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EARLY MODERN HUMAN SEX AND SEX ROLES
Malta Venus
In his book the "The Prehistory of Sex”, Timothy Taylor wrote, "As soon as there are written records from around 5,000 years ago in the Far East, we find references to many of the sexual practices — homosexuality, male and female transsexualism and transvestitism, masturbation — familiar to us today." Chapters in the book include "Making the Beast with Two Backs," "the Graves of the Golden Penis," and "Skull Sex and Brain Sex." Taylor say that sexual imagery dates back as late as 30,000 years. Engraved blocks from the Aurignacian period (40,000 to 28,000 years ago) depict a an oval or triangle partly bisected by a line. Some scientists believe these are representations of the female vulva. A 10,000-year-old sandstone tablet from Enléne cave in the French Pyrenees seems to show an obese man copulating with a chunky woman. A 5,000 year-old Siberian rock engraving depicts a stone-age man on skis trying to have sex with an elk.
It has long been assumed that prehistoric men were the driving force behind tool invention, cave art and early religion, with women not having much of an impact until they appeared in exaggerated sexual forms in early Venus statues dating back to around 22,000 years ago. In their book “The Invisible Sex: Uncovering the True Roles of Women in Prehistory”, archaeologist J.M. Adovasio and anthropologist Olga Soffer argue that many of the greatest achievement of early man could just have easily been accomplished by women as men and the meaning of the Venus statues — often offered as evidence of women’s central role as child bearers — is ambiguous and cold mean all sorts of things.
Based on the observed role of women in developing cultures, they argue that women played a primary role in early agriculture and the development of textiles and basketmaking. In modern hunter-gatherer societies, most of the calories come from the women's work. Men often come home empty-handed, which means that it falls to the women to provide much of the food.
Websites and Resources on Neanderthals: Wikipedia: Neanderthals Wikipedia ; Neanderthals Study Guide thoughtco.com ; Neandertals on Trial, from PBS pbs.org/wgbh/nova; The Neanderthal Museum neanderthal.de/en/ ; The Neanderthal Flute, by Bob Fink greenwych.ca. Websites and Resources on Prehistoric Art: Chauvet Cave Paintings archeologie.culture.fr/chauvet ; Cave of Lascaux archeologie.culture.fr/lascaux/en; Trust for African Rock Art (TARA) africanrockart.org; Bradshaw Foundation bradshawfoundation.com; Australian and Asian Palaeoanthropology, by Peter Brown peterbrown-palaeoanthropology.net
Books: "Sex at Dawn: the Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuaity” by Christopher Ryan and Cacida Jethas, Harpers, 2010] "Prehistory of Sex” by Timothy Taylor (Forth Estate, 1997);”A Natural History of Rape; Biological bases of Sexual Coercion” (2000) by Randy Thornhill
Theories About Early Modern Human Sex
Among the popular, conventional ideas in evolutionary psychology is that it made sense for women to be monogamous and choosy so they could pick the best and strongest man and get the best genes for their children and find a man that could provide for the kids while men preferred young women over older ones because they were more likely to be fertile and wanted to have sex with as many women as possible to spread their seed high and low and hither and thither.
But aspects of this theory are not borne out by statistical data. A study by psychologists at the University of Aberdeen — based on United Nations health statistics and volunteers asked to chose which they preferred a masculine square-jawed and rounded-chin feminine one — found that woman living in countries where disease and heart problems are serious problems are more likely to chose masculine-looking men, which implies that women who chose strong, masculine men were more likely to be sick and pass on “get sick” genes to their offspring.
In his book “A Natural History of Rape; Biological bases of Sexual Coercion”, Randy Thornhill, a biologist at the University of New Mexico, contends that men living 100,000 years ago who carried a “rape gene” had a reproductive and evolutionary edge over men who didn’t in that could sire children among mates that were willing and mates that were not. Needless to say the book generated a storm of criticism. Among those who countered the rape hypothesis was Kim Hill, who used his study of the Ache of Paraguay — hunter-gatherers that live like much people did 100,000 years ago — and did a cost-benefit analysis of rape, factoring in things like the mother’s refusal to raise a child born of a rape, the chance the rapist might be killed and woman’s fertility in the day she is raped and found that the costs of rape exceeded the benefits by a factor 10.
