Sex at Dawn MP3 CD – Unabridged, April 8, 2014

(Hey! Hey, baby, baby, waitwaitwaitwait. Wait. Wait! Baby, don't... don't freak outOkay, okay, I know what this looks like, but I can explain! Quiet, Chad, let me handle this. I can explain! I'm just - please, stop crying and listen - I'm just fulfilling my evolutionary heritage and helping to cement social bonds with... um... the pizza boy, but that'snotthepoint!! That's not the point! Look, before you do anything, y'know, drastic, you just need to read this book....)Humans are really good at figuring things out. As far as we go, we have a real knack for taking things apart and figuring out how they work. Though determined curiosity and perseverance, we know what's happening at the center of the sun, we know how the continents slide across the surface of the earth, how plants turn sunlight into potatoes. We can smash atoms and cure disease and peer back to the moment of creation itself. There is almost nothing that humans cannot comprehend if we put our minds to it.Except ourselves.Don't get me wrong - we have made great strides in philosophy and psychology, and come very far in understanding human origins and our spread across the planet. But there is a fundamental problem that we have when we study ourselves, and that is that we cannot do so objectively. Try as we might, it is impossible to completely put aside our own biases, judgments and backgrounds when we study how humans behave and try to understand why they do what they do. They are still there, if you look for them, and nowhere are they more evident than in the search for the origins of foundations of human sexuality.The standard model, as it's often called, goes something like this: ancient men and women established a pattern of monogamy based on mutual self-interest. The man would keep to one mate in order to be absolutely sure that he was dedicating his efforts towards raising his own kids and not someone else's. If a man had multiple partners, he wouldn't be able to provide for them all, and his genetic investment would die out. So, in terms of efficiency, it is much better for the man to keep himself to one woman, focusing all his attention on the children he knows he has fathered and making sure they live to have children of their own.As far as women are concerned, they require the resources that the men bring. When pregnant, a woman's physical capacities are reduced and she is in a vulnerable state, so by staying monogamous, she is essentially purchasing security and resources that would otherwise be unavailable to her in a world that brought quick and merciless death to the weak. If she slept around, the man wouldn't be sure that the child she bore was his, and would therefore have less interest in taking care of the both of them. Thus, monogamy is the best bet to assure the survival of herself and her child.This is the story that's been told for a long time, and it's considered by most to be the truth. Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha, however, disagree. Not only do they think the standard model is wrong, but they think it is nothing more than a relic of our own modern biases and hang-ups. The process, they say, can be referred to as "Flintstonization."As you know, the characters in "The Flintstones" were more or less just like us. They went to work, they had houses and appliances and domestic disputes. They had the same issues and amusements as we did, because we overlaid our own society onto a prehistoric setting. Now in cartoons, that's good entertainment, and in the right hands it can be used as powerful satire and commentary. In science, though, it's just no good.Starting with Darwin, people have imagined prehistoric humans to have the same sexual values that we have: a demure, reluctant female who is very choosy in deciding which male she will mate with. A bond forms, and they are faithful to each other until the end of their days. Later researchers, looking at our ape cousins, have plenty of observational research to support the idea that very early humans were monogamous. They look at chimps and gorillas and baboons and confirm what they had always suspected - that our natural sexual state is one of monogamy.The logical conclusion, then, is that our modern attitude towards sexuality, with the rising rates of divorce and teen sexuality, represents a deviation from the way things "should" be, and must therefore be fixed. A loveless marriage, a man's roving eye, a woman who cuckolds her husband, serial monogamists, all of these, according to the standard model, result from our attempts to go against our nature.Or is it the other way around?Ryan and Jetha have put together a very compelling argument that the standard model of pre-agricultural human sexuality is not only wrong, but dangerously so. By looking at modern foraging tribes and the way they live, as well as doing a comparative analysis of humans against our nearest ape cousins, they have come to this conclusion: our "natural" sexual state is one of promiscuity. Back in the day, communities were small and tightly bonded, and sex was one of the things that held those bonds tight. Rather than one man and one woman struggling to