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An implausible theory. It would have been much more efficient to evolve non-sentient human females.
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CB: Wouldn't this be too "drastic" and undermine the fundamental living activities of the organism, being non-sentient ?
"Evolve non-sentient human females" seems somewhat bizarre , no ?" Wouldn't there be too many other disadvantages to not being sentient so as to undermine fitness ?
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Large brains are quite expensive
in terms of the food required to sustain them, so natural selection already has a prejudice against intelligence. Evolution would have strongly selected against sentient females if comprehension that sex leads to pregnancy was any kind of disadvantage.
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CB: I don't understand "intelligence" in the abstract as an inherited trait.
Concretely, don't you think it is likely that human females were the first to become aware of the connection between sex and pregnancy ?
Realizing the connection between sex and pregnancy might have been one of the original triggers for brains to get bigger. In other words, what if this comprehension preceded to increase in brain size ?
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In reality, the desire to have children is far more powerful than any concern about the risks or pain involved. The female orgasm is quite irrelevant.
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CB: So, you are saying that women go ahead and have sex, even though they might get pregnant and suffer pain, because these women's desires to have children is so great. OK.
But was that true with the original female pithecanthropine who first realized that sex can cause pregnancy ? What is the source of desire to have children that you refer to ? Instinct ? Culture ?
If instinct, then you are saying a preexisting instinct in primates who did not know of the connection between sex and offspring, but just had a standing desire to have children , and then the children just pop up , no one knows how. So, upon realizing that sex causes children, the women just continue to want to have sex "anyway" because their preexisting desire to have children is so strong and can now be met by the instrumental act of having sex.
And orgasms and clitoris just arise spandrels-like in the general physiological vicinity, but unrelated to all of this.
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So you are talking total codswallop.
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CB: You got that right.
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I gather that the real reason you refuse to accept the obvious explanation
^^^^ CB: Did you say what the obvious explanation is ? :>) Oh, I see, "the desire to have children ".
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is that, for misplaced ideological reasons, you cannot bring yourself to acknowledge that human fathers play an important supportive role in child-rearing.
^^^^^ CB: No, I am saying that in the earliest kin groups, like in modern elementary kinship systems, there are _several_ male "fathers" or "uncles". In matrilineal systems, the "significant" male involved in childrearing is the mother's brother sometimes. I agree with you , but I would point out that it is several, not just , one. So, a "pair" , just two is not the structure. All women of the generation are "mothers" of a type to all children. In other words, the original " it takes a whole village to raise a child" . Each child is raised by every adult.
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Something to do with a romantic conception of primitive communism.
^^^ CB: Actually, anthropology is scientific. My view is not romantic, but a scientific socialistic view of "the ancient communes".
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Get over it.
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That's a bit impolite. :>)
Charles