Sex at Dawn

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.

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).

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.

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.