Penis Spines and Bones
Tia Ghose wrote in Live Science: “The penis may have been a lot scarier in humans' evolutionary past. At one point in time, the male penis had spines, but human ancestors lost those prickly structures before Neanderthals and modern humans diverged some 700,000 years ago, according to a 2010 study published in the journal Nature. Scientists aren't clear on the function of those spines, but some propose they allowed for quickies because they can create an erection quickly, and are more common in promiscuous species, such as cats (tomcats have rather terrifying spines on their penis). [Source: Tia Ghose, Live Science, October 4, 2013 +/]
“Another relic of times past is the penis bone, or baculum. Though most apes have a bone to keep their member erect, human males lost theirs at some point and now rely on blood pressure for stiffness. In other animals, the penis bone sits inside the body and is pushed out into the penis for an instant, reliable erection. It's still a mystery why males lost this trait, but in "The Selfish Gene" (Oxford University Press, 2006), biologist Richard Dawkins proposes the bone-free penis was selected for because it allows females to gauge potential partners' health — those who can't get an erection probably have poor blood flow.” +/
Genetic comparisons with chimps suggests that losing chunks of DNA – including one associated with penis spines and facial whiskers – played a crucial role in making humans what they are, according to an article published in Nature by U.S. scientists in March 2011. Ian Sample wrote in The Guardian: “Scientists have identified a clutch of subtle genetic changes that have shaped our minds and bodies into the unique form that sets humans apart from chimpanzees and the rest of the animal kingdom... The findings offer up the humbling conclusion that the secret of human success may owe more to what we lost along the path of evolution, rather than anything we gained. [Source: Ian Sample, The Guardian, March 9, 2011 |=|]
“When the human genome was first deciphered more than a decade ago, some scientists expected to find extra genes that explained why humans had an intellectual edge over their closest living relatives and other species. But since diverging from chimpanzees around seven million years ago, it turns out that our human ancestors lost several hundred snippets of DNA, which together led to traits that are uniquely human, the researchers claim. In ditching these chunks of DNA, our ancient ancestors lost facial whiskers and short, tactile spines on their penises. The latter development is thought to have paved the way for more intimate sex and monogamous relationships. The loss of other DNA may have been crucial in allowing humans to grow larger brains. |=|
Shedding Penis Spines Helped Humans Become Human?
penis spines
The loss of DNA that gave rise to both facial whiskers and penis spines — both of which are found in chimpanzees and other non-human primates but not humans — may have a key episode in human development. Ian Sample wrote in The Guardian: ““Penile spines – which make the penis more sensitive and speed ejaculation – are more common in animals that face intense competition for mates, and where females are likely to mate with many males in rapid succession. The loss of penile spines may have allowed our ancient ancestors to copulate for longer, a development thought to have nurtured monogamous couples and paved the way for more complex social structures. [Source: Ian Sample, The Guardian, March 9, 2011 |=|]
Christine Dell'Amore wrote in National Geographic News: “Penile spines, which are still present in several modern animals, are usually small barbs of keratin—a type of hard tissue—that line the outside of the organ. The prehistoric male enhancement existed in the common ancestor of chimpanzees and humans, which lived about six million years ago, according to the gene analysis. But the "penile spine enhancer" code disappeared from human genes before our common ancestor split into modern humans and Neanderthals about 700,000 years ago, said study co-author Gill Bejerano, a developmental biologist at Stanford University in California. [Source: Christine Dell'Amore, National Geographic News, March 11, 2011 =]
“In some modern animals, such as domestic cats, penile spines help males fertilize females when sperm competition inside the female is fierce. For instance, the spines can break through copulatory plugs, or coagulated secretions of fluids placed inside the female by other males to prevent different sperm from fertilizing the egg. But most women today are monogamous, and the males "are not just present during the competitive act of fertilization—they establish long-term relationships with females," Kingsley said. Snook, who studies the evolution of sperm form and function, said theories linking simpler genitalia to monogamy are still tenuous. For instance, a phylogenetic analysis—a study comparing the presence or absence of spiny penises in different organisms over time—would offer more insight.” =
Female Early Hominins Wandered While Males Stayed Close to Home
Fossilised remains of Australopithecus africanus and another species suggest 90 percent of males spent their whole lives in the same area while at least half of the females came from outside Ian Sample wrote in The Guardian: “Ancient forerunners of modern humans stayed close to where they were born but paired up with females from far beyond their local stomping grounds, a new study claims. The research provides a rare insight into the social behaviour of primitive "hominins" that appears to match closely that seen in chimpanzees and bonobos today. [Source: Ian Sample, The Guardian, June 1, 2011 |=|]
“Scientists analysed fossilised remains around cave networks near Johannesburg in South Africa and found that while 90 percent of males appeared to have spent their whole lives in the area, at least half the females had come from farther afield. The work suggests that males regularly stayed with the community they were born into, with females roaming into new territories as they reached sexual maturity, the scientists report in the journal, Nature. |=|
Lucy
