Study: Prehistoric Man Had Sex for Fun

[intuition897]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,269115,00.html

Refreshing...

Although I can see the nay-sayers clinging to the idea that society has somehow "progressed" and we're "better now" because monogamy has become the standard.

Thoughts?

[Spoomonkey]

That is pretty interesting. Thanks for posting it!

Spoomonkey

[spectraschain]

He argues that monogamy only became established as hunter-gatherer societies took up agriculture and settled in houses, allowing the social roles of men and women to become more fixed.

Anyone here a Daniel Quinn fan?

[spectraschain]

Aww..c'mon. As much religious retoric as some of us engage in here...

Come clean!

[intuition897]

Originally Posted by spectraschain

Aww..c'mon. As much religious retoric as some of us engage in here...

Come clean!

Huh?

I just thought it was interesting. I didn't think it had anything to do with religion. Or are we supposed to argue creation vs. evolution? I wasn't there, and I have no idea what happened. In the words of Forrest Gump, "Maybe...maybe it's both?"

Anyhow, I just thought it was an interesting wrench in the monogamy machine.

[spectraschain]

Anyhow, I just thought it was an interesting wrench in the monogamy machine.

And here I thought you'd be the first to bite....

Guess I'll go fish in another thread...

[pervgeeks]

Originally Posted by spectraschain

Anyone here a Daniel Quinn fan?

Yes, very much so.

[WesternSwing]

Very interesting. I've heard this theory several times before, and I wholeheartedly believe it. It's been said on more than one occasion that early humans used sex, and not monogamous sex, to bond the tribe or group together. And after being in the lifestyle ourselves for several years, Mrs. WS and I have discussed this based on personal experience and how some couples or singles that started out as "just sex" has developed into closer friendships than we have with most - if not all - of our vanilla friends, and it's not because we are having sex at that moment in our relationship with them. Some we haven't swung with in quite a while, but the close friendship continues. And being around them in daily life is not awkward, nor is sex expected.

I think that if some could get past their personal insecurities or conditioned morality to take a long and open-minded look at this subject, they may see the same, even if they don't agree with it for their own life.

Mr. WS

[Spoomonkey]

Originally Posted by intuition897

I didn't think it had anything to do with religion.

While I am not sure why Spectraschain has been so interested in "fishing" lately (why is that? What is the issue with feeling you have to provoke something on every thread that pops up? Cable out?) I did see a potential tie in.

I had just been doing so reading about theories surrounding the origins of the Garden of Eden story. When people shifted from hunter/gatherer to farming the story was likely to have started, since "Eden" would have been an ideal place that did exist - inasmuch as man first started settling there. The theory goes that this place is now under the Persian Gulf because of water levels rising over mountains and causing a catastrophic flood forcing this young society out this idyllic garden.

The tie in of sexual morals and early society is intriguing.

Some liberal theologians reject a literal "Adam and Eve" story and hold that people evolved, and at a point in our development, God's spirit entered them. Such a construct would give that theory a little back bone. And at the very least it does give some context for the existence of the creation story that is common in much of the world's ancient histories.

Again - I think it is a very interesting post, Intuition. But I think there are lots of interesting things about you

Spoomonkey

[RANDJ4FUN]

Oh the ever so suble lies about sex. Just to try to make one partner sex seem normal.

Early man (and woman) was poly-amourous. We know this because of primitive societies living today who are still hunters and gatherers.
Then mankind learned farming tecnics that required many hands working the soil. Society became POLIGAMOUS (not monogamous as this story states) because the easiest way to have plenty of MEN was to have as many sons as one could procreate and the easiest way to have a multitude of male hands was to have a multitude of wives bearing sons.
Monogamy came about with the rise of CITIES (specifically the city states of ancient Greece) because of the need to simplify record keeeping and to pass laws of inheritance and other laws to keep order. Also in cities a father didn't need a hundred sons to work for him.
I personaly hate how the word monogomy has become a method of lying to make the unatural seem normal. The overwhelming evidence is that mankind is not genetically programmed to only be happy with one sex partner. Monogomy means ONE WIFE, not one sex partner. The one wife may not even have had a sexual purpose in ancient times since marriges were arrainged for profit and power, not romance.
Just wanted to unload a little.

