a bonobo humanity?

So, back to the question of monogamy. Is Homo sapiens a monogamous species? If they are, how long have they been so? We know that neither chimps nor bonobos are monogamous (it’s very rare in primates generally), and we know very little – almost nothing – of the social lives of those extinct species that fill in the gaps between ourselves and Pan paniscus. Nor do we know anything much about the social lives of our own species going back 50,000 years and more. A fairly standard view, it seems to me, is that the rise of agriculture and the stable settlements that were part of this change promoted monogamous ‘ownership’ just as it promoted land ownership. But, as Joseph Henrich argues in The weirdest people in the world, powerful or large-scale landowners could also become large-scale people-owners too, in terms of wives and slaves. Polygyny was an elitist cultural thing, even if it has faint links with our gorilla ancestors. 

So it’s fair to say that monogamy is more a cultural than a natural phenomenon, and so subject to variation. We can see this cultural effect in terms of our obsession with lineage and inheritance, generally along male lines. A culturally created patriarchal monogamy, with various exceptions, increasingly in the modern WEIRD world. 

The general acceptance of monogamous norms puts pressure on individuals, as well as affecting their worldview, as they may, often unconsciously, take on the concept of a ‘right partner’, especially for breeding purposes. This goes along with ‘hearth and home’, much like the nest-building of most avian species. 

I’m trying not to write this from an anti-monogamy perspective – frankly I’m not sure where I stand on the topic. Laissez faire might be the best description. Nowadays, again in the WEIRD world, we’re more conscious about how we’ve come to arrange things – nuclear families, home-making, and their alternatives, single parents, kibbutzim, two mums, two dads, and so forth, and we can even question the hearth and home arrangements, given our knowledge of bonobos in particular, with their broader supportive communities. Could it be that earlier human communities, those of Homo erectus and their immediate ancestors, were also more communal, in terms of sexual activity and child-rearing? Less possessive and jealous? Will we ever know?

And is our greater consciousness about monogamy having the effect of making us less monogamous? Bucking the trend? Is this really the best way to raise children? Of course it’s still generally seen as the norm, and the best – single-parent homes are ‘broken monogamies’, half-families. But we’re constantly evolving, learning new ways, considering other species – bonobos again. Their kids are so well-adjusted (funny expression, that). 

We’re stuck in our own time, and history can’t teach us the future. Keeping options open is surely a key to survival so let’s not condemn other ways, let’s keep on searching and admiring, not just the best in human efforts, glimpses of utopia, but in those of other species….

References

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0140175079900010

Joseph Henrich, The weirdest people in the world: how the west became psychologically peculiar and particularly prosperous, 2020