“The team reached their conclusions after studying remnants of fossilised teeth belonging to two extinct species that lived in the region more than a million years ago. The tests looked at an element called strontium in the tooth enamel, which can identify where an individual lived as the tooth formed. Strontium is found naturally in rocks and soil, but is picked up by plants and animals, and can be detected in trace amounts in mammalian teeth. In this way, strontium levels in teeth are linked to the land where an individual grew up. |=|
“The researchers looked at teeth from eight Australopithecus africanus individuals from a site called Swartkrans that dates back to 2.2 million years ago, and 11 Paranthropus robustus individuals from nearby Sterkfontein, estimated to be around 1.8 million years old. While A. africanus might be a direct ancestor of modern humans, P. robustus was a side branch of the family tree that went extinct for reasons unknown. |=|
“The analysis focused on two kinds of teeth: incisors and third molars, both of which develop late and are easily distinguished between males and females. "It is difficult enough to work out the relations between the sexes today, so the challenges in investigating the ways that male and female hominins used the landscape and formed social groups over a million years ago are considerable, to say the least," said co-author Matt Sponheimer at the University of Colorado, Boulder. "Disembodied skulls and teeth are notoriously poor communicators, so the real difficulty with a study like this is finding new ways to make these old bones speak," he added. |=|
“The strontium tests revealed that most of the individuals lived and died in the same area, where the rock is dominated by a limestone called dolomite. But results from the smaller teeth, which most likely came from females, showed many must have spent their youth elsewhere. "Here we have the first direct glimpse of the geographic movements of early hominins, and it appears the females preferentially moved away from their residential groups," said lead author, Sandi Copeland at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig. |=|
“A similar situation is seen among modern chimpanzees, where females tend to move out of their groups, in part because males form strong ties that help them protect a troop's territory. "By virtue of the fact that the males choose to remain, the females are indirectly forced to leave their communities in order to avoid close inbreeding. It could be that among these early hominins, female dispersal has some correlation to close cooperative behaviour between males," Copeland added.” |=|
Why Do Animals Have Sex
Gregory Mone wrote in Discover: “Biologists cannot agree on the reason for sex. The standard evolutionary argument is that the mixing of DNA between two members of a species introduces more variation into the gene pool. But asexual reproduction is far more efficient. [Source: Gregory Mone, Discover, June 22, 2012 ]
“One leading hypothesis suggests that sex won out over DIY as a defense against parasites, which would be less harmful in a varied gene pool. In 2009 a team of scientists bolstered this idea by monitoring two groups of snails—one that reproduced sexually, the other asexually. Over time, the self-starters became more susceptible to parasites, dying off at a faster rate. Not that sexual reproduction is exactly disease free. About 3.7 million Americans carry the most common sexually transmitted parasite, Trichomonas vaginalis.
Psychologists at the University of Texas at Austin surveyed 444 people and found 237 reasons why people have sex. “I was drunk” made the top 50 for women; “to get a favor” made the top 50 for men. Studies of human male inflation, a.k.a. “phallometry,” often use a sealed, gas-filled cylindrical chamber that fits snugly around the object of interest and registers the amount of gas displaced. Equivalent studies in women use a photo-plethysmograph, a probe that measures pulse and changes in blood volume in the vagina.
Sex Exists to Avoid Disease, Study Shows
Marlowe Hood of AFP wrote: “From an evolutionary perspective, sexual reproduction could be seen as a non-starter. Compared to cloning, which also exists in Nature, it's a major waste of time and energy. Think of the ungainly, preening peacock — an easy snack for tigers and wild dogs — strutting his stuff to impress the ladies. Even without predators, sex and its attendant rituals can be dangerous: when stags butt heads or alpha-male lions fight for mating rights, it does not always end well. Some animals and plants — starfish, bananas, to name two — reproduce asexually. Even a few birds and bees do it solo, Cole Porter be damned. Others, like the Komodo dragon, can work it either way, though asexually produced Komodo babies — produced by their mothers — are not clones. In short, without males in the picture the business of reproducing is faster and less fraught. [Source: Marlowe Hood, Agence France-Presse, December 21, 2016 \~/]
“And yet, sex remains by far the dominant means by which the world's fauna and flora pass on genes to future generations, ensuring the survival of the species. "One of the oldest questions in evolutionary biology is, why does sex exist?", said Stuart Auld, a biologist at the University of Stirling in Scotland. Darwin's laws of natural selection dictate that doing it the hard way — sex rather than cloning, in this case — must confer some major, if hidden, advantages. Granted, sexual reproduction fuels genetic variation, which boosts the likelihood that offspring in the wild will have the genetic makeup to thrive in an ever-changing environment. \~/
“By contrast, clones do not vary, and so if the environment deteriorates, a clonal mother will produce offspring that lack the genes they need to succeed. "But sex needs to be over twice as efficient as cloning to outweigh its costs," Auld told AFP. "If sex is to be favoured by natural selection, a sexual mother needs to either produce twice as many offspring as an asexual mother, or produce offspring that are twice as good." \~/
