Soyin Milka

Greetings,

I read a few things about sociobiology and primatology recently. I'm not an expert by any stretch of the imagination though, so anyone should fell free to correct any of the assumptions I'll make throughout this post. But there are two questions bugging me that I would like to have help answering.

The reproductive strategies that seem to be generally accepted as being the best are different for both genders. For men, it usually is described as having sex with as many women as possible, spreading his seeds like they say. On the other hand, the best strategy for women is usually described as monogamy, finding a good man to provide for her and her children and making sure to keep him all for herself (which would explain why female sexuality is not linked to the menstrual cycle like many other mammals). Correlary to this, it's usually assumed women would be very selective in choosing their mate, much more so that men, because women don't get as many opportunity for reproduction as men could theoretically have.

I will now try to explain why I question these accepted ideas about women mating patterns.

For most of their existence, homo sapiens have led a hunter/gatherer lifestyle (agriculture being a fairly recent invention). Judging from the works of late anthropologists from the 19th century and primatology, the hunter/gatherer lifestyle seems to have two clear demographic characteristcs.
1) It can support only a very low population density.
2) It never leads to the formation of large groups. Most groups are in fact made up of extended families and number less than 30 individuals. It has something to do with the fact the amount of walking required to find food for a whole group increases with the number of members in that group.

I'm mostly in the dark about the frequency at which these hunter/gatherer groups would encounter each other. It seems like an unlikely occurance unless some ritualised gatherings are held at regular intervals. I would also tend to think most random encounters between groups would be unpredictable and risky events. It's not clear how violent or pacific our ancestors were, but in a harsh environment, competitors for ressources might not have always been greeted with a smile.

All this leads me to think that contacts between groups would be limited and serious affairs. For most of the year, most homo sapiens would only see the faces of their extended family group of less than 30 individuals.

In that context, why the heck would women need to be picky about the mate they choose? By the time they reach puberty, if monogamy is truly the norm, most males of their own group would already been taken. Their options could probably be summed up as choosing between "Stinky Joe" and his younger brother "Hairy Bob". Perhaps, if she's very lucky, her range of options could be extended to "Clumsy Karl" and "Mad Max" (at a larger gathering or after a random encounter between groups, or through newspaper ads). But it just seems to me that women wouldn't have much choice no matter what. The idea that they were biologically wired to be monogamous and on the look-out for the best provider doesn't seem to fit at all with the reality in which these women lived.

My second criticism of that model has to do with the idea of "safety net". If a woman can rely on a single man to provide for her and her children, the loss of that man would be a terrible tragedy for her and her children. I'm sure accidents, diseases and violence ended the life of many homo sapiens in those days also. Hunting large game was risky business for sure. So what would happen to a monogamous woman who lost her mate? Like my old aunt Betty the Gypsy used to say: "Single moms had it even tougher in the days of the paleolithic!"

I have an alternative hypothese to monogamy as the best reproductive strategy for women in those times: Promiscuity. I think it had to be better for women to have sex with all the men of their group. It makes it impossible for the men to know which children they fathered and stimulates them to provide for all the children of their group, just in case. For women, it offers a much better safety net than monogamy because if a man of your group gets killed somehow, you still receive support from all other men.

There's of course the problem of inbreeding looming on the horizon, but I think that's something our ancestors found a way to solve. Large gatherings or encounters would have provided them with the opportunity to "trade" members.

This all brings me to my two questions:

1) Is it possible scientists who grew up in a culture influenced by judeo-christian values, old ideas like "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" or "Men trade love for sex, women trade sex for love", might have been predisposed to interpret data to support the idea that women are biologically wired to be monogamous and highly selective of their partners?

2) What was the best reproductive strategy for women 100,000 years ago?

Thank you for reading all this

Soyin

Cojana

Your hypothesis on primetive womans activities on sex are pretty well thought out,I concur with your analogy, your se3cond question are answered by yourself, I don't see how we survived as a species, a new born are completely helpless,left to itself without care are sure death, I see a woman giving berth in agonizing pain, with care for the cause of her agony,as suspect, how many newborns died at conception? how did our species survive?

