Sex at Dawn

In evolutionary terms, it would be hard to overstate the importance of such networks. After all, it was primarily such flexible, adaptive social groups (and the feedback loop of brain growth and language capacities that both allowed and resulted from them) that enabled our slow, weak, generally unimpressive species to survive and eventually dominate the entire planet. Without frequent S.E.Ex., it’s doubtful that foraging bands could have maintained social equilibrium and fecundity over the millennia. S.E.Ex. were crucial in binding adults into groups that cared communally for children of obscure or shared paternity, each child likely related to most or all of the men in the group (if not a father, certainly an

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uncle, cousin ...).

Because these interlocking relationships are so crucial to social cohesion, opting out can cause problems. Writing of the Matis people, anthropologist Philippe Erikson confirms, “Plural paternity . is more than a theoretical possibility.. Extramarital sex is not only widely practiced and usually tolerated, in many respects, it also appears mandatory. Married or not, one has a moral duty to respond to the sexual advances of opposite-sex cross-cousins (real or clas-sificatory), under pains of being labeled ‘stingy of one’s genitals,’ a breach of Matis ethics far more serious than plain infidelity [emphasis added].”⁸

Being labeled a sexual cheapskate is no laughing matter, apparently. Erikson writes of one young man who cowered in the anthropologist’s hut for hours, hiding from his horny cousin, whose advances he couldn’t legitimately reject if she tracked him down. Even more serious, during Matis tattooing festivals, having sex with one’s customary partner(s) is expressly forbidden—under threat of extreme punishment, even death.⁹

But if it’s true that S.E.Ex. played a central role in maintaining prehistoric social cohesion, we should find remnants of such shamelessly libidinous behavior throughout the world, past and present. We do.

Among the Mohave, women were famous for their licentious

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habits and disinclination to stick with one man. Caesar (yes, that Caesar) was scandalized to note that in Iron Age Britain, “Ten and even twelve have wives common to them, and particularly brothers among brothers..”¹¹ During his three months in Tahiti in 1769, Captain James Cook and his crew found that Tahitians “gratified every appetite and passion before witnesses.” In an account of Cook’s voyage first published in 1773, John Hawkesworth wrote of “[a] young man, nearly six feet high, performing] the rites of Venus with a little girl about 11 or 12 years of age, before several of our people and a great number of natives, without the least sense of its being indecent or improper, but, as appeared, in perfect conformity to the custom of the place.” Some of the older islander women who were observing this amorous display apparently called out instructions to the girl, although Cook tells us, “Young as she was, she did not seem much to stand in need of [them].”¹²

Samuel Wallis, another ship captain who spent time in Tahiti, reported, “The women in General are very handsome, some really great Beauties, yet their Virtue was not proof against a Nail.” The Tahitians’ fascination with iron resulted in a de-facto exchange of a single nail for a sexual tryst with a local woman. By the time Wallis set sail, most of his men were sleeping on deck, as there were no nails left from which to hang their hammocks.¹³

There is a yam-harvest festival in the present-day Trobriand Islands, in which groups of young women roam the islands “raping” men from outside their own village, purportedly biting off their eyebrows if the men do not satisfy them. Ancient Greece celebrated sexual license in the festivals of Aphrodisia, Dionysia, and Lenea. In Rome, members of the cult of Bacchus hosted orgies no fewer than five times per month, while many islands in the South Pacific are still famous for their openness to unconstrained sexuality, despite the concerted efforts of generations of missionaries preaching the morality of shame.¹ Many modern-day Brazilians let it all hang out during Carnival, when they participate in a rite of consensual nonmarital sex known as sacanagem that makes the goings-on in New Orleans or Las Vegas look tame.

Though the eager participation of women in these activities may surprise some readers, it has long been clear that the sources of female sexual reticence are more cultural than biological, despite what Darwin and others have supposed. Over fifty years ago, sex researchers Clellan Ford and Frank Beach declared, “In those societies which have no double standard in sexual matters and in which a variety of liaisons are permitted, the women avail themselves as eagerly of their opportunity as do the men.”¹⁵