taking the final step, an involvement strong enough to take the initial physical discomfort in its stride.
A word must be added here on the question of monogamy and pologamy. The development of the pair-bond, which has occurred in the species as a whole, will naturally favour monogamy, but it does not absolutely demand it. If the violent hunting life results in adult males becoming scarcer than females, there will be a tendency for some of the surviving males to form pair-bonds with more than one female. This will then make it possible to increase the breeding rate without setting up dangerous tensions by creating ‘spare’ females. If the pair-formation process became so totally exclusive that it prevented this, it would be inefficient. This would not be an easy development, however, because of the possessiveness of the females concerned and the dangers of provoking serious sexual rivalries between them. Also working against it would be the basic economic pressures of maintaining the larger family group with all its offspring. A small degree of polygamy could exist, but it would be severely limited. It is interesting that although it still occurs in a number of minor cultures today, all the major societies (which account for the vast majority of the world population of the species) are monogamous. Even in those that permit polygamy, it is not usually practised by more than a small minority of the males concerned. It is intriguing to speculate as to whether its omission from almost all the larger cultures has, in fact, been a major factor in the attainment of their present successful status. We can, at any rate, sum up by saying that, whatever obscure, backward tribal units are doing today, the mainstream of our species expresses its pair-bonding character in its most extreme form, namely long-term monogamous coatings.
This, then, is the naked ape in all its erotic complexity: a highly sexed, pair-forming species with many unique features; a complicated blend of primate ancestry with extensive carnivore modifications. Now, to this we must add the third and final ingredient: modern civilisation. The enlarged brain that accompanied the transformation of the simple forest-dweller into a co-operative hunter began to busy itself with technological improvements. The simple tribal dwelling places became great towns and cities. The axe age blossomed into the space age. But what effect did the acquisition of all this gloss and. glitter have on the sexual system of the species? Very little, seems to be the answer. It has all been too quick, too sudden, for any fundamental biological advances to occur. Superficially they seem to have occurred, it is true, but this is largely make-believe. Behind the facade of modern city life there is the same old naked ape. Only the names have been changed: for ‘hunting’ read ‘working’, for ‘hunting grounds’ read ‘place of business’, for ‘home base’ read house’, for ‘pair-bond’ read ‘marriage’, for ‘mate’, read ‘wife’, and so on. The American studies of conteporary sexual patterns, referred to earlier, have revealed that the physiological and anatomical equipment of the species is still being put to full use. The evidence of prehistoric remnants combined with comparative data from living carnivores and other living primates has given us a picture of how the naked ape must have used this sexual equipment in the distant past and how he must have organised his sex life. The contemporary evidence appears to give much the same basic picture, once one has cleaned away the dark varnish of public moralising. As I said at the beginning of the chapter, it is the biological nature of the beast that has moulded the social structure of civilisation, rather than the other way around.
Yet, although the basic sexual system has been retained in a fairly primitive form (there has been no communalisation of sex to match the enlarged communities), many minor controls and
A word must be added here on the question of monogamy and pologamy. The development of the pair-bond, which has occurred in the species as a whole, will naturally favour monogamy, but it does not absolutely demand it. If the violent hunting life results in adult males becoming scarcer than females, there will be a tendency for some of the surviving males to form pair-bonds with more than one female. This will then make it possible to increase the breeding rate without setting up dangerous tensions by creating ‘spare’ females. If the pair-formation process became so totally exclusive that it prevented this, it would be inefficient. This would not be an easy development, however, because of the possessiveness of the females concerned and the dangers of provoking serious sexual rivalries between them. Also working against it would be the basic economic pressures of maintaining the larger family group with all its offspring. A small degree of polygamy could exist, but it would be severely limited. It is interesting that although it still occurs in a number of minor cultures today, all the major societies (which account for the vast majority of the world population of the species) are monogamous. Even in those that permit polygamy, it is not usually practised by more than a small minority of the males concerned. It is intriguing to speculate as to whether its omission from almost all the larger cultures has, in fact, been a major factor in the attainment of their present successful status. We can, at any rate, sum up by saying that, whatever obscure, backward tribal units are doing today, the mainstream of our species expresses its pair-bonding character in its most extreme form, namely long-term monogamous coatings.
This, then, is the naked ape in all its erotic complexity: a highly sexed, pair-forming species with many unique features; a complicated blend of primate ancestry with extensive carnivore modifications. Now, to this we must add the third and final ingredient: modern civilisation. The enlarged brain that accompanied the transformation of the simple forest-dweller into a co-operative hunter began to busy itself with technological improvements. The simple tribal dwelling places became great towns and cities. The axe age blossomed into the space age. But what effect did the acquisition of all this gloss and. glitter have on the sexual system of the species? Very little, seems to be the answer. It has all been too quick, too sudden, for any fundamental biological advances to occur. Superficially they seem to have occurred, it is true, but this is largely make-believe. Behind the facade of modern city life there is the same old naked ape. Only the names have been changed: for ‘hunting’ read ‘working’, for ‘hunting grounds’ read ‘place of business’, for ‘home base’ read house’, for ‘pair-bond’ read ‘marriage’, for ‘mate’, read ‘wife’, and so on. The American studies of conteporary sexual patterns, referred to earlier, have revealed that the physiological and anatomical equipment of the species is still being put to full use. The evidence of prehistoric remnants combined with comparative data from living carnivores and other living primates has given us a picture of how the naked ape must have used this sexual equipment in the distant past and how he must have organised his sex life. The contemporary evidence appears to give much the same basic picture, once one has cleaned away the dark varnish of public moralising. As I said at the beginning of the chapter, it is the biological nature of the beast that has moulded the social structure of civilisation, rather than the other way around.
Yet, although the basic sexual system has been retained in a fairly primitive form (there has been no communalisation of sex to match the enlarged communities), many minor controls and
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