Homo Mysterious: Evolutionary Puzzles of Human Nature Read Online Free PDF

today, single parenting is difficult. It therefore makes sense that having a devoted mate would enhance the fitness of the woman in question, even if said devotion is purchased via a kind of sexual hostage taking, playing to his unconscious uncertainty rather than his love.
    It is certainly possible that if women were more chimplike, men would be, too: copulating avidly with a given partner while she is fertile, but then seeking other and equally alluring “partnerships,” bolstered by an unconscious confidence that his prior mate would not cuckold him in the meanwhile, since she obviously is incapable of conceiving. In addition, it is interesting to speculate that by inducing men to keep close company with a given woman, concealed ovulation contributed to making them fathers and not just sperm donors, since one result of all that “mate guarding,” as biologists term it, would be greater male confidence that their off-spring—or rather, their female partner’s offspring—are in fact theirs too.
    But such speculation—compelling as it may be—doesn’t prove anything. For instance, the “keep him close by keeping him uncertain” hypothesis assumes that regular sex is a prerequisite for socialbonding and biparental behavior, yet there are numerous bird species and even some primates (e.g., gibbons) that commonly go long periods without sexual intercourse and are nonetheless socially monogamous, and some that copulate rarely yet demonstrate notably shared parental duties (e.g., pigmy marmosets, in which fathers carry infants and even reportedly assist with the birthing process). Most of us know people who stay devoted to each other even though the sexual spark may be only intermittent, if not altogether extinguished. And on the other side, human marriages can fail despite intense and satisfying sexual chemistry; sometimes, indeed, this is the only thing that works in a relationship, and if so, it’s rarely enough.
Taking Control and Increasing the Options
     
    In fact, there is another possible explanation for concealed ovulation that goes precisely against the grain of the “shell game” or “keep him guessing to keep him close” explanations. Rather than promoting social and sexual bonding (cynics might say “bondage”), ovulation might be hidden in our species because such obscurantism makes it easier for women to have sex with men other than their designated partner. After all, given that women don’t identify their precise time of ovulation, even the most dedicated man would likely have a hard time guarding “his” woman so closely as to be able to monopolize her sex life—something that would presumably be more possible if her fertile times were clearly signaled as in so many other primates. By obscuring their exact ovulation, ancestral women might therefore have actually given themselves more leeway to mate with other, more attractive males when and if they chose.
     
    In addition to providing women with greater potential choice of mates, concealed ovulation may have yielded a counterintuitive evolutionary payoff, by enabling them to mate with males who might otherwise be potential murderers of their offspring. It is now well established that among many social species—including, presumably, our own ancestors—strange adult males were a major threat to the survival of infants. This is because after taking over a social unit, male langur monkeys, chimpanzees, gorillas, lions, andso forth often kill lactating infants, which had been sired by their predecessor. Why such carnage? Two reasons: First, these infants had been sired by the
previous
male, so the new harem tyrant has no genetic interest in preserving them. And second, by killing their suckling babes, a newly ascendant male induces nursing mothers to begin cycling once again, thereby making these females potential recipients of the murderous male’s sexual attention and, eventually, contributing to his reproductive success.
    Not a pretty