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1 - Human Sexuality: The Evolutionary Legacy of Mating, Parenting, and Family Formation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 April 2024

By
Karen L. Kramer  and
Ryan Schacht
Edited by
Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks  and
Mathew Kuefler
Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Mathew Kuefler
Affiliation:
San Diego State University
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Summary

This chapter reviews what can be gleaned about human sexuality from the evolutionary and ethnographic record. Ancestral human sexuality leaves neither fossil nor archaeological evidence, but inferences about how humans mated, consorted, parented, formed partnerships, and aggregated into families can be drawn from two large and growing bodies of work, both discussed in this chapter. The first are anatomical and biological indicators of ancestral mating patterns inferred from fossil evidence as well as observations from nonhuman primates. The second is ethnographic research across an array of contemporary human societies, which highlights variation in mating, marriage, and family structure. Together, biological indicators and cross-cultural patterns shed light on the legacy, constraints, and possibilities carried forward into the diverse and variable expression of human sexuality today. Humans have a deep ancestry in a social structure of males and females living in social groups together, although how humans organize themselves is structurally different from anything observed in our closest relatives. Not only do families form around long-term pairbonds in all societies, but there is also a great deal of flexibility in who constitutes the pairbond, the families that surround them, and in the prevalence of extra-pair relationships.

Keywords

human evolutiongreat apesparental Investmentmating systemsmarriagefamily formationcooperative breedingtestosteronegender identitysexual orientation
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge World History of Sexualities , pp. 1 - 21
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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References

Further Reading

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