"Sex at Dawn": Why monogamy goes against our nature - Nonfiction - Salon.com

You argue that much of this misery stems from changes that occurred when humans developed agriculture, around 8000 B.C. What happened?

The advent of agriculture changed everything about human society, from sexuality to politics to economics to health to diet to exercise patterns to work-versus-rest patterns. It introduced the notion of property into sexuality. Property wasn't a very important consideration when people were living in small, foraging groups where most things were shared, including food, childcare, shelter and defense. It makes perfect sense that sexuality would also be shared -- why wouldn't it be when paternity wasn't an issue?

When you have agriculture, men started to worry about whether or not certain children were theirs biologically, because they wanted to leave their accumulated property to their own child. At that point, people also made a very clear connection between sexual behavior and birth. Lots of people didn't have a very clear understanding of the cause and effect of sex and birth, but when you have domesticated animals living side by side with people, they start to notice that the characteristics of a certain male that has mated with a certain female show up in the offspring.

One of the central ideas of much biological and genetic theory is that animals will expend more energy protecting those they're genetically related to -- siblings, parents, offspring -- as opposed to those they're not related to. Why wouldn't that apply to humans?

There are many, many exceptions to that rule in nature. One of the exceptions we talk about in the book are the vampire bats that share blood with each other. They go out and they suck the blood at night and then they come back to the cave and the bats that didn't get any blood will receive blood from other bats. They share, and that has nothing to do with genetic connection. And in terms of animals that are much more closely related to humans, when you look at bonobos and their promiscuous interaction, it's virtually impossible for a male to know which of his offspring are related to him biologically. So to say that there's this inherent concern with paternity within our species, I just don't see evidence for that.

Does this mean that humans didn't form couples before the advent of agriculture?

Because human groups at the time knew each other so well and spent their lives together and were all interrelated and depended upon each other for everything, they really knew each other much better than most of us know our sexual partners today. We don't argue that people didn't form very special relationships -- you can see this even in chimps and bonobos and other primates, but that bond doesn't necessarily extend to sexual exclusivity. People have said that we're arguing against love -- but we're just saying that this insistence that love and sex always go together is erroneous.

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

This reminds one of the conviction, common to both sides, during the early years of WW I that it was vitally important for each nation involved to show its resolve by being willing to sacrifice the lives of its soldiers.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."