protect their own genetic line, their entire community made sure that children were cared for and raised well. Everyone was everyone else's responsibility, and in a world of plenty there was no reason to try and enforce any kind of sexual exclusivity.It was only with the rise of agriculture that it became important to know what was yours, as opposed to someone else's, and that quickly extended from fields and livestock to wives and children. Now that people were keeping their own food and making sure to divide their lands from their neighbor's lands, sharing went out of style. With so much work put into growing crops, that's where the standard model of economic monogamy settled in, and it's been with us ever since. The advent of agriculture changed everything, and not everything for the better.In addition, the very biology of humans, from the way sperm behaves to the shape of the penis, to the anatomy of the clitoris to the noises women make in the throes of orgasm - all of these point to an evolutionary history of sexual promiscuity. The evidence of our bodies tell us that being locked into a lifetime monogamous pair-bond is not what we evolved to do.Ryan and Jetha know that their view of the fundamental nature of human sexuality will not be popular, mainly because it completely undermines our vision of who we are. So much law, tradition, education, entertainment and just plain common sense relies on humans being naturally monogamous. It's something that seems so obvious to us that we cannot imagine a society built any other way. Unfortunately, if Ryan and Jetha are right, society is the problem. We have established a cultural norm that goes completely against our biological and evolutionary nature, and which makes people miserable on a daily basis.I bought this book mainly to stop Dan Savage from nagging me about it. If you listen to Savage's podcast - and you should - you will soon realize that monogamy is something that a lot of people aren't good at. We look at other people with lust in our hearts, we cheat, we stay in relationships where we're sexually miserable just because that's what we "should" do. For most people, our sexual urges are to be fought against, with everything from self-restraint to social shame to law itself. It seems like staying monogamous is one of the hardest things for many people to do.This, of course, raises the question: if it were natural, would it really be so hard?It is a fascinating read, which covers a lot of ground and makes some very compelling arguments. It's also quite funny in places, which was quite welcome. In discussing the standard model the authors note that this is, fundamentally, prostitution, wherein the woman uses sex for material resources. This sexual barter system has been assumed to be true for years, leading the authors to write, "Darwin says your mother's a whore. Simple as that." They also put in some special notes for adventurous grad students in the field of sexual research (especially genital to genital rubbing, something popular in bonobo apes, but which is rarely studied in humans) and re-titling the extremely popular song "When A Man Loves a Woman" as "When a Man Becomes Pathologically Obsessed and Sacrifices All Self-Respect and Dignity by Making a Complete Ass of Himself (and Losing the Woman Anyway Because Really, Who Wants a Boyfriend Who Sleeps Out in the Rain Because Someone Told Him To?)"I don't really know what can be made of the serious information proposed in this book. No matter how it may seem, the authors are not proposing a dissolution of marriage or compulsory orgies or anything like that, nor is this book a "Get Out of Cheating Free" card. We've spent thousands of years putting these restraints on human sexuality, and they're not going to come off anytime soon. The best we can do right now is to be aware of where our ideas about relationships come from, and stop to think about the difference between what is true and what we wish were true. This understanding might help to save relationships that would otherwise work. People cheat not because they're scum or whores, but because they're human. Being monogamous is really hard not because we're weak or flawed, but because it's not what our bodies want for us.The search for a better understanding of human nature should lead us to being better humans, and nothing should be left out. Not even our most sacred beliefs. Not even sex.------------------------------------------------"Asking whether our species is naturally peaceful or warlike, generous or possessive, free-loving or jealous, is like asking whether H2O is naturally a solid, liquid or gas. The only meaningful answer to such a question is: It depends."- Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha, Sex at Dawn------------------------------------------------(Okay? Okay, baby? So you see, I wasn't really cheating - okay, I was, but you can see why, right? I was just acting in accordance with my fundamental humanity, following the biological impulses as determined by millions of years of evolution when we... Hey, where are you going? Where are you? Oh, hell, he's going for the shotgun. Run, Chad, leave your pants, you don't have time, run!)