Elvithriel

This may surprise you but the first of our ancestors to live monogamously was Homo ergaster, 1.5 million years ago.

Gurdur

And personally I think that's a very bad idea.

The theory is based on an implicit assumption --- that the resultant offspring will be cared for and succesful. A very dubious assumption.
Much more likely is a mixture of potential mating patterns in societies, including a minority cuckoo tendency.
Bonding.
Care of human infants in a stateless society requires a heavy degree of bonding to ensure good care of the offspring (and mothers of infants).
I think women seem to have more choice often than is popularly supposed, no matter how "primitive" the society.
Correct, largely.
And so it was.
Not necessarily. There have been human societies that had such principles, but bonding again is the key issue.
Hard to bond if you're jumping from bed to bed a wee bit too often. The societies that used such a pattern evolved rather interestingly complex solutions to the problem.
But it doesn't seem to have been a norm.
Well, hey, it happens; there have been some very funny articles written about male bias in evopsych theory.
Probably a mixture of strategies, some conflicting ?

jayh

Actually a lot of examination and thought has gone into this.

Firstly don't confuse monogamy of the legally constructed rigid marriage monogamy of modern culture.

. So what would happen to a monogamous woman who lost her mate?

She'd probably look to pick up with a new one. Death in childbirth was probably comparable to death in hunting, so the market was probably fairly fluid.

The driving force is resource allocation, in both humans and all other animals. Sometimes there are more than one strategy at play, often of differing ages. With the longer childhood of later hominids, it became more and more desirable for the male to stick close to the female (in many other animals, that is a disadvantage). So we still have two competing behaviors, most men have a desire for a stable monogamy but many find the appeal of the older programing They retain ability to be readily excited by a relatively anonymous temporary partner. Very few women, even relatively 'promiscuous' ones are easily excited by a stranger. The need to 'get to know' a man first is just about universal (far beyone cultural conditioning), which is why prostitution is almoste entirely a male customer field, it simply doesn't work that well for females, even those looking for new sexual experiences.

Consider this: One male is strictly monogamous, and a second is primarily monogamous but has a few additional liasons. Over the course of time, the second model will produce a few more descendants on average each generation, assuring that behavior stays in the gene pool.

Now strict monogamy is not always best for females, but they have less to gain so have less pressure to experiment (though studies of other primates show that spontaneous 'illicit' matings are a normal part of female culture).

Now recreational sex was the biggest thing that changed human behavioral evolution. It provided the bonding mechanism for relatively long term pair bonding, keeping parents together for at least the 7 or so years that young were particularly vulnerable (ever wonder why 7-9 years is a peak divorce time?)

Monogamy has had another effect on human behaviror. In most animals, because female reproductive resources are more limited, males compete actively to gain attention (access to) females. Humans do this of course but with humans there is a reverse pattern as well. Anyone whose spent time in bars inhabited by singles has seen this.

Throughout virtually all cultures in the world, there is a tremendous emphasis on female grooming to attract males. Some try to put this down to male cultural dominance, but it is far more strongly motivated within the females of the culture. Women will spend large amounts of their disposable cash on clothing, makeup ,grooming, etc., and the more financially independent they are, the larger the amount spent. The huge fashion and grooming industry is targeted at women, not men. Even in simpler societies, female grooming is a paramount cultural component. I suggest that this is due to the rise of monogamy. Just as the value of female reproductive resources raised the relative value on the reproductive marketplace, the resources that the long-term male parter (husband) brings to the reproductive cycle has created a mirror image pattern of female competition for resource rich males.

So once again a behavior can be explained in terms of resource availability (though I will emphasize that unlike the strongly scientifically backed components of EP, this one is not an item that I have read about much, so I cannot claim scientific backing--- but it sure seems to fit the pattern).

j

meritocrat

I've heard this too, but how would paleoanthropologists have known that homo ergaster/erectus had monogamous relationships?

jayh

Total absence of exchange currency beads buried with male individuals.

