My theory is not monogamy, but that the placement of the clitoris, inconvenient for bringing the woman to orgasm through intercourse, and promoting intercourse would seem to be a major adaptive value of orgasm, because it gives women an opportunity to assess whether whatever partner she's engaging in sex with -- and this may be one or many -- would go the extra mile, as it were, to satisfy her sexual needs rather than merely selfishly indulging his own. This would give her information about whether he might be a good mate, considerate of her needs, likely to support her and their offspring, and therefore worthwhile to engage in further sexual relations with.
The communality of childcare in prehistorical social groups only affects this hypothesis weakly, because it is still more probable that a male who did in fact care more for his own offspring and his partner (polygamous, monogamous, higamous, hogamous)is likely to reproduce; he will be a more attractive partner. If women with a "conventionally" placed clitoris is better placed to evaluate which partners are more attractive, that will enhance their own adaptive fitness and make it more likely that they will differentially reproduce with that feature at a greater rate.
(As well as to some degree increasing the adaptive fitness of caring males -- I guess the incidence of caring males, which I would guess is moderate at best, may cut against the hypothesis. Or maybe men care but are ignorant and our society makes people too prudish to talk about, and educate men in, bringing women to organism through clitoral stimulation. I read a survey somewhere that some ridiculously small proportion of men even know here the clitoris is, much less what it does, and as for the g-spot, forget it.)
--- Charles Brown <cbrown at michiganlegal.org> wrote:
> andie nachgeborenen
> ________________________________________
> An older date is stronger support for my theory.
>
>
> ^^^^^
> CB; If by your theory you mean monogamy, the earlier
> date for the origin of
> the human species doesn't support that theory more
> than a theory that the
> matings were not monogamous. Again, childcare was
> very communal ("whole
> village"). Women wouldn't have to rely on their male
> sex partners to help
> care for children, because there are a whole bunch
> of sisters and brothers
> (who are not sex partners because of the incest
> taboo) who do childcare
> together. This is what undercuts your theory that
> women would be looking
> for special, caring attention in the sex act as an
> indication of being more
> caring in childcare. Sex partners were probably not
> "wife-husband" in the
> modern sense.
>
>
>
> ___________________________________
>
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