You Will Die: The Burden of Modern Taboos (21 page)

In a phenomenon that may foreshadow our pair-bonding, some male chimpanzees try to monopolize a female’s affections. They may do this by physically keeping other males away or by winning the female over. The latter is much more effective. Male chimps will try to win females by grooming them and giving them food. If the male is successful he will be able to get the female to “go on safari” with him.

With hair and penis erect he will beckon, rock from side to side, flick his penis, wave branches, and stare intently at the object of his desire. When she comes toward him he walks away and hopes that she will accompany him. If he is judged worthy they will disappear into the woods for several days or even weeks for a private affair.

To witness what sex might have been like for our forebears, or just to see what sex is like free of human cultural trappings, one can go to a zoo and admire the bonobos (pygmy chimpanzees). The bonobo is our closest genetic relative. Sex is casual and relaxed for the bonobo, and serves as a social lubricant.
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For example, if a female wants some of a male’s food supply she will copulate with him and the male will share.
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Whenever there is a source of conflict bonobos will engage in sexual activity, rather than aggression, to relieve the tension. For example, after a male bonobo chases another male away from a female the two may reconcile by rubbing their genitals together.

For those that think that humans invented sex play, bonobos will surprise. Just
like
Homo sapiens
sex, bonobo sex is remarkably varied. Bonobos enjoy oral sex, manual stimulation by others, masturbation, and rubbing genitals with members of the same sex.
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Other remarkably human-like sexual activity includes intense open-mouth kissing and sex in the missionary position—the position preferred by female bonobos. This is noteworthy because it was once thought the missionary position was uniquely human. Even many preliterate societies did not practice it and were taught the more “holy” position by missionaries, hence its name.

The first humans were hunter-gatherer bands of roughly twenty-five members who ventured out of the jungles into the African savannas.
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This was considerably more dangerous terrain. Whereas arms provided a climbing advantage in the forest, where the dense trees provided cover, in the open fields early humans were vulnerable to the quicker four-legged predators.

It was in this new environment that humans became bipedal. Standing upright and moving efficiently on two legs gave early people several advantages. They could use their arms for tools and weapons. They could see over the grasses for approaching predators. They could carry things such as collected fruit and scavenged meat. Perhaps most importantly, now that mouths were no longer needed to carry things, they could be used for communication.

The new environment and stance had important ramifications for human sexuality. For one, raising a child was significantly more dangerous. In the savanna the child had to be watched constantly, and with the new erect posture mothers could not sling their babies on their backs. Babies now had to be held. Unlike chimpanzees, the male was now required to assist in the raising of the offspring.

Because of this, humans began to form pair bonds. These bonds were not for life. Early humans practiced what could be called serial monogamy.
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,
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Serial monogamy is the forming of temporary exclusive pair bonds in succession. These bonds usually
lasted four years because that is how long it took to raise a child and how long it took early women to begin ovulating again.
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Children were not independent at the age of four, however, at that age they were weaned and able to join other children in multi-age play groups where the entire community assumed more responsibility for them.

Serial monogamy was not a firm rule. Men would try to keep as many partners as they could afford. However, in the hunter-gathering state in which humans began, men could readily support and defend only one partner from other males’ advances, so few men were capable of polygyny (multiple wives or partners).
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In fact, most men could not even defend one partner from other male’s advances. Discreet “cheating” was common.
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,
19
Men would try to have sex with whomever they could, and females would cheat with a more attractive male than their current partner. Men knew of their female mate’s proclivity and would guard their mate from others.
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Despite this, cheating still occurred frequently because men would have to leave to hunt. It was easy to take advantage of these absences when clothes amounted to an animal hide, if anything, a bush could provide cover, and wooing was fast.

Wooing was fast because there was no taboo on sex. Women were still the instinctually choosier sex because, as noted previously, they have a much larger investment in the outcome of sex—pregnancy. Whereas men would cheat with any woman available, women, like their animal brethren, would cheat only with a male superior to her mate, a tactic called “ratcheting up.”
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,
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However, early women could tell if a man was superior (strong, attractive, and healthy) to her mate by a quick look-over. Dating was not necessary.

As in every era, there were men and women who could not find mates willing to copulate with them. This leads to an archeological mystery—the Venus figurines.
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It is believed that early people developed an appreciation of art and a hint of self-awareness roughly three million years ago,
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and by the end of the Ice Ages, roughly 26,000 B.C., people were carving figurines of women. The most famous is the Venus of Willendorf, found in what is now Austria. She is five inches high, carved out of limestone, originally colored with red ocher, faceless, naked, and has a bulging stomach and breasts.

Around two hundred similarly carved statues have been found in places as divergent as the Pyrenees in Western Europe and the steppes of Southern Russia.
They come in a range of shapes and states of undress, however, they are mostly faceless. There are several theories about the Venus figurines. One is that these were prehistoric pornography. Due to the climate, naked women were an uncommon sight and these figurines, which accent the naked, fleshy hips and breasts could have been masturbatory aids. No male figurines have been found.

