Women After All: Sex, Evolution, and the End of Male Supremacy (45 page)

117
Bonobo brains more adapted for social cognition and impulse control:
James K. Rilling, Jan Scholz, Todd M. Preuss, Matthew F. Glasser, Bhargav K. Errangi, and Timothy E. Behrens, “Differences Between Chimpanzees and Bonobos in Neural Systems Supporting Social Cognition,”
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
7, no. 4 (2012): 369–79.

Chapter 5: Equal Origins?

119
“In the beginning there was nature”:
Camille Paglia,
Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990), 1.

123
“Although strong dimorphism is consistently”:
J. M. Plavcan, “Sexual Size Dimorphism, Canine Dimorphism, and Male-Male Competition in Primates: Where Do Humans Fit In?”
Human Nature
23, no. 1 (2012): 52.

125
lap dancers earn more money at midcycle:
For a review of studies of this and other evidence of changes in sexual attractiveness at midcycle, see M. G. Haselton and K. Gildersleeve, “Can Men Detect Ovulation?”
Current Directions in Psychological Science
20, no. 2 (2011): 87–92. For an elegant study using digitized body movements, see Bernhard Fink, Nadine Hugill, and Benjamin P. Lange, “Women’s Body Movements Are a Potential Cue to Ovulation,”
Personality and Individual Differences
53, no. 6 (2012): 759–63.

125
The “red dress effect” in winter:
On cold days, women wearing red or pink are almost twice as likely to be in the fertile part of the cycle: J. L. Tracy and A. T. Beall, “The Impact of Weather on Women’s Tendency to Wear Red or Pink When at High Risk for Conception,”
PLoS One
9, no. 2 (2014): e88852. See also A. T. Beall, and J. L. Tracy, “Women Are More Likely to Wear Red or Pink at Peak Fertility,”
Psychological Science
24, no. 9 (2013): 1837–41.

125
Polygyny commonly allowed:
G. Murdock and D. White, “Standard Cross-Cultural Sample,”
Ethnology
8 (1969): 329–69; Melvin Ember, Carol R. Ember, and Bobbi S. Low, “Comparing Explanations of Polygyny,”
Cross-Cultural Research
41, no. 4 (2007): 428–40.

126
Father-infant proximity and mating systems:
Frank W. Marlowe, “Paternal Investment and the Human Mating System,”
Behavioural Processes
51 (2000): 45–61.

126
“Nonclassical” polyandry throughout the world:
K. E. Starkweather and R. Hames, “A Survey of Non-classical Polyandry,”
Human Nature
23, no. 2 (2012): 149–72.

127
the custom of
partible paternity
:
Robert S. Walker, Mark V. Flinn, and Kim R. Hill,
“Evolutionary History of Partible Paternity in Lowland South America,”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
107, no. 45 (2010): 19195–200.

127
Hunter-gatherers allow polygyny but not much:
Robert S. Walker, Kim R. Hill, Mark V. Flinn, and Ryan M. Ellsworth, “Evolutionary History of Hunter-Gatherer Marriage Practices,”
PLoS One
6, no. 4 (2011): e9066.

127
Why did those old men get all the women?:
For a discussion, see R. B. Lee and I. DeVore,
Man the Hunter
(Chicago: Aldine, 1968).

128
“a large number of studies”:
Kelly Gildersleeve, Lisa DeBruine, Martie G. Haselton, David A. Frederick, Ian S. Penton-Voak, Benedict C. Jones, and David I. Perrett, “Shifts in Women’s Mate Preferences Across the Ovulatory Cycle: A Critique of Harris (2011) and Harris (2012),”
Sex Roles
69, no. 9–10 (2013): 516–24.

129
Man the Hunter
and
Woman the Gatherer
:
Lee and DeVore, 1968, cited above; Frances Dahlberg, ed.,
Woman the Gatherer
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981).

129
Stone tools in an ancient chimp habitat:
J. Mercader, H. Barton, J. Gillespie, J. Harris, S. Kuhn, R. Tyler, and C. Boesch, “4,300-Year-Old Chimpanzee Sites and the Origins of Percussive Stone Technology,”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
104, no. 9 (2007): 3043–48.

129
females use a broader spectrum of tools:
Thibaud Gruber, Zanna Clay, and Klaus Zuberbühler, “A Comparison of Bonobo and Chimpanzee Tool Use: Evidence for a Female Bias in the Pan Lineage,”
Animal Behaviour
80, no. 6 (2010): 1023–33.