Anthropologists have long noted that marriage is virtually universally present in all cultures across time and place. From that observation it has been extrapolated that monogamous pair bonding is the natural mating arrangement for Homo sapiens. In “Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships,” Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha challenge these basic and long held presumptions. “Despite centuries of religious and scientific propaganda,” they say, “the basic illusions underpinning the supposed ‘naturalness’ of the conventional nuclear family is clearly exhausted.”The authors begin by describing and then rejecting the standard narrative of human sexual evolution. That narrative goes something like this: Men, with nearly inexhaustible sperm, are driven to mate widely and frequently; women, with an extremely limited supply of eggs, are choosier in selecting mates and trade sexual access in return for access to resources and physical protection; men gain certainty of paternity in this arrangement and thus ensure that their genes are passed on to the next generation. The authors argue that this narrative cannot be explained by evolutionary biology but rather is a cultural phenomenon shaped by the agricultural revolution that began some 10,000 years ago.Our true sexual instincts, they claim, were honed over hundreds of thousands of years during human prehistory when our ancestors were hunter-gatherers and our social arrangements were very different. Contrary to popular conception, often characterized by Thomas Hobbes’ assertion that prehistoric human existence was “solitary, nasty, brutish, and short,” the authors argue that our hunter-gatherer ancestors led an almost idyllic life. “A dispassionate review of the relevant science clearly demonstrates that the tens of thousands of years before the advent of agriculture,” they write, “while certainly not a time of uninterrupted utopian bliss, was for the most part characterized by robust health, peace between individuals and groups, low levels of chronic stress and high levels of overall satisfaction for most of our ancestors.”Low human population density ensured an abundant and varied diet. The upshot, the archaeological record shows, was that prehistoric humans were as tall as their modern descendants and, if they survived early childhood, could expect to live a full life of 70 years or older. Moreover, their lives were far from solitary. In all likelihood, they lived in close-knit communities of 100-150 individuals. And they propagated by having indiscriminate sexual relations and raising their offspring cooperatively and communally. Wait….what?!Yes, that is the big “gotcha” in “Sex at Dawn.” “What if – thanks to the combined effects of very low population density, a highly omnivorous digestive system, our uniquely elevated social intelligence, institutionalized sharing of food, casually promiscuous sexuality leading to generalized child care, and group defense – human prehistory was in fact a time of relative peace and prosperity.”Basically, they argue that female human sexuality has been warped and constrained over that past few thousand years, much to the detriment, presumably, of female human sexuality. “Institutionalized sharing of resources and sexuality spreads and minimizes risk,” the authors write, “assures food won’t be wasted in a world without refrigeration, eliminates the effects of male infertility, promotes the genetic health of individuals, and assures a more secure social environment for children and adults alike.”The authors present a few points to defend their thesis. First, they say, consider the famously libidinous behavior of the bonobo, our closest genetic relative besides the chimpanzee. (One of the many interesting things I learned in reading “Sex at Dawn” is that there is only 1.6% genetic difference between humans and chimps and bonobos; that’s less than that between dogs and foxes or African elephants and Indian elephants.) If you squint hard enough, bonobos may actually represent our distant hunter-gatherer past, demonstrating close knit, largely peaceful, and wildly promiscuous behavior. Fun fact: humans and bonobos are the only female mammals to have hidden ovulation and copulate throughout their menstrual cycle.Second, the authors claim that human anatomical biology also supports their claims. In short, both the male and female genetalia show signs that humans evolved where mating competition occurred at the microscopic level. Rather than having the strongest males fighting it out for exclusive sexual access to the female herd (e.g. polygamous), human sexual competition developed to occur inside the vagina. For instance, the authors argue, the enlarged head of the human penis and the back-and-forth thrusting of mating was specifically designed as a plunger to suck out the semen of the last male. Furthermore, they write about the chemical properties in the first and last ejaculatory thrust to show that the real competition occurs after sex is over. “The evidence that sperm competition played a role in human evolution is simply overwhelming,” they claim.So what do Ryan and Jetta really tell us about human sexuality? Frankly, I’m not sure. I love their playful writing style and applaud their disruptive arguments. But did they convince me? No. They didn’t. They ask serious and compelling questions, such as: “Might the contemporary pandemics of fracturing families, parental exhaustion, and confused, resentful children be predictable consequences of what is, in truth, a distorted and distorting family structure inappropriate for our species?” But the alternative narrative they supply provides precious few answers. For instance, the authors argue, “If human sexuality developed primarily as a bonding mechanism in interdependent bands where paternity certainty was a nonissue, then the standard narrative of human evolution is toast.” If the standard narrative of human evolution is, in fact, “toast,” how does their competing worldview better help explain contemporary human sexual relations?Toward the end of the book the authors cite some social science research showing that sex is, for women, a primarily emotional connection. In a world where women regularly had sex with every eligible male in the social group, why would emotional connection matter? The authors never seek to reconcile this fact (?) with their thesis. “One of the most important hopes we have for this book,” they write, “is to provoke the sorts of conversations that make it a bit easier for couples to make their way across this difficult emotional terrain together, with a deeper, less judgmental understanding of the ancient roots of these inconvenient feelings and a more informed, mature approach to dealing with them.” They completely ignore the fact that most Western women feel no strong urge to procreate indiscriminately. There appear to be deeply ingrained differences between male and female sexual preferences and the standard narrative best explains these differences that the authors explicitly reject.

