English language

Published Feb. 28, 2010

ISBN:
978-0-06-170780-3
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4 stars (18 reviews)

"A controversial, idea-driven book that challenges everything you know about sex, marriage, family, and society"--Provided by publisher.

Since Darwin's day, we've been told that sexual monogamy comes naturally to our species. But this narrative is collapsing. Here, renegade thinkers Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá, while debunking almost everything we "know" about sex, offer a bold alternative explanation. Ryan and Jethá's central contention is that human beings evolved in egalitarian groups that shared food, child care, and, often, sexual partners. Weaving together convergent, frequently overlooked evidence from anthropology, archaeology, primatology, anatomy, and psychosexuality, the authors show how far from human nature monogamy really is. With intelligence, humor, and wonder, Ryan and Jethá show how our promiscuous past haunts our struggles over monogamy, sexual orientation, and family dynamics. Human beings everywhere and in every era have confronted the same familiar, intimate situations in surprisingly different ways. The authors expose the ancient roots …

3 editions

Review of 'Sex at dawn' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Let me start by saying that I am by no means an expert for human mating systems, anthropology or primatology, so I'm not the perfect judge for all the "facts" presented in this book. I'm also biased, as I had strong prior belief in the hypothesis that humans are not monogamous by nature, so goodbye any perceived neutrality with respect to this review.

The authors of this book have set out to challenge the view that humans have been shaped into a monogamous species by evolution. Doing so they criticize a lot of the evidence put forward by traditional evolutionary psychology, primatology and anthropology. For example the TED talk by Steven Pinker gets torn apart, for the obvious cherry picking done on the data side. All their criticism on studies supporting natural monogamy seems to be well done as far as I can tell. They mix all this with lots …

Review of 'Sex at dawn' on 'GoodReads'

5 stars

What did I think? What didn't I think. A well researched, it seems, (although I didn't hunt down the copious references) volume on polygamy.

For many the instinctive argument would be obvious by tell tale signs in our every day lives but to have some research unfolded into the specific relationship we have with that is well deserved - although not new, these studies into polygamy before agriculture are not findings that are revelatory to us through this book but it is a relevance that is both systematic and semantic and should be taken further. Moreover we should by now be seeking individual reference points to this material.

The overall colour of the book is to introduce the research in somewhat of a mix between opinion piece and well researched paper, although at times the 'asides' come across as Cosmopolitan Magazine editorial, I would have preferred something dryer than zippy …

Review of 'Sex at dawn' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

A fact-packed synthesis of an impossibly broad subject, but Ryan and Jethá manage to make some sense of it all. A well-researched book like this that challenges the "standard narrative" of human (and closely related primate) sexuality has been sorely needed. There are some great diagrams, too (e.g. the comparison of monogamous/promiscuous species and their genital and breast sizes).

As the LOC note by the publisher reads, "A controversial, idea-driven book that challenges everything you know about sex, marriage, family, and society." Despite this alleged controversy, the authors are careful not to prescribe too much. While there are a few too many sarcastic remarks, the humor is usually appropriate to the point that the authors are trying to make.

Review of 'Sex at dawn' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Monogamy is bullshit. It's unnatural. Everybody knows that, yet we spend our lives living and defending the lie. How did the myth get started? Why does it persist? In a word: agriculture. It's a long and convoluted story, but it all boils down to Stuff. Once we settled down and started accumulating Stuff, we had to start defending it. And "Stuff", of course, includes wimminfolk. There you go.

It's hard to imagine prehistory. Really hard. There's not much to go on... but there's a lot more every year: archaeological evidence, anthropological, DNA analysis, behavioral studies of our Bonobo cousins. And all of it -- all of it -- points to a history that's different from what we grew up believing. The last 10,000 years are an aberration, and one that's making us sick.

Sex at Dawn is the most thorough study I've yet read on the subject. It's also the …

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