Sex at Dawn
Here’s the copy from the Press Release:
Quote:
On an almost daily basis we are inundated with stories about the collapse of the latest celebrity marriage—and infidelity is almost always the cause of the break up. From Sandra Bullock and Jessie James to Tiger Woods and his wife Elin Nordegren, it seems that famous couples (just like ordinary folks) struggle to keep their marriages healthy and thriving. Is it even possible for two people to stay together happily over an extended period of time? Since Darwin’s day, we’ve been told that sexual monogamy comes naturally to our species. It doesn’t, and it never has.
Mainstream science—as well as religious and cultural institutions—have long maintained that men and women evolved in families where a man’s possessions and protection were exchanged for a woman’s fertility and fidelity. But this narrative is collapsing. Fewer and fewer couples are getting married and divorce rates keep climbing as adultery and flagging libido drag down even seemingly solid marriages.
In SEX AT DAWN: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality (July 1, 2010, 384 pages; $25.99; ISBN 978-0-06-170780-3), renegade researchers Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá debunk almost everything we “think we know” about sex.
Ryan and Jethá show how our promiscuous past haunts our current struggles regarding monogamy, sexual orientation, and family dynamics. Some of the themes they explore include:
• why long-term fidelity can be so difficult for so many;
• why sexual passion tends to fade even as love deepens;
• why many middle-aged men risk everything for an affair;
• why homosexuality persists in the face of standard evolutionary logic; and
• what the human body reveals about the prehistoric origins of modern sexuality
Ryan and Jethá show that our ancestors lived in egalitarian groups that shared food, child care, and often, sexual partners. Weaving together convergent, often overlooked evidence from anthropology, archeology, primatology, anatomy, and psychosexuality, the authors show how far from human nature sexual monogamy really is. They expose the ancient roots of human sexuality while pointing toward a more optimistic future illuminated by our innate capacities for love, cooperation, and generosity.
In the tradition of the best historical and scientific writing, SEX AT DAWN unapologetically upends unwarranted assumptions and unfounded conclusions while offering a revolutionary understanding of why we live and love as we do. A controversial, idea-driven book that challenges everything you know about sex, marriage, family, and society.
|
anyone read this yet? I've always had this inner hunch that monogamy didn't seem quite instinctual to our need to procreate. Is Polygamy more natural than Monogamy?
I kinda wanna read this to get an idea. I myself also come from a "broken home" a mother of 3 children, though I am the only child of my father. My longest relationship of 5 years became less and less about love and more about trust and friendship, less about sexual attraction and more about caring for our needs. I loved her but I would still look at other women. I would have never cheated though, and I never have.
We were undone by social convention, she still loved me but she also loved another, so she had to choose.
It gutted me but I always wondered if it were simply the more enlightened path to just wish her the best in her quest for timeless love and monogamy. After all, wasn't it simply possessive of my nature to thing of her as "mine" and all of a sudden belonging to someone else? these feelings of violence I felt towards the other man, were they reasonable? Shouldn't I had celebrated the fact that 2 other human beings had established a connection which made them happy?
She was not mine to possess. Yet it felt I had been robbed. Was this my instinctual feeling? or was it a product of my moral upbringing?
Seems like the dating pool is full of people practicing safe sex with multiple partners, never getting so involved as to belong to one person, but still capable of caring and feeling for one another.
Points to ponder perhaps.
Honestly I can't claim to believe in the idea of polygamy or monogamy considering I have to find my own confidence issues to work out I suppose.
09-22-2010, 12:37 AM
