Sex, Time, and Power

by Leonard Shlain

  The universal urge to create art exploded in the final third of our species’ 150,000-year history. Why did it arise and what took it so long?

  Having an heir that they could name and that they were sure belonged to them gave men their best chance to achieve a kind of immortality.

  Chapter 20

  Father/Mother

  We do not marry for ourselves, whatever we say, we marry just as much or more for our posterity.

  —Montaigne1

  Men desire offspring more than women do, and they generally want more children than women want.

  —Mary Batten2

  Men have to learn to want to provide for others, and this behavior, being learned, is fragile and can disappear rather easily under social conditions that no longer teach it effectively.

  —Margaret Mead3

  As I have speculated, the first key insight to mold human culture profoundly concerned deeptime. Women noted how their monthly cycles coordinated with lunar ones and began to mark off the days of a month. Soon afterward, they made the connection between the sexual act and birth. The next key insight was the recognition of individual mortality. Evidence in the archeological record suggests that the third insight, of equal influence on the relations between the sexes, occurred nearly simultