The Descent of Woman: The Classic Study of Evolution
Elaine Morgan
Language: English
Pages: 288
ISBN: 0285627007
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
166, 257 Caves, 151 ff. Centripetal societies, 187–90ff. Chance, Michael, 173, 175, 187, 192, 195, 201, 213 Chesser, Eustace, 71 Chesterton, G. K., 117 Chickens. See Poultry Children (babies; infants), 35, 59, 191, 196, 201, 211, 218, 220, 222–33, 254–55 (See also Nuclear family; Pregnancy); and breastfeeding (See Breasts and nipples); food-gathering by Bushman, 163–64; and frowning expression, 47–48,49; love, attachment in mother-child relationship, 96, 104–5, 223–28 (See also Nuclear
woman vows she’s never going to go through that again. There has to be a way of making the baby like it, or at least tolerate it, or at least not notice what’s happening until it’s too late. She may never find an absolutely foolproof way, but she keeps on trying. And the naked ape would undoubtedly have done the same. It would have been very difficult for him to find a way out if sex were the sole (or even the primary) bond giving cohesion to primate communities. Fortunately it is by no means
would be lucky to survive more than twenty-nine years, anyway? Second: Why in our species has sex become so closely linked with aggression? In most of the higher primates sexual activity is the one thing in life which is totally incompatible with hostility. A female primate can immediately deflect male wrath by presenting her backside and offering sex. Even a male monkey can calm and appease a furious aggressor by imitating the gesture. Nor is the mechanism confined to mammals. Lorenz tells of
upsetting things can happen to a species in the course of ten million years. Before we go on with the story, an acknowledgement is overdue. This aquatic theory of human evolution was first suggested by the marine biologist Professor Sir Alister Hardy, F.R.S., in an article in The New Scientist in 1960. Later he gave a talk on it on the BBC’s Third Programme, which was reprinted in the BBC’s publication The Listener. I heard nothing about it at the time. Apparently it made about as much impact
took up all his time, and no one else seemed inclined to carry a banner for it. It needed someone who either had unlimited supplies of moral courage or—as In my case—was an outsider with nothing to lose. A second result was that up to that date it had been usual in books about prehistoric man to make reference to ‘a hunting economy’. Professional anthropologists knew this to be a misnomer, but the knowledge, was confined to a small minority: the popularizers used the term as though it were