Pyrrho

One of the things that everyone seems to be forgetting is the fact that people are not born with knowledge of how children are created. I think that many primitive groups regarded children as simply something that occurred spontaneously or, perhaps, as gifts from the gods. After all, when the cause and effect are separated by 9 months, it will not be easy to connect them. Imagine if the sound of clapping your hands was only heard 9 months later; it would be difficult to connect the two events. I seem to recall reading somewhere that it has been speculated that reproductive knowledge came with the domestication of animals, and that it was observed that animals that were separated from others in pens did not have the offspring that animals had that were with other animals. This, supposedly, led to figuring out that offspring had to do with sex. Of course, one is dealing with pre-history, so there is a good deal of speculation involved.

Probably, the ONLY reason why most of the people who read this know about the connection between sex and reproduction is because they were told about it, not because they discovered it on their own. (And, of course, one generally does not encounter evidence against the idea in one's life, but that is not the source of one's knowledge of such matters.) What do you think people would believe if they never heard such stories?

In any case, the idea that primitive humans knew about reproduction is something that needs some evidentiary support before it should be believed.

And, we can expect that that knowledge, whenever and however it first appeared, was likely to impact the societies that knew about such things, and probably affected mating habits.


Also, it is important to recognize the difference between what a society regards as appropriate and what people actually do. It is difficult, if not completely impossible, for a society to prevent people from having sex in ways that are regarded as unacceptable. People have been doing "unacceptable" things throughout history. So even if some artifact indicates a particular attitude (which would be difficult to determine with any degree of certainty anyway), it does not follow that actual behavior followed such models.


Directly addressing the original questions:

1. Yes, obviously bias is very likely in the interpretation of data. Men often want an excuse for promiscuity, and an excuse for not allowing it in women. Any story that suggests what people are already predisposed to believe is likely to be believed without sufficient evidence.

Furthermore, there is very little data upon which to make any judgment about the sexual practices of early humans. Since we are dealing with pre-history, there are no written records that can be used. And the artifacts that we find are not likely to be very revealing as far as sexual practices are concerned.

Probably, our best guess of what early humans did would be based upon the behavior of other primates, and we can say that they do not generally behave according to the ideas that many would have you believe about early humans. The idea that males are promiscuous and females monogamous does not fit in with any primate behavior of which I am aware. (Nor, for that matter, does it fit in with the mating behavior of any other kind of animal of which I am aware.) Of course, I am not an expert on the sex habits of primates, so I welcome any corrections if my knowledge on such matters is defective.


2. The "best" reproductive strategy is likely to be influenced by the situational aspects of one's life. Things like the environment, including the weather, and how difficult it is to live would be relevant. If one lived in extreme conditions (like Eskimos), then things are likely to be different than if one lives in a warm place with plenty of food naturally growing around one. (In the one case, people will be more dependent upon others than in the other case.) Of course, societal factors would also be relevant, as breaking taboos in one's society can be detrimental to one's chances of survival. So I don't think that one can say that one particular strategy would be "best" in all cases.

jayh

One of the things that everyone seems to be forgetting is the fact that people are not born with knowledge of how children are created.

Neither do most animals. The whole point is that the behavior is prewired into the animal (human or other) and the creature need no understanding whatsoever about why it is doing anything.

In any case, the idea that primitive humans knew about reproduction is something that needs some evidentiary support before it should be believed.

No one is suggesting that primitive humans understood reproduction.

for a society to prevent people from having sex in ways that are regarded as unacceptable. People have been doing "unacceptable" things throughout history. So even if some artifact indicates a particular attitude (which would be difficult to determine with any degree of certainty anyway), it does not follow that actual behavior followed such models

Please be specific about what you are referring to.



The idea that males are promiscuous and females monogamous does not fit in with any primate behavior of which I am aware. (Nor, for that matter, does it fit in with the mating behavior of any other kind of animal of which I am aware.)

It's all over nature. A single male with a 'harem' of females in many species, primates, mammals etc. Look at walrus, elk, cattle, wild horses, etc. Actually it was because of the way the model fit in nature that the behavior was looked for in humans.

It's consistently a matter of the balance of relative contribution of resources. The exceptions are telling as well. With certain crickets the male provides a great deal of protein with his semen, enough to nourish the eggs, so the cost to the female is quite low. In these specific crickets (and not others) the sexual roles are reversed, the females are promiscuous and the males are not.