One paleontologist wrote that “sex and hunger were the two motives which influenced the entire mental life of the mammoth hunters and their productive art.”
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This is apparent in early peoples’ other art forms as well. Another common artifact of the late Ice Ages is the dildo. Although one cannot be certain that these rounded shafts were dildos, they are frequently in the dimensions of modern dildos and some have explicit penis images carved into them, like the double dildo found in what is now the French Pyrenees.

Prehistoric cave and rock art also have sexual themes, which run from a woman having intercourse with two men simultaneously to bestiality. One drawing is of a man having sex with a donkey from what is now Northern Italy. Another drawing from Siberia appears to portray a man on skis having sex with a moose.

These sexually free times would come to an end in the New Stone Age or Neolithic era (7000 B.C.). Before the Neolithic, men were the hunters of larger game and women were the gatherers of plants and small game such as turtles, crabs, and mussels.
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It was a relatively egalitarian society in which resources could not be easily accumulated and everyone was valued roughly equally for their roles.

In the Neolithic, economic changes led to the sexual and social subjugation of women. First, people learned how to farm. Plants were raised, not just gathered, and animals were domesticated. Agriculture allowed successful men to become
significantly more powerful than their peers. The domestication of animals allowed men to accumulate them and one strong and talented man could tend his own flock. The weaker and less intelligent men, previously needed for the constant hunting forays, were less valuable. Wealth, property, and female partners could now be stockpiled. In this new stratified society, polygyny occurred more frequently.

Humans learned to castrate the bull to make it a draft animal. With the ox pulling a plough, the female role of plant expert was supplanted as men operated their first power tool.
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Even with an ox, a plough required greater strength than a hoe. Most women could not handle a plough and their agricultural role was displaced. It was no longer necessary for women to go out and gather, nor for men to venture out on hunting trips. This made it easier for men to guard their partners from other males’ sexual advances. Men could simply keep their women at home.

Other changes did not bode well for women. At some point men realized their own role in reproduction. The giveaway may have come from observing domesticated animals’ reproduction patterns. Knowing that a child was “theirs” reinforced their instinctual drive to keep other men away from their partners.

This conscious realization that the male played a crucial role in reproduction probably cemented the family unit. It is from this point that female partners will be referred to as wives and male partners as husbands, even though these early “marriages” were nothing like marriage today. Despite the fact that these pairings were often for life, mutual affection was not much of a factor. A male might not even see his wife-to-be until the marriage ceremony.

Marriage first meant that a female belonged to a male. She was property that passed from her father’s possession, to her husband’s, to her son’s. Wives were head servants who bore sons for the husband to pass his property, and bore daughters for the husband to marry off for payment or to cement political alliances. Men could have more than one wife, but only the most successful could afford them. The early civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and our religious forebears, the Jews,
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all practiced polygyny, as have the large majority of societies on our planet.

Another repercussion of men understanding that a woman’s child belonged to a specific man was that they took steps to assure it was theirs. Sex, for the first time, became wrong outside of marriage. This started the preoccupation with virginity that continues to this day. However, it was only wrong for the female—not the male—
and it was only wrong because it lowered her value by putting any future husband’s paternity in doubt.

Law codes from ancient Mesopotamia dating from 1100 B.C. indicate that men were allowed to have extramarital sex but women could be killed for it. Men ran afoul
only
when they had extramarital sex with another man’s property, such as his wife or daughter. The plentiful slaves, prostitutes, and females from lower classes were fair game. This property view is seen in the
only
sexual prohibition in the Hebrew Ten Commandments—a man cannot have sex with another man’s wife.

Divorce was rare in the early days of marriage simply because there was no need for it. If a wealthy man did not like his wife he could just get another. There was no reason to get rid of the first wife, who was still a useful servant. Poorer men, who could not afford another wife, could go elsewhere for sexual services. The marriage was not for companionship, so the existence of love was not important anyway. Women did not have much say in the matter. The one situation where divorce did occur was when a woman proved infertile, because then she could not fulfill her primary purpose.

These early civilizations were preoccupied with population growth. Hunter-gatherer communities with limited resources were burdened by too many children and frequently practiced infanticide,
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but on a farm, children were assets because their labor contributions outweighed their expense. They were also important for another growing feature of life—war. Although humans have always warred (as do their genetic relatives, the chimpanzees), war became more prevalent in early agricultural civilizations. Farming allowed the population to grow exponentially and people to accumulate goods and land. There were more people with whom to fight and more things for which to fight. Wars require warriors and large families provide more of them.

With this emphasis on population growth, early civilizations began to clamp down on non-procreative sex. The early Jews were particularly concerned with propagation.
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They believed the Hebrew God said to the first two humans, “be fruitful and multiply.”
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In line with this, the Hebrew God outlawed homosexuality and zoophilia.
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Unlike other cultures at the time, the Hebrew proscription on non-procreative sex extended to prostitution. Female prostitutes tried to inhibit pregnancy,
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and did not provide legitimate children. Despite this, prostitution was
still common in Jewish communities, especially for impoverished women, who had few alternatives.

The restrictive Jewish attitude toward sex was based in economics. The act of sex itself carried no stigma, nor was it bad. For that innovation, one must thank the ancient Roman philosophers.