130
Women’s contribution on average about half:
Frank W. Marlowe,
The Hadza: Hunter-Gatherers of Tanzania
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), chapter 10; and Frank W. Marlowe, “Hunting and Gathering: The Human Sexual Division of Foraging Labor,”
Cross-Cultural Research: The Journal of Comparative Social Science
41, no. 2 (2007): 170–195. The roughly equal division is true overall for warm-climate hunter-gatherers, the ones most relevant to the evolution of our species.

130
there should be more intense male competition:
F. W. Marlowe and J. C. Berbesque, “The Human Operational Sex Ratio: Effects of Marriage, Concealed Ovulation, and Menopause on Mate Competition,”
Journal of Human Evolution
63, no. 6 (2012): 834–42.

131
Hunter-gatherer mortality:
Nancy Howell,
Demography of the Dobe Area !Kung
(New York: Academic Press, 1979).

131
A pair-bonding species with adaptive flexibility:
Robert J. Quinlan, “Human Pair-Bonds: Evolutionary Functions, Ecological Variation, and Adaptive Development,”
Evolutionary Anthropology
17, no. 5 (2008): 227–38.

131
“Should a paternally caring male desert”:
H. Kokko, H. Klug, and M. D. Jennions, “Unifying Cornerstones of Sexual Selection: Operational Sex Ratio, Bateman Gradient and the Scope for Competitive Investment,”
Ecology Letters
15, no. 11 (2012): 1343.

131
Hadza men experience conflict but invest in children:
Frank W. Marlowe, “Male Care and Mating Effort Among Hadza Foragers,”
Behavioral Biology and Sociobiology
46 (1999): 57–64; Frank W. Marlowe, “A Critical Period for Provisioning by Hadza Men: Implications for Pair Bonding,”
Evolution and Human Behavior
24 (2003): 217–29.

131
Male investment in children in other hunter-gatherers:
Frank W. Marlowe, “Paternal Investment and the Human Mating System,”
Behavioural Processes
51 (2000): 45–61; and Michael Gurven and Kim Hill, “Why Do Men Hunt?,”
Current Anthropology
50, no. 1 (2009): 51–74. Male investment is not limited to fathers: Kim Hill and A. Magdalena Hurtado, “Cooperative Breeding in South American Hunter-Gatherers,”
Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences
276, no. 1674 (2009): 3863–70.

131
Grandmothers, menopause, and male show-offs:
Kristen Hawkes, “Grandmothers and the Evolution of Human Longevity,”
American Journal of Human Biology
15, no. 3 (2003): 380–400; and Kristen Hawkes, James F. O’Connell, and James E. Coxworth, “Family Provisioning Is Not the Only Reason Men Hunt: A Comment on Gurven and Hill,”
Current Anthropology
51, no. 2 (2010): 259–64.

131
Menopause reduces competition between generations of women:
R. Mace, “Cooperation and Conflict Between Women in the Family,”
Evolutionary Anthropology
22, no. 5 (2013): 251–58.

132
Flow of calories among !Kung:
Nancy Howell,
Life Histories of the Dobe !Kung: Food, Fatness, and Well-Being over the Life Span
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010).

132
only humans have such extensive provisioning:
Jane B. Lancaster and Chet S. Lancaster, “The Watershed: Change in Parental-Investment and Family-Formation Strategies in the Course of Human
Evolution,” in
Parenting Across the Life Span: Biosocial Dimensions
, ed. Jane B. Lancaster, Jeanne Altmann, Alice S. Rossi, and Lonnie R. Sherrod (New York: Aldine De Gruyter, 1987), 187–205; updated in an important theoretical article by Hillard Kaplan, Kim Hill, Jane Lancaster, and A. Magdalena Hurtado, “A Theory of Human Life History Evolution: Diet, Intelligence, and Longevity,”
Evolutionary Anthropology
9, no. 4 (2000): 156–85.

132
We are cooperative breeders:
Sarah Blaffer Hrdy,
Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009).

132
confirmed in the past few years:
Karen L. Kramer, “Cooperative Breeding and Its Significance to the Demographic Success of Humans,”
Annual Review of Anthropology
39, no. 1 (2010): 417–36; Howell,
Life Histories of the Dobe !Kung;
B. F. Codding, R. B. Bird, and D. W. Bird, “Provisioning Offspring and Others: Risk-Energy Trade-offs and Gender Differences in Hunter-Gatherer Foraging Strategies,”
Proceedings of the Royal Society
278, no. 1717 (2011): 2502–09; and Courtney L. Meehan, Robert Quinlan, and Courtney D. Malcom, “Cooperative Breeding and Maternal Energy Expenditure Among Aka Foragers,”
American Journal of Human Biology
25, no. 1 (2013): 42–57.