High ranking male primates tend to have access to more females. However it has been pointed out that even here, periodic female crossings with low ranking males are not that uncommon.



The "best" reproductive strategy is likely to be influenced by the situational aspects of one's life. Things like the environment, including the weather,

When nature tunes for survival, it favors survival in the overall. There are plenty of times when instincts work against survival (rabbits and cars for example), but that does not mean that the overall behavior was not efficient for the circumstances under which it evolved.

This is not some artificial programming, it is the natural outworking of selection. consider 3 sets of genes, one produced men strictly monogamous, one produced men mostly monogamous, and one produced men entirely promiscuous. Ove the course of time the promiscuous ones would not see their children through to adulthood, so more of their offspring would die. The strictly monogamous ones would be fairly successful but would have a limited (by the capacity of the mate) number. The mostly monogamous one would still see his primary children to adulthood, and produce as many as the monogamous one (the mate is the limiting factor), but would produce a few extra in the process, some of whom would survive to adulthood. With just a couple of percent advantage, this model would become the dominant one in just a few generations.

Now to a female, who pretty much is at capacity over her lifetime, the only advantages in promiscuity would be a few children with an alternate gene pool, which might improve her genetic chances, and social position (this is also been observed in primates). Indeed if she is a lower ranked female, her main access to males monopolized by higher ranked females would be the occasional opportunistic mating.


Our current times are very different. Child mortality is near zero, so we need to artificially suppress our fertility. Modern economic systems provide great efficiency to families that remain intact, beyond the first few years, so committed monogamy is much more useful now than it was 100,000 years ago.

A side point: For many years (before all the talk of EP) psychologists had noticed a difference in male and female language of sexual jealousy. Males described anger primarily at the thought of another male touching their mate sexually, women often tended to dwell more on anger over a sense of betrayal and the attention that their rivals received. In terms of reproductive resources this makes sense. Another male potentially impregnating his mate would be blocking some of his chances for genetic success, while another female impinging on a female's mate would be a threat in terms of lost resources of support and comittment (necessary for successful breeding).

Pyrrho

The portions in bold appear to be originally posted by me.

Are you saying that the mating behavior of people does not involve choice? That it is purely a matter of instinct (and opportunity) that determines if and when one mates?



I meant to be making general comments, not comments about a specific culture or situation.



Your description of the "harems" is like most such descriptions, and it is misleading. If we consider a specific example, say lions, we may observe that the male lion has a harem for a limited portion of his life. He took it from another male, and it will be taken from him by yet another male (unless that particular group comes to an end). Each of the females in the "harem" typically mates with multiple males. So the female "monogamy" is not monogamy at all. And we can say that in most human societies, there is no structure like these animal "harems", so it is a very poor analogy for human conduct in any case.



Do you mean to suggest that there is a specific set of genes that causes monogamy or promiscuity, or are you speaking in the abstract? If the former, then I would like to know what evidence there is for the assertion. If the latter, then I am not convinced that it works that way. (Not to mention the fact that the "mostly monogamous" males would not always produce the same number of children with their mates as the totally monogamous ones, as the woman may choose to leave him or otherwise deny him access for his infidelity, if such matters are important to her.)



There is another possible motive for her infidelity, and that is to provide a stronger or otherwise better father for her children. She may accept a particular man because he will provide for her, but may prefer other breeding stock for her children. The alternate mates may also provide her with help at some point in her life (e.g., a male that has mated with her may be more willing to take some risk to prevent her from being eaten by a lion or whatever), so she may benefit in those ways as well. As long as her mate never finds out, she may engage in sexual acts with as many males as she wishes, and it will do her no harm (forgetting about sexually transmitted diseases, of course, which are also quite bad for promiscuous males).



There are social factors that may be at work in such matters, so it may have nothing to do with genetics. In most human societies, males have had financial independence, whereas women often have not. The social conditions being different for the sexes can easily explain these different descriptions of 'jealousy'.

I recall reading some speculation about differences in jealousy being caused by knowledge of reproduction, and the inherent uncertainty of a male that he is ever a father. The woman will definitely know that she is a parent, but until recently, with genetic testing, a man could not be certain that he was the father of any children, no matter how many children he actually fathered.