“Biologists have long agreed that the enhanced ability to fight off disease was a major advantage of the genetic changes that come with sexual reproduction. But constructing an experiment to confirm this has always proved difficult: how do you compare the costs and benefits of sexual strategies in different species? To get around that "apples and oranges" problem, Auld and two colleagues used an organism — the humble waterflea — that can reproduce both ways. "By comparing clonal and sexual daughters from the same mothers, we found sexually produced offspring get less sick," Auld said. \~/
“The ever-present need to evade disease, it turned out, explains why sex persists in the natural world in spite of the high "costs" that come with it, he explained. Parasites and their hosts are in a constant tug-of-war, each evolving and adapting to the other, one attacking immune defences and the other rebuilding them. Cloning offers fewer chances for genetic changes in the host that can rise to that challenge. But sexual reproduction — with a new genetic variations coming into the mix with each generation — offers more opportunities to fight back against pathogens. The findings were published in the British journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.” \~/
Finger Bone Study Finds: Neanderthals, Promiscuous; Australopithecus, Monogamous
Homo naledi hand
Michael Reilly wrote in Discovery News: “Emma Nelson of the University of Liverpool and a team of researchers combed through literature on early human-like primates in search of fossils that contained hands with intact index and ring fingers (the second and fourth digits). In humans and primates, the ratio between the index and ring fingers is thought to be a telltale marker for how much of the androgen class of hormones — and specifically, testosterone —someone was exposed to while in the womb. Extra androgen leads to longer ring fingers, the thinking goes, and therefore a lower index-to-ring finger ratio. [Source: Michael Reilly, Discovery News, September 24, 2009 **/]
“Though highly contentious, studies indicate that men who receive high levels of androgen before birth are more likely to be stronger, faster, and more sexually competitive. Women who receive high levels of androgen may have similar traits. Nelson's work suggests the same holds true for most primates living today, but the team wanted to see how our ancient relatives stacked up. They found two Neanderthals and one Australopithecus afarensis skeleton with the first bones of the index and ring fingers intact —enough detail to do the job. **/
“The Neanderthals had long ring fingers, suggesting they were a promiscuous bunch — like many primates alive today they probably lived in groups. Males may have likely either kept harems of female mates, or males and females each mated with multiple partners. A. afarensis, made famous by the popular "Lucy" skeleton, lived between 4 and 3 million years ago, long before modern humans. Its short ring finger hints that it was faithful to a single mate, but Nelson says that doesn't sit well. "These were small creatures that probably lived in groups and were being eaten by predators." she said. "How do you keep from mating with different members of the group?" **/
“Nelson is presenting the team's work today at the Society for Vertebrate Paleontology meeting in Bristol, United Kingdom. "What they're seeing is very interesting," Dean Snow of Pennsylvania State University in University Park. "The difference between being pair-bonded and non pair-bonded mating is a major watershed within primates. If a distinction is that Neanderthals weren't pair-bonded and modern humans were, that would be a major consideration in trying to figure out why modern humans out-competed Neanderthals in Europe." **/
“Pair-bonded males help feed and look after females while they're pregnant, while females and males both forage equally in non-pair bonded social structures, Snow added. But because the work involved such a tiny sample size, it is highly speculative, Nelson noted. She stressed that firm conclusions about the sex lives of our ancestors can't be made until the team examines many more fossil hominids, not least of which should be skeletons of H. sapiens that lived during the same period as Neanderthals. If successful though, her results could shine light on why the modern human animal displays such an array of of sexual behavior.” **/
Why Are Animals Monogamous
Scientists have long wondered why so few species of mammals chose to spend their life with one mate. Around 90 percent of birds are monogamous, but less than 3 percent of mammals are. About 25 percent of primates, of which humans belong, are monogamous.
Why are some species monogamous and others not. Scientists have to come up with three possible explanations: 1) In caring for demanding offspring, two parents might be more efficient than one. 2) The "mate guarding" hypothesis proposes that males stay close to their mates to ward off rival males. 3) Males stick with females to defend their offspring against the violence of other males, who want to kill existing offspring so that females become fertile again and can be impregnated.[Source: Ian Sample, July 29, 2013 |=|]
Meeri Kim wrote in the Washington Post: “For researchers tackling the monogamy question, here was the fundamental puzzle: Males, by sticking with one partner, seemed to lose out on the chance to father lots of children; gestation periods, after all, can be long in female mammals. That explains why most mammalian species don’t follow the one-partner rule. But for the roughly 5 percent that do, what caused monogamy to evolve? [Source: Meeri Kim, Washington Post, July 30, 2013]
Two studies mentioned below “studied the DNA sequences of animals alive today and traced the evolutionary tree to answer the question. They tracked how species were related and when species branched off. One long-standing hypothesis — that having a father on hand to help raise and protect the child swayed mammals toward monogamy — was debunked by both groups. A two-parent system is a consequence, not a cause, of staying faithful, they concluded. “First, you become monogamous, and then you are stuck, so you might as well help raise the child,” said Eduardo Fernandez-Duque, a University of Pennsylvania anthropologist.