I'm shocked how none of these argument where ever touched in school, high-school nor university... the content of this little book should be shared to more influential people in our society so that it can be spread wider.I'm not saying this book gives you a universal truth, as there will never be one, but at least it gives you a different perspective and another option to the one and only given by the part of society that neglects and refuses that after all we're still an animal species.

While the authors appeared to have done a lot of research, the book fails to make any coherent points. It took far too long to get any point (if it did at all). The writing is boring and while there were some sparks of engaging writing and humour early on, they're soon drowned by the lack of clarity. I quickly found myself skim-reading pages. It gets a bit interesting towards the end but otherwise it's a snoozefest.

Packed with research, but Ryan & Jetha are constantly working backwards back from their conclusion.Like Yuval Noah Harari, they believe in a pre-agricultural utopia that existed before mankind was enslaved by private ownership, leading to wars and everything else that ails modern civilisations.They’re convinced that we’d be far better off as promiscuous foragers and they just don’t let up.However, what they circle around but never land on, is that to return to our non monogamous foraging past, we would have to give up the relationships we have with our children, irrespective of our gender.

When i first downloaded this, my. Kindle said 16 hrs 50 mins, OMGAnyhow, I saw it recommended on a YouTube channel, so i thought I would give it a go.When I finished there was over 3 hrs to go but these were all acknowledgements and references....So, The whole content of this book could be condensed into a couple of chapters, just tell us what we need to know.Its an alternative theory to human evolution and one I can buy into. It explains why we as couples cant stay together etc.As mentioned, should be read in school, there would be far fewer divorces as there would be far fewer marriages, but probably far more kids....

This book came to me as a written proof of things that I already thought they could be like this. Some ideas in the book were new to me, but mostly it was just very detailed explanation of what I already thought how it should be. Sometimes authors took just too much time discussing and preparing for some statements, as it seems, but probably this is OK. Without that much background those facts would sound like opinion. One might consume it, one might refuse it. But book that have over 500 links to various sources can't be fake.I like it!Some say authors did very selective proof picking. My opinion is that the opposite side do the same. I was raised in traditional environment and education. Since 1st grade of school I was thinking that all that does not make sense and was seeking for deeper answers that would also clarify why traditional science (and church) have such opinion as it is and how that comes together. This book gave me the reason why, and the answers which I searched.For someone just seeking excitement and sexy contents it will find this book boring. No such things inside. It is actually little contents dedicated to actual sex. But rather to understand how we came to this point. It gives answers to a lot of non-sex related issues of modern human. Everything in this book match my other sources of research. The most common match is to what old people of my society was telling - I live in place where some knowledge is still passed through story telling. Some tales we have in our culture are pointless from today's (modern) understanding, but after reading this book I slapped my forehead because suddenly it made all the sense.So: If old people are saying it, who never read a sentence, old tales are saying it, which are here before we knew how to write, and my guts feeling says it, than this book confirms all that - that it must be something on it. :)