Passionate Love and Sexual Desire - Elaine Hatfield

5After observing many kinds of primates, Sommer discovered that it is easy topredict what sort of sexual mating arrangements a primate species will adopt. All heneeded to know were four facts: (1) in that species, who is bigger—the males or thefemales? (2) how much do the males’ testes weigh? (3) do females have sexualswellings (which signal sexual receptivity and fertility)? and (4) how long does sexualintercourse last? (The scientists found, for example, that in monogamous species suchas gibbons, males and females are generally about the same size. In polygynousspecies such as orangutans (where successful males must physically dominate theirrivals), males are much larger than their mates.When Sommer classified Homo sapiens on these four characteristics, hiscalculations led him to conclude that although our human forebears may have beenmonogamous, the odds are that they were polygynous. 1There is no chance that theywere either polyandrous or polygynandrous.What about our more immediate ancestors? How did they live? On the basis ofher calculations, Fisher (1989) concluded that throughout the world, although (intheory) most societies are polygynous, in fact, the overwhelming majority of marriedmen and women are actually in monogamous marriages. Fisher studied the maritalarrangements of the 853 societies sampled in the Ethnographic Atlas. (The Atlascontains anthropological information on more than 1,000 representative pre-industrialsocieties throughout the world.) She found that although almost all societies (84%)1 Arguing that in prehistory people might have been monogamous is the fact that today menand women are fairly similar in size. Arguing (more strongly) that our ancestors werepolygamous are the facts that: (1) men are generally taller and stronger than are women. (2)Since selection is based on physical strength and body mass, not sperm competition, men'stestes are fairly small. (3) women do not possess sexual swellings. (4) Sexual intercoursecan last fairly long, since there are not many rivals competing for access.