Australopithecus afarenis
Mammals Are Monogamous to Protect Their Mates?
One study published in Science that focused on more than 2,500 species of mammals, said males form pairs with females to protect their mates, saying this situation arose said, because females lived spread apart from one another, making the risk of leaving a vulnerable female too great. [Source: Meeri Kim, Washington Post, July 30, 2013]
Meeri Kim wrote in the Washington Post: “The Science paper said females started living far from one another as they competed for a better diet. “Females changed their diet to foods of higher quality that were clumped and defended that food more aggressively,” University of Cambridge zoologist Dieter Lukas said. This led to large, exclusive territories, each containing one female, rather than territories that overlapped.
“The males had no choice but to follow that distribution. A male mammal could not successfully defend more than one female because of risk of injury or predation, and then he would lose the paternity he had just gained, Lukas said. However, the researchers found no association between monogamy and infanticide, which the PNAS paper [below] cited as the primary reason monogamy evolved.”
Primate Are Monogamous to Fight Infanticide?
Meeri Kim wrote in the Washington Post: “One group of scientists, who looked only at primates, found that the impulse for males to protect their offspring from infanticide by rival males was the trigger for monogamy. That study was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. That paper looked at 230 species of primates, about a quarter of which are monogamous; the analysis included people, classifying them as monogamous and polygynous, a mating system involving one male with two or more females. “Infanticide is a real problem, particularly for social species,” said University College London anthropologist Christopher Opie, senior author of the PNAS paper. [Source: Meeri Kim, Washington Post, July 30, 2013]
“Living in an advanced social system requires a large brain to deal with the complexities of relationships, Opie said. The downside of a big brain is slower infant development and longer lactation periods to foster brain growth — meaning more opportunities for a rival male to kill the child and impregnate the female. This gives males an evolutionary advantage for sticking with the child, to ward off intruding males.
“Even though the primary incentive for mammals becoming monogamous differed, “quite a number” of the Science and PNAS papers’ conclusions are “similar,” said Tim Clutton-Brock, senior author of the Science paper and a University of Cambridge zoologist. He called it a “chance phenomenon” that both groups were investigating such a similar topic.
“Fernandez-Duque said that how species were classified in each study could possibly explain the differences in the results. The Cambridge report focused more on the social behavior of animals by separating species into three groups: solitary, socially monogamous and group-living. However, the other group used mating system as its classification, tagging each type of primate as monogamous, polygynous or “promiscuous, meaning multiple males and multiple females,” Opie said. He said he finds an issue with the Cambridge classification because of its focus on social, rather than mating, habits. “You can’t have a breeding system that is solitary,” he said. “You can’t do that on your own.” Also, the Science paper included evolutionary trees from a variety of mammals, including wolves, jackals, beavers, meerkats and primates.
Ian Sample wrote in The Guardian: “For some scientists, however, the mystery of monogamy remains unsolved. Dr Maren Huck, who studies animal behaviour at the University of Derby, said the findings [of the animal studies above] should be treated with "extreme caution". She said the authors had labelled some animals as monogamous that were not in the wild, and made false assumptions about the impact of infanticide. "Owl monkeys give birth once a year. So if the female loses her offspring, she will not resume oestrus again until the next breeding season the following year. Hence, killing the offspring would not hasten reproduction," she said. “She also queried the classification of monogamy, saying the numbers seemed very high. "Very few old world monkeys, for example, are monogamous." [Source: Ian Sample, July 29, 2013 |=|]
Australopithecus family
Why Are Humans Monogamous
In the abstract to their paper, “Evolution of Monogamy in Response to Partner Scarcity,” Ryan Schachta and Adrian V. Bell of the University of Utah wrote: “The evolution of monogamy and paternal care in humans is often argued to have resulted from the needs of our expensive offspring. Recent research challenges this claim, however, contending that promiscuous male competitors and the risk of cuckoldry limit the scope for the evolution of male investment. So how did monogamy first evolve? Links between mating strategies and partner availability may offer resolution. [Source: Ryan Schachta and Adrian V. Bell of the University of Utah, Scientific Reports, September 7, 2016]
“While studies of sex roles commonly assume that optimal mating rates for males are higher, fitness payoffs to monogamy and the maintenance of a single partner can be greater when partners are rare. Thus, partner availability is increasingly recognized as a key variable structuring mating behavior. To apply these recent insights to human evolution, we model three male strategies – multiple mating, mate guarding and paternal care – in response to partner availability. Under assumed ancestral human conditions, we find that male mate guarding, rather than paternal care, drives the evolution of monogamy, as it secures a partner and ensures paternity certainty in the face of more promiscuous competitors. Accordingly, we argue that while paternal investment may be common across human societies, current patterns should not be confused with the reason pairing first evolved.” [Ibid]
Are Humans Monogamous to Ward off Sexually Transmitted Infections