[Pinmonkey]

I read the title and thought "a joke about hoping they used a condom" would be funny. Then I read the thread and thought. Humm, it might be inappropriate. So I'll refrain from including the joke, and just say it's an interesting article. Thanks for bringing it to our attention.

[wyandly]

Originally Posted by spectraschain

Anyone here a Daniel Quinn fan?

Absolutly!
I was thinking the very same thing before i even read your post, spectra.

For those of you who may not be familiar with his work. D.Q. believes/argues that one of the attitiudes causing many of the problems our civilization is facing, is the attitude that our way of doing things (like monagamy) is the right way, the way hummans were meant to live, and that hummans, as they are right now, represent the finished product of creation. He goes on to argue that it's this attitude that prevents us from seriously understanding how we function/ how we live, because we (not all of us, of course) instantly dismiss all that has come before our present civilization as being trivial. So I think this article completely ties into "the missing picture" that our civilization keeps stumbling around.

Anyway, if you want to read more of what im babling about, heres a link that may be useful:
http://www.ishmael.com/Education/Wri...hwestern.shtml

B.t.w. I never read any of his books other than Ishmael, but I have found both his esays/speeches and the book helpful in understanding the pickle our civilization is in.

[Chicup]

This is one of those pop science things which makes me shake my head.

Early humans had sex for fun? Shocking. This is like someone having a study to see if water is wet.

At the same time their evidence is flawed. I saw the prehistoric dildo when it was discovered a few years back but that proves nothing. Hell it might have been nothing more than a fertility symbol or the artwork of a boy being naughty. It may give some ideas, but its not real proof of anything. I'm sure if you search the homes of some Southern Baptists you would find some naughty things, but that doesn't mean someone digging them up 30000 years later would be able to surmise how sex worked in their culture.

[Thrax]

Originally Posted by RANDJ4FUN

Monogomy means ONE WIFE, not one sex partner. The one wife may not even have had a sexual purpose in ancient times since marriges were arrainged for profit and power, not romance.

Maybe the meaning of "monogamy" has changed over the centuries, but I don't have ready access to the Oxford English Dictionary to check that. So far, all I've found is that the archaic definition is of "one marriage during a lifetime" and the current definition (which is how I would define the term) is "being married to one person at a time". That would be one sex partner, not specifying gender, or more correctly, sex.

Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary (1977) says that the English word originates from the Greek monogamos which means monogamous. Monogamos, in turn is from the joining of mon- + gamos which means marriage. The first definition describes the archaic use of the term monogamy: "the practice of marrying only once during a lifetime." The second definition, which I assume concerns current usage of the word, is: "the state or custom of being married to one person at a time."

I can't comment on the other parts of your post, RANDJ4FUN, but I wanted to point that out.

Thrax

[Thrax]

Originally Posted by Chicup

This is one of those pop science things which makes me shake my head.

Early humans had sex for fun? Shocking. This is like someone having a study to see if water is wet.

At the same time their evidence is flawed. I saw the prehistoric dildo when it was discovered a few years back but that proves nothing. Hell it might have been nothing more than a fertility symbol or the artwork of a boy being naughty. It may give some ideas, but its not real proof of anything. I'm sure if you search the homes of some Southern Baptists you would find some naughty things, but that doesn't mean someone digging them up 30000 years later would be able to surmise how sex worked in their culture.

The report sounds interesting, but I know I can't judge its content from a single news report. I'm not sure how you could say the evidence is flawed when you don't know how it's been presented in this report. If you used the term unbelievable, I could believe that. The stone phallus and the Venus of Willendorf are given the limelight in the article, but might not have preeminence in the full report. It would be nice to know how those artifacts fit in with all of the evidence the researcher used from "...dozens of archeological finds and scientific studies for his research."

According to the article, the researcher is "challenging assumptions that sex for the purposes of reproduction is the form closest to nature". So, he's proposing a competing scientific theory. I can't tell from the limited description given by the article where his theory would be on the continuum from complete hogwash to completely believeable.

If anyone reads the full report, please report back.

Thrax