"there is an oft-overlooked plot in the human saga. It stars the ancient hominins who realised that they’re related to some people and not others, and that sexual intercourse might have something to do with that. The effects of this realisation are profound, and deserve some credit for our species’ widespread success on the planet...
In eliminating the distinctions between human sexual behaviour and that of other primates, a murky anthropomorphism creeps in. The journalist Nicholas Wade wrote in The New York Times that male chimps and baboons ‘are prone to kill any infant they believe could not be theirs, so females try to blur paternity by mating with as many individuals as possible before each conception’. This suggests that non-human primates could know that semen transforms into a baby and that the act of sex, broadly, makes an infant. Further, it implies that they have a sense of relatedness, and that it extends to fathers. If not, then it’s deliberately narrating animal sex and violence like a scene from Game of Thrones, for our entertainment. And it works (it’s sensational and relatable) because a more scientifically grounded alternative – male baboons, gorillas and chimps might kill infants, but they’re less likely to kill ones clinging to females with whom they’ve mated because sexual relations between primates builds affiliation – isn’t nearly as scintillating...
Chimpanzees deftly navigate a world with gravity without thinking about gravity, or rationalising about it and making rules. In an equally naïve way, they deftly navigate a world with paternity without thinking of the consequences of sexual intercourse...
Because our species is inextricably steeped in sociocultural context, you could argue that all human marriage is somehow arranged. This is a whole new approach to mate choice on the evolutionary scene. Like other social animals, we do compete for mates and we are choosy, but it’s not just because we want to have sex with them, it’s also because we want to make babies with them, to merge families with theirs, to make a future together. Reproductive consciousness isn’t just an aftermath to human mating. It has shaped it profoundly...
Reproductive consciousness would have increased attraction to and competition for mates, male or female, who are observed to be good community members and good parents, or who have potential to be. It would have increased competition for mates or for families with resources they’re willing to share. Reproductive consciousness is a powerful context for boosting male-female cooperation, even beyond mates and into adult brother-sister relationships – effectively a uniquely human phenomenon...
Reproductive consciousness is just one element in the invention of human culture – a whole cluster of behaviours, knowledge, values and beliefs that unhooks human destiny from the standard evolutionary model of other species. We humans do many things that undermine our evolutionary interests. We practise religious celibacy, contraception, abortion, suicide bombing. We adopt infants who aren’t our kin, we go to war, we kill our siblings. A lot of this we do voluntarily, and none of it perpetuates our own genes. In fact, it actively does not."
Related: that critique of evolutionary pychology; why we are underestimating chimps intelligence
FB: "it’s the absence of the awareness that sex makes babies (which we’re calling reproductive consciousness) that makes it impossible for a monkey to know who the father is, or to have the concept of ‘father’ or paternity in the first place. Something else is driving marmoset fathers to care for their own biological offspring and not others...
When a dominant chimpanzee kills an unrelated infant, one set of explanations is needed. And it’s not enough to map those directly, with no recognition of the utterly distinct human experience of reproduction and family, on to human domestic violence."
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