One study using computer simulations said that a shift from polygyny to monogamy around the dawn of agriculture 10,000 years ago may have occurred to limit the impact of sexually transmitted infections in communities Nicola Davis wrote in The Guardian: “Based on insights from computer models, scientists argue that the shift away from polygynous societies – where men had many long-term partners, but women had only one – could be down to the impact of sexually transmitted infections on large communities that arose with the dawn of the agricultural age. Agriculture is thought to have taken hold around 10,000 years ago, although some studies put the date even earlier. “That behaviour was more common in hunter gatherers and it seemed to fade when we became agriculturists,” said Chris Bauch of the University of Waterloo in Canada who co-authored the paper. [Source: Nicola Davis, The Guardian, April 12, 2016 |=|]
“Writing in the journal Nature Communications, Bauch and his colleague Richard McElreath from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, describe how they built a computer model to explore how bacterial sexually transmitted infections such as chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis that can cause infertility, affected populations of different sizes. The authors considered both small hunter gatherer-like populations of around 30 individuals and large agricultural-like populations of up to 300 individuals, running 2,000 simulations for each that covered a period of 30,000 years. |=|
“In small polygynous communities, the researchers found that outbreaks of such STIs were short-lived, allowing the polygynous population to bounce back. With their offspring outnumbering those from monogamous individuals, polygyny remained the primary modus operandi. But when the team looked at the impact of STIs on larger polygynous societies, they found a very different effect. Instead of clearing quickly, diseases such as chlamydia and gonorrhea became endemic. As a result, the population plummeted and monogamists, who did not have multiple partners, became top dog. The team also found that while monogamists who didn’t ‘punish’ polygyny could gain a temporary foothold, it was monogamists that ‘punished’ polygyny – often at their own expense of resources – that were the most successful. While the form of such punishments were not specified in the model, Bauch suggests fines or social ostracisation among the possible penalties. |=|
“The results, they say, reveal that STIs could have played a role in the development of socially imposed monogamy that coincided with the rise of large communities that revolved around agriculture. “It’s really quite exciting,” said evolutionary anthropologist Laura Fortunato of the University of Oxford who was not involved in the study. While there is little data to be had on the prevalence of STIs in either hunter gatherer populations or in early communities that embraced agriculture, Fortunato believes that there are opportunities to explore the idea further. “You could see if that mechanism is in operation in contemporary populations,” she said. |=|
“While the authors acknowledge that other factors might also have influenced the shift to monogamy, the research, they believe, highlights an oft-overlooked aspect of human behaviour. “A lot of the ways we behave with others, our rules for social interaction, also have origins in some kind of natural environment,” said Bauch. |=|
“But others describe the authors’ theory as “unlikely”. “I don’t think it is necessarily wrong but I think the basis for their modelling may be,” said Kit Opie of University College, London. Opie argues that early human society was not likely to be polygynous. “Looking at modern day hunter gatherers who provide some sort of model for pre-agricultural societies, ie any human society prior to about 10,000 years ago, then polygyny is very rare,” he said. “Hunter-gatherer marriage is a much looser affair than we are used to and polygyny may be allowed but very rarely is it actually practiced.” Bauch believes the argument doesn’t detract from the authors’ conclusions. “I don’t think it affects our hypothesis because our hypothesis and mechanism concern general trends,” he said. While the authors note that further work that clearly distinguished between marriage and mating could add further insights, Bauch believes the new study shows the power of simulations. “Our research illustrates how mathematical models are not only used to predict the future, but also to understand the past,” he said. |=|
World Oldest Vulva Engraving
Vulva images in La Ferrassie cave Nikhil Swaminathan wrote in Archaeology magazine: “Archaeologists have dated an engraving of a vulva found on a one-and-a-half-ton limestone block at Abri Castanet, a collapsed rock shelter in France, to about 37,000 years ago. That figure, however, is only a minimum age for the rock carving. The date, announced in May, actually corresponds to the approximate time when the rock shelter’s roof, of which the engraved block was once a part, collapsed. The engraving is thus one of the earliest examples of European wall art, likely older than the elaborate paintings 200 miles east in Chauvet Cave. [Source: Nikhil Swaminathan, Archaeology, December 6, 2012 |/]
“The block was found directly above a surface containing hundreds of artifacts from the early Aurignacian culture, the earliest modern humans in Europe. An imprint of the vulva on the shelter floor, along with a lack of sediment buildup between the block and the surface, suggested that radiocarbon dating of several pieces of bone smashed by the fallen block would give an accurate age of the roof collapse and an approximate age of the engraving. “We see vulva again and again and again,” says New York University archaeologist Randall White about Aurignacian sites in the region near Abri Castanet (See “Letter from France"). “The fact that they’re repeating the same forms suggests that it is conventionalized in a way that allowed these people to relate to the meaning.”“ |/
