Are human beings naturally monogamous?

[nihilistic]

Interesting article on this:

http://www.newsroom.ucla.edu/page.asp?RelNum=6713&email=G2IH

 

[Birdjaguar]

Clearly our genes can and do override social mores. The thin veneer of civilization is only 5000 years old; our genetic heritage several million.

 

[Narz]

Interesting ni.

 

[CaptainF]

human beings naturally love each other somehow, but in different ways.

 

[Birdjaguar]

human beings naturally love each other somehow, but in different ways.

People naturally find specific people to love. Other people they cannot get along with at all. Many instances of what people perceive as love is merely a way to satisfy an ego driven need. Lust is a good example of this as is teenage hormone driven craziness. The best kinds of love are all about sacrificing or denying one's self (ego) for another. Mother's do it all the time. You can see it in successful marriages where the committment to the other is more important than the desire to get what you want.

You can think of love as a continuum of behaviors that at one end are all about getting what you want and at the other, all about providing what another wants or needs. Each relationship that you have could be placed on such a continuum. Love shows itself in many ways, but all of them are an expression of our need to feel complete and whole.

 

[Odin2006]

Humans are like many bird species, serially monogomous with ocassional cheating. Our australopithicine ancestors were definitely polygamous, they had a huge amount of sexual dimorphism. The transition from polygamy to monomgamy was a result of our brain expansion. Humans are unusual in that babies continue the rapid fetal rate of brain development for a year after birth, this is why human infants are much more helpless that those of other apes. Under such a situation, it becomes evolutionary advantageous for the father to stay with the the mother and offspring because the female would be burdunded with a helpless infant. This is easily seen in the age of weening. In hunter-gatherer societies a child is usually weened at the age of 4, other apes ween at age 5 or 6. This situation is also the start of the sexual double standard and patriarchy, since the male would want to be sure the offspring were his, and also why sexuality is much more private in humans than in other apes and is why male and female brains work differently.