Comments

1
What the hell, did the publishers of this book offer to pay the Stranger staff salaries for a year or something?
2
Am I missing something here? How would the woman know which partner was the father?
3
Didn't some research group find that the younger male gorillas who were turned out by the Alpha male would sneak back in to get with the lady gorillas, usually while the Alpha was fighting off a challenging almost-Alpha? Otherwise, wouldn't gorillas have eventually fallen victim to inbreeding, especially any genetic issues that fall/are carried on the Y chromosome?
4
sloppy seconds IS a negative though.
5
Are you talking about the brotherhood of jackrolling?
6
@2 The point is that which partner is "the father" is irrelevant.

@3 That's true, but it doesn't change the description of the social dynamics at play and how physiology reflects and enforces them. If caught, the paramours will almost certainly be killed. With bonobos, there's nothing illicit - the paramour simply waits his turn.
7
I think by "pro-social" you mean "homosocial"
8
@6 - I actually wasn't being rhetorical, I really was missing something.
9
Mmmm a semen drenched vagina, how enticing.

What ev's
10
Chuck,

"the pro-social aspects of this practice"

?!?!?!?!

Please enlighten us...

(The savage mind can be sooo fascinating.)
11
Pro-social (as I understand it) is intended to describe the situation (in early human societies) where, as no-one knows the identity of the father and all the males have contributed sperm, all of the males are willing to provide for the child. That process leads to a closer, stronger social bond between the males of the group. It's the masculine aspect of the village raising a child.
12
While I'm sure it is pro-social in some situations, the horrendous prevalence of gang rape in South Africa demonstrates that it ain't necessarily so.
13
@11 – Sounds like the modern urban black ghetto (72 percent of the births to black women are out of wedlock). How’s that communal sense of responsibility coming along with their men folk?
14
@13:AFAIK ghettos are the antithesis of small, ancient villages. In ghettos the men who refuse to contribute to the society aren't beaten to a pulp, cast out and eaten by passing saber tooth tigers. The communities women aren't protected by the communities men. The threat to the members of a ghetto come from within the 'society', not outside.
And WTF does the mother's marital status have to do with the applicability of the theory to ANCIENT societies?

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