Michael Balter wrote in sciencemag.org: “Harold Dibble, an archaeologist at the University of Pennsylvania, says the team's dating of the vulva engraving appears sound because it cannot be any younger than the surface onto which it fell and might even be older. "The context of the find is quite clear," Dibble says. As for the long-standing tradition among archaeologists working in France of interpreting such images as vulvas, Dibble says, "Who the hell knows" what they really represent? Dibble adds that such interpretations could be colored by the worldview of Western archaeologists whose culture probably differs greatly from that of prehistoric peoples. "Maybe it's telling us more about the people making those interpretations" than the artists who created the images, Dibble says. On the other hand, he says, the repeated use of this image at other sites in the Vezere valley suggests that it was some sort of "shared iconography" that might identify specific groups of people. Indeed, archaeologists have also identified differences in the styles of personal ornaments and other artifacts that might also reflect different groups or tribes, much as people express their group identities by the way they dress today. [Source: Michael Balter, sciencemag.org, May. 14, 2012 ^=^]
“Paul Pettit, an archaeologist at the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom, agrees that the new work "provides admirable independent verification of the age of the Castanet rock art that has been suspected for decades." What's more, argues Pettit, a leader of a small but vocal group of archaeologists who have questioned the dating of the Chauvet paintings, the discovery at Abri Castanet helps make their case that the Chauvet art is too sophisticated to be 37,000 years old. "The only other examples of convincingly dated rock art in this period are the painted block from Fumane, which in terms of technical achievement is similar to the Castanet examples," he says. The reason there are so many stylistic differences between the spectacular Chauvet paintings and the relatively simple engravings at Abri Castanet, he insists, is that the Chauvet images are much younger.” ^=^
World's Oldest Figurative Art “Pornographic"?
Venus from Hohle Fels
Chip Walter wrote in National Geographic: “In Hohle Fels, Conard’s team recently uncovered some objects whose messages are so sexually explicit they might require a parental warning. One is a carving of a woman with exaggerated breasts and genitalia, found in 2008. At least 35,000 years old, the Venus of Hohle Fels is the most ancient figure yet discovered that is indisputably human. (Two much earlier figurines from Morocco and what is now Israel may be natural rocks that vaguely resemble the human form.) Earlier the team had found a polished rod of siltstone, about eight inches long and an inch in diameter, with a ring etched at one end—likely a phallic symbol. A few feet away from the Venus figurine, Conard’s team uncovered a flute carved from a hollow griffon vulture bone, and in Geissenklösterle Cave found three other flutes, one made of ivory and two fashioned from a swan’s wing bone. They are the oldest known musical instruments in the world. We don’t know whether these people had drugs. But they clearly had the sex and rock and roll. [Source: Chip Walter, National Geographic, January 2015]
Eliza Strickland wrote in Discover: “A tiny ivory carving of a busty woman may be not only the oldest known example of erotic art–it may be the oldest art depicting any human figure at all. Named the Venus of Hohle Fels after the cave in southwestern Germany where it was recently excavated, the object dates to at least 35,000 to 40,000 years ago, based on more than 30 radiocarbon measurements conducted at the site [Discovery News]. The statue is also “bordering on the pornographic” by our modern standards, one expert says, with its huge, bulbous breasts and oversized genitalia. [Source: Eliza Strickland, Discover, May 13, 2009]/^\
“Germany’s southern caves were presumably inviting sanctuaries, scholars say, for populations of modern humans migrating then into central and western Europe. These were the people who eventually displaced the resident Neanderthals, around 30,000 years ago. Dr. Conard reported that the discovery was made beneath three feet of red-brown sediment in the floor of the Hohle Fels cave. Six fragments of the carved ivory, including all but the left arm and shoulder, were recovered. When he brushed dirt off the torso, he said, “the importance of the discovery became apparent” [The New York Times]. /^\
“The Venus, which is described in a paper in Nature, was carved from a woolly mammoth tusk, and measures just over two inches long. In place of a head the statue has a polished ring, suggesting that the carving may have been hung from a string and worn like a pendant. The newfound object reminds experts of the most famous of the sexually explicit figurines from the Stone Age, the Venus of Willendorf, discovered in Austria a century ago. It was somewhat larger and dated at about 24,000 years ago, but it was in a style that appeared to be prevalent for several thousand years. Scholars speculate that these Venus figurines, as they are known, were associated with fertility beliefs or shamanistic rituals [The New York Times]. /^\
“Or there may be a simpler explanation for why the Venus of Hohle Fels was carved, argues anthropologist Paul Mellars, who wrote a commentary on the find in Nature. “If there’s one conclusion you want to draw from this, it’s that an obsession with sex goes back at least 35,000 years…. But if humans hadn’t been largely obsessed with sex they wouldn’t have survived for the first 2 million years. None of this is at all surprising” [LiveScience], he says. /^\ “Human-made art goes back further in our history; the first abstract, geometric designs date from around 75,000 years ago. But the jump to figurative art is a significant cognitive step, researchers say, and could be tied to the development of language, another symbolic system. Jill Cook, an expert on ancient figurines, says the Venus “shows that people at this time in Europe had reached a stage in development of the brain which enabled objects to be symbolised and abstracted…. You’re dealing with a mind like ours, but simply a different time and environment” [New Scientist]. /^\
Venuses: Paleolithic Pornography?
