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/ 931165/ challenging_darwins_theory_of_sexual_selection/index.html.
7. The New Yorker, November 25, 2002.
8. Cartwright’s article is available here: http://www.pbs.org/ wgbh/aia/part4/4h3106t.html.
9. Symons (1979), p. 108.
10. Valentine (2002), p. 188.
11. Article by Souhail Karam, Reuters, July 24, 2006.
12. The New Yorker, April 17, 2007.
13. Vincent of Beauvais Speculum doctrinale 10.45.
14. Both from Townsend and Levy (1990b).
Chapter 9: Paternity Certainty: The Crumbling
Cornerstone of the Standard Narrative
1. Edgerton (1992), p. 182.
2. In Margolis (2004), p. 175.
3. Pollock (2002), p. 53.
4. For more on the deep connections between a society’s levels of violence and its eroticism, see Prescott (1975).
5. Quoted in Hua (2001), p. 23.
6. Namu (2004), p 276. For an excellent look at Mosuo culture, check out PBS Frontline World, “The Women’s Kingdom,” available at www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/rough/ 2005/07/introduction_to.html.
7. Namu (2004), p. 69.
8. Namu (2004), p. 8.
9. This sacred regard for each individual’s autonomy is characteristic of foragers, too. For example, when Michael Finkel visited the Hadza recently in Tanzania, he reported, “the Hadza recognize no official leaders. Camps are traditionally named after a senior male … but this honor does not confer any particular power. Individual autonomy is the hallmark of the Hadza. No Hadza adult has authority over any other.” (National Geographic, December 2009.)
10. Hua (2001), pp. 202–203.
11. Namu (2004), pp. 94–95.
12. China’s Kingdom of Women, Cynthia Barnes. Slate.com (November 17, 2006): http://www.slate.com/id/2153586/ entry/2153614.
13. Goldberg (1993), p. 15.
14. (Photo: Christopher Ryan.) When I saw this old woman, I knew her face contained the feminine strength and humor I was hoping to convey in a photo. I gestured to ask if it would be all right to take her picture. She agreed, but asked me to wait, and immediately started calling. These two little girls (granddaughters? Great-granddaughters?) came running. Once she had them in her arms, she gave me the go-ahead to take the shot.
15. The book was published in 2002, while Goldberg’s came out almost a decade earlier, but all of Sanday’s work on the Minangkabau, including the paper Goldberg cites, argues against his position—a point certainly deserving of mention.
16. Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2002-05/ uop-imm050902.php.
17. Source: www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2002-05/ uop-imm050902.php.
18. Most of these quotes are from an article by David Smith that appeared in The Guardian, September 18, 2005, available online at http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/sep/18/ usa.filmnews, or Stephen Holden’s review in The New York Times, June 24, 2005, available online at http://movies.nytimes.com/2005/06/24/movies/ 24peng.html?_r=2.
19. The San Diego Union-Tribune: “Studies Suggest Monogamy Isn’t for the Birds—or Most Creatures,” by Scott LaFee, September 4, 2002.
20. “Monogamy and the Prairie Vole,” Scientific American online issue, February 2005, pp. 22–27.
21. Things have become a bit more muddled since Insel said that. More recently, Insel and others have been working on trying to discover the hormonal correlations underlying the fidelity or lack thereof among prairie, montane, and meadow voles. As reported in the October 7, 1993 issue of Nature, Insel and his team found that vasopressin, a hormone released during mating, seemed to trigger protective, nestguarding behavior in some species of male voles, but not others, leading to speculation about “monogamy genes.” See http://findarticles com/p/articles/mi_m1200/is_n22_v144/ ai_14642472 for a review. In 2008, Hasse Walum of the Karolinska Institute in Sweden found that a variation in the gene called RS3 334 seemed to be associated with how easily men bonded emotionally with their partners. Most interestingly, the gene appears to have some association with autism as well. The reference for Walum’s paper is Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI:
10.1073pnas.0803081105. A news article summarizing the findings is online at http://www.newscientist.com/article/ dn14641-monogamy-gene-found-in-people.html.
Chapter 10: Jealousy: A Beginner’s Guide to
Coveting Thy Neighbor’s Spouse
1. Darwin (1871/2007), p. 184.
2. Hrdy (1999b), p. 249.
3. Known to historians as The Wicked Bible or The Adulterous Bible, the mistake led to the royal printers losing their license and a £300 fine.
4. Confusingly, the tribe that came to be known as the Flatheads was not one of them, as their heads were “flat,” like the white trappers’, while the neighboring tribes’ heads were bizarrely conical.
5. Grayscale reproduction scanned from Eaton, D.; Urbanek, S.: Paul Kane’s Great Nor-West, University of British Columbia Press; Vancouver, 1995.
6. In fact, Maryanne Fisher and her colleagues found the opposite; distress was greater if the infidelity involved someone with familial bonds (see Fisher, et al. [2009]).
7. Buss (2000), p. 33.
8. Buss (2000), p. 58.
9. Jethá and Falcato (1991).
10. Harris (2000), p. 1084.
11. For an overview of Buss’s research on jealousy, see Buss (2000). For research and commentary rebutting his work, see Ryan and Jethá (2005), Harris and Christenfeld (1996), and DeSteno and Salovey (1996).
12. www.epjournal.net/filestore/ep06667675.pdf.
13. Holmberg (1969), p. 161.
14. From an “On Faith” blog post in The Washington Post, November 29, 2007: http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/ onfaith/panelists/richard_dawkins/2007/11/ banishing_the_greeneyed_monste.html.
15. Wilson (1978), p. 142.
Part III: The Way We Weren’t
Chapter 11: “The Wealth of Nature” (Poor?)
1. Presumably, he was reading the sixth edition, published in 1826.
2. Barlow (1958), p. 120.
3. It’s no accident that Darwin was well aware of Malthus’s thinking. Harriet Martineau, an early feminist, economic philosopher, and outspoken opponent of slavery, had been close to Malthus before striking up a friendship with Darwin’s older brother, Erasmus, who introduced her to Charles. Had Charles not been “astonished to find how ugly she is,” some, including Matt Ridley, suspect their friendship might have led to marriage. It would surely have been a marriage with lasting effects on Western thought (see Ridley’s article, “The Natural Order of Things,” in The Spectator, January 7, 2009).
4. Shaw (1987), p. 53.
5. Darwin (1871/2007), p. 79. Both Malthus and Darwin would have profited from familiarity with MacArthur and Wilson’s (1967) thoughts on r/K reproduction and selection. Briefly, they posit that some species (like many insects, rodents, etc.) reproduce quickly to fill an empty ecological niche. They don’t expect most of their young to survive to adulthood, but they flood the environment quickly (r-selected). K-selected species have fewer young and invest heavily in each of them. Such species are generally in a state of Malthusian equilibrium, having already reached a population/food supply stasis point. Thus, these questions: as Homo sapiens is clearly a K-selected species, at what point did our environmental niche become saturated? Or have we continually found ways to expand our niche as human population expanded? If so, what does this mean for the underlying mechanisms of natural selection when applied to human evolution?
6. For example: “In the roughly 2 million years our ancestors lived as hunters and gatherers, the population rose from about 10,000 protohumans to about 4 million modern humans. If, as we believe, the growth pattern during this era was fairly steady, then the population must have doubled about every quarter million years, on average.” Economics of the Singularity, Robin Hanson, http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/ jun08/6274.
7. Source: U.S. Census Bureau: http://www.census.gov/ipc/ www/worldhis.html.
8. Lilla (2007).
9. Smith’s essay is online at http://realhumannature.com/ Ppage_icU26.
10. Hassan (1980).
11. For a different take on how and why prehistoric population levels grew so slowly, see Harris (1977), particularly Chapter 2. For yet another take, see Hart and Sussman (2005), who argue that our ancestors did in fact live in Hobbesian fear—but not from each other so much as from constant predation. Malthus acknowledged the low population growth of Native Americans, but he attributed it to lack of libido caused by food shortages, “phlegmatic temperament,” or “a natural defect in their bodily frame” (I. IV. P. 3).
12. Most of the other species of hominids that had spread from Africa to Asia and Europe previously were already long gone by the time modern humans wandered out of Africa. Those still hanging on, Neanderthals and (possibly) Homo erectus, would have been at a huge disadvantage if there was interspecies competition—which is unclear. One could argue that the presence of Neanderthals in Europe and parts of Central Asia may have led to competition over hunting areas, but the extent of contact between our ancestors and Neanderthals, if any, is unresolved. Also, any overlap would have been partial, as Neanderthals appear to have been top-level carnivores, while Homo sapiens are and were enthusiastic omnivores (see, for example, Richards and Trinkaus, 2009).
13. The question of when humans first arrived in the Americas is unresolved. Recent archaeological finds in Chile suggesting human settlements dating to about 35,000 years ago have thrown open the question of how and when the first humans arrived in the western hemisphere. See, for example, Dillehay et al. (2008).
14. See Amos and Hoffman (2009), for example. Paleoanthropologist John Hawkes isn’t convinced that population bottlenecks necessarily imply sparse prehistoric human populations overall, proposing that “many small groups of humans were in fact competing intensively, and many of them failed to persist over the long term. In other words, a small effective size is hardly evidence of no ancient competition or warfare. It may be the result of intense competition leading to many local extinctions” (see his blog: http://johnhawks.net/node/1894). Given the persistence of hunter-gather populations in the world’s least habitable zones, the relative abundance of the rest of the planet, and the genetic evidence of just a few hundred breeding pairs after the Toba eruption 70,000 years ago (Ambrose, 1998), we aren’t convinced by Hawkes’s scenario of “many local extinctions” due to competition—as opposed to planetary catastrophe.
15. Agriculture itself can be seen as a response to ecological saturation brought about by the combined effects of gradually rising regional population and catastrophic climate change. For example, Nick Brooks, a researcher at the University of East Anglia, argues, “Civilization was in large part an accidental by-product of unplanned adaptation to catastr