Learning Lovemaking from Bonobos
Welcome to the 9th edition of Discover Intimacy!
Read time: 7 - 9 minutes
We’ve been promising for weeks to tackle our latest topic – prehistoric sex – and we’re doing so today. Today’s edition covers roughly the first half of the book and we’ll tackle more in our next edition.
In Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships, authors Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá address the essence of human sexuality and how it has evolved over thousands of years.
“Deep conflicts rage at the heart of modern sexuality. Our cultivated ignorance is devastating. The campaign to obscure the true nature of our species’ sexuality leaves half our marriages collapsing under an unstoppable tide of swirling sexual frustration, libido-killing boredom, impulsive betrayal, dysfunction, confusion, and shame. Serial monogamy stretches before (and behind) many of us like an archipelago of failure: isolated islands of transitory happiness in a cold, dark sea of disappointment.”
And that’s in just the first three pages.
This work is certainly not without controversy. At the heart of their arguments, Ryan and Jethá contend that the vast majority of modern humans exist in monogamous relationships as we know them today, not because we biologically evolved that way, but because societal constructs demand it.
According to Ryan and Jethá, “With and without love, a casual sexuality was the norm for our prehistoric ancestors.”
FROM FORAGING TO FARMING
Our prehistoric ancestors were nomadic peoples – existing, living and moving in tribes. Within those foraging (i.e. nomadic) communities, sharing was imperative for the survival of the group. The concept of “owning stuff” as we know it today did not exist. Owning and not sharing was a privilege prehistoric peoples could not afford.
Consider this... If you live within a group of nomadic people and each day, several of you go out to hunt for food and some days you return with food and other days other group members return with food, you would need to share to ensure you have daily access to food.
“Foragers divide and distribute meat equitably, breastfeed one another’s babies, have little to no privacy from one another, and depend upon each other for survival. As much as our social world revolves around notions of private property and individual responsibility, theirs spins in the opposite direction, toward group welfare, group identity, profound interrelation, and mutual dependence.”
According to Ryan and Jethá, this sharing applied to other areas as well.
“We believe this sharing behavior extended to sex as well. A great deal of research from primatology, anthropology, anatomy, and psychology points to the same fundamental conclusion: human beings and our hominid ancestors have spent almost all of the past few million years or so in small, intimate bands in which most adults had several sexual relationships at any given time.”
Basically, your great-grand ancestors to the thousandth power were having sex with various folks in the group. Regularly.
When civilizations began transitioning to farming-based societies, along with it came ownership of items, property and people; changes in group/family structures; new belief systems and subsequently forms of worship; and most importantly to our discussion today – the nature of sexual relations between and among people. And, according to the authors, the sharing that existed among nomadic peoples did not extend itself to farming communities.
Some scholars, including the book’s authors, consider the transition to agriculture a detrimental one citing the negative outcomes of agriculture-based societies.
“Clearly the biggest loser (aside from slaves perhaps) in the agricultural revolution was the human female, who went from occupying a central, respected role in foraging societies to becoming another possession for a man to earn and defend, along with his house, slaves, and livestock.”
This argument presents two questions the book has not answered yet (reminder: we’re at the mid-way point):
What was it about the transition to agriculture that shifted women’s roles in society from revered forager to subjugated farmer? Considering the physicality of a woman’s body (i.e. size, speed, strength, childbearing, etc.), one would think that women are better suited physically for farming-based activities than for hunting and spearing animals. In light of this, wouldn’t the role of women be more instrumental in a farming environment? What exactly happened – psyche shift or otherwise – to make women the “losers” of the agricultural revolution?
What is it about agricultural societies that don’t lend themselves to sharing? Are there pre-historical examples of agriculture-based communities that shared - maybe not sex, but other things?
As we continue reading, we'll see if the authors address these questions and will include them in our next edition.
SCIENCE FOLLOWING SOCIETY
Ryan and Jethá spend considerable time outlining how science has come to explain our “natural monogamy,” which they don’t believe is natural at all.
According to the authors, science and scientists are just as subject to the ideologies, opinions and attitudes of the societies in which they live as anyone else. And, those ideologies, opinions and attitudes can and do impact their work. Meaning, “scientific” research and findings are subject to the influence of a society that prioritizes and holds in high regard monogamy, patriarchy and other modern constructs of sex and sexuality.
“What if Victoria’s biggest secret was that men and women are both victims of false propaganda about our true sexual natures and the war between the sexes – still waged today – is a false-flag operation, a diversion from our common enemy?”
They go on to cite a specific example often discussed during the Victorian Era and even today – the female libido.
“If women were as libidinous as men, we’re told, society itself would collapse. Lord Acton was only repeating what everyone knew in 1875 when he declared, ‘The majority of women, happily for them and for society, are not very much troubled with sexual feeling of any kind.’
And yet, despite repeated assurances that women aren’t particularly sexual creatures, in cultures around the world men have gone to extraordinary lengths to control female libido: female genital mutilation, head-to-toe chadors, medieval witch burnings, chastity belts… Why the electrified high-security razor-wire fence to contain a kitty-cat?”
While Ryan and Jethá don’t go so far as to say we should not rely on any science in the field, they do state that our scientific understanding of sex and sexuality has been colored heavily through the lens of societal expectations and norms at the time the work was produced.
There’s evidence of this in other scientific work. If you look at studies about African-Americans in the mid-20th century for example, the language, assertions and conclusions often reflect society’s attitudes towards race at that time.
MONKEY SEE, MONKEY DO
“Our DNA differs from that of chimps and bonobos by roughly 1.6 percent, making us closer to them than a dog is to a fox…”
In evolutionary scholarship, humans are often compared to chimps, but comparatively little is said about bonobos.
“The importance of the chimpanzee in late twentieth-century models of human nature cannot be overstated… The cunning brutality displayed by chimpanzees, combined with the shameful cruelty that characterizes so much of human history, appears to confirm Hobbesian notions of human nature if left unrestrained by some greater force.”
While humans are similar to chimps in our violent history, we are also similar to bonobos in our sexual behaviors. Quite similar.
“Human and bonobo females copulate throughout menstrual cycle, as well as during lactation and pregnancy.
Female bonobos return to the group immediately after giving birth and copulate within months.
Bonobos and humans enjoy many different copulatory positions.
Bonobos and humans often gaze into each other’s eyes when copulating and kiss each other deeply.
Food sharing is highly associated with sexual activity in humans and bonobos.
There is a high degree of variability in potential sexual combinations in humans and bonobos.
Bonobos and humans utilize sexuality for social purposes (tension reduction, bonding, conflict resolution, entertainment, etc.).”
So, because we have sex during our periods, return home immediately after giving birth, have sex in different positions, tongue kiss, eat during dates to warm up for sex, have make-up sex and participate in various parts of the LGBTQIA rainbow, we are just like bonobos.
But, there is one big exception. Bonobos are not monogamous and do not engage in long-term pairing. They have sex with various members of the group, multiple times per day.
This is where Ryan and Jethá argue that humans strayed from our natural way of being – not bonobos. Like our bonobo kin and our ancient ancestors, according to the authors, we too are naturally inclined to multi-pairing and monogamy, with all its societal trimmings, is not in fact natural for human beings.
In our next edition, we’ll continue exploring – starting with groups in the Amazon who believe that you can be a “little pregnant” and that a fetus needs lots of sperm from different men to grow.
Thank you for joining us today.