Dolci Vestonicka venus
Bob Brockie wrote in The Dominion Post: “Professor Dale Guthrie, from the university of Alaska, and author of The Nature of Paleolithic Art, is surprised that while Paleolithic people were surrounded by plenty of things – babies, men, animals, plants, battle scenes, clan symbols – these things were never represented in their art, only well-endowed women. Guthrie suggests that all the figurines were made by young men and “it’s not too difficult to theorise about what was on their minds in their free time”. He thinks the similarly stylised Venus figures represent a cross-cultural view of women shared by prehistoric Europeans – well prehistoric men – for more than 20,000 years. [Source: Bob, Brockie,The Dominion Post April 9, 2007]
April Nowell told New Scientist Magazine: “The idea that curvaceous figurines are prehistoric pornography is an excuse to legitimise modern behaviour as having ancient roots. The Venus figurines of women, some with exaggerated anatomical features, and ancient rock art, like the image from the Abri Castanet site in France that is supposedly of female genitalia. [Source: April Nowell Jude Isabella, New Scientist Magazine, November 13, 2012 /*]
“People are fascinated by prehistory, and the media want to write stories that attract readers – to use a cliché, sex sells. But when a New York Times headline reads “A Precursor to Playboy: Graphic Images in Rock”, and Discover magazine asserts that man’s obsession with pornography dates back to “Cro-Magnon days” based on “the famous 26,000-year-old Venus of Willendorf statuette…[with] GG-cup breasts and a hippopotamal butt”, I think a line is crossed. To be fair, archaeologists are partially responsible – we need to choose our words carefully. /*\
Multiple Interpretations of the Meaning of Female Figurines
April Nowell told New Scientist Magazine: Upper Palaeolithic figurines “are incredibly varied beyond the few figurines seen over and over again: the Venus of Hohle Fels, the Venus of Willendorf and the Venus of Dolní Ve?stonice. Some are male, some are female; some are human, some are animals or fantastical creatures; some wear items of clothing, others do not. A recent study by my doctoral student Allison Tripp and her colleague Naomi Schmidt demonstrated that the body shapes of female figurines from around 25,000 years ago correspond to women at many different stages of life; they’re a variety of shapes and sizes. All of this suggests that there are multiple interpretations.[Source: April Nowell Jude Isabella, New Scientist Magazine, November 13, 2012. Nowell is a Palaeolithic archaeologist at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. Her paper “Pornography is in the eye of the beholder: Sex, sexuality and sexism in the study of Upper Paleolithic figurines” was co-authored with Melanie Chang /*]
“When we interpret Palaeolithic art more broadly, we talk about “hunting magic” or “religion” or “fertility magic.” I don’t think these interpretations have the same social ramifications as pornography. When respected journals – Nature for example – use terms such as “Prehistoric pin-up” and “35,000-year-old sex object”, and a German museum proclaims that a figurine is either an “earth mother or pin-up girl” (as if no other roles for women could have existed in prehistory), they carry weight and authority. This allows journalists and researchers, evolutionary psychologists in particular, to legitimise and naturalise contemporary western values and behaviours by tracing them back to the “mist of prehistory”.
“The French, in particular, are doing incredible work analysing paint recipes and tracing the movement of the ancient artists as they painted. We may never have the knowledge to say, “This painting of a bison meant this”, but I am confident that a detailed study of the corpus of ice age imagery, including the figurines, will give us a window on to the “lived life” in the Palaeolithic.
Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons
Text Sources: National Geographic, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, Nature, Scientific American. Live Science, Discover magazine, Discovery News, Ancient Foods ancientfoods.wordpress.com ; Times of London, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, BBC, The Guardian, Reuters, AP, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, “World Religions” edited by Geoffrey Parrinder (Facts on File Publications, New York); “History of Warfare” by John Keegan (Vintage Books); “History of Art” by H.W. Janson (Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.), Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.
Last updated September 2018