132
the !Kung San, or Ju/’hoansi:
The exclamation point refers to an implosive consonant, or “click,” but ignoring it (as in “Kung”) gives a reasonable approximation of the name; likewise, the alternative name can be approximated with “Jutoansi.” For the fundamental and classic descriptions of their way of life, see Richard Lee’s
The !Kung San: Men, Women and Work in a Foraging Society
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), and Lorna Marshall’s two books,
The !Kung of Nyae Nyae
(1976) and
Nyae Nyae !Kung: Beliefs and Rites
(1999), both published by Harvard University Press.

132
Shostak’s studies of !Kung women:
Marjorie Shostak,
Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981); and Marjorie Shostak,
Return to Nisa
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000).

134
Men did two-thirds of the talking:
“Politics, Sexual and Non-Sexual, in an Egalitarian Society,” in
Politics and History in Band Societies,
ed. Eleanor Leacock and Richard Lee (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 37–59.

135
Interviewing a group of men about animal behavior:
Nicholas G. Blurton Jones and Melvin J. Konner, “!Kung Knowledge of Animal Behavior,” in
Kalahari Hunter-Gatherers: Studies of the !Kung San and Their Neighbors
, ed. Richard B. Lee and Irven DeVore (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976).

135
Women Like Meat: Megan Biesele,
Women Like Meat: The Folklore and Foraging Ideology of the Kalahari Ju/’hoan
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993).

135
Trance-dance ritual:
Richard Lee, “The Sociology of !Kung Bushman Trance Performances,” in
Trance and Possession States
, ed. R. Prince (Montreal: Bucke Memorial Society, 1968), 35–54; Lorna Marshall, “The Medicine Dance of the !Kung Bushmen,”
Africa
39 (1981): 347–81; and Melvin Konner, “Transcendental Medication,”
Sciences
25, no. 3 (1985): 2–4. For a film of the ritual, see John Marshall’s
N/um Tchai: The Ceremonial Dance of the !Kung Bushmen
(Watertown, MA: Documentary Educational Resources, 1969), available for purchase or rental at www.der.org.

137
“I ran so fast . . .”:
Shostak,
Nisa,
102.

137
girls had dramatic initiation rites:
Shostak,
Nisa,
134–35; Marshall,
The Nyae Nyae !Kung: Beliefs and Rites,
chapter 9.

138
the leveling effect of giving:
Lorna Marshall, “Sharing, Talking, and Giving: Relief of Social Tensions Among the !Kung,” in
Kalahari Hunter-Gatherers: Studies of the !Kung San and Their Neighbors
, ed. Richard B. Lee and Irven DeVore (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976), 349–71; and Polly Wiessner, “Leveling the Hunter: Constraints on the Status Quest in Foraging Societies,” in
Food and the Status Quest: An Interdisciplinary Perspective
, ed. Polly Wiessner and Wulf Schiefenhövel (Providence, RI: Berghahn, 1996), 171–91.

138
women should give birth alone:
M. J. Konner and M. J. Shostak, “Timing and Management of Birth Among the !Kung: Biocultural Interaction in Reproductive Adaptation,”
Cultural Anthropology
2 (1987): 11–28; and Megan Biesele, “An Ideal of Unassisted Birth: Hunting, Healing, and Transformation Among the Kalahari Ju/’hoansi,” in
Childbirth and Authoritative Knowledge: Cross-Cultural Perspectives
, ed. Robbie E. Davis-Floyd and Carolyn F. Sargent (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997).

138
Families never left to their own devices:
Nancy Howell,
Life Histories
of the Dobe !Kung: Food, Fatness, and Well-Being over the Life Span
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010).

139
Lee documented twenty-two cases:
Lee,
The !Kung San,
381–400.

140
“A woman has to want her husband and her lover equally”:
Shostak,
Nisa,
247.

140
“Women are strong”:
Ibid., 247.

140
“!Kung women themselves refer to”:
Ibid., 220–21.

141
early in what would become feminist anthropology:
M. Z. Rosaldo and L. Lamphere, eds.,
Woman, Culture and Society
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1974). For a basic overview of women’s roles cross-culturally, see Dorothy Hammond and Alta Jablow’s
Women in Cultures of the World
(Menlo Park, CA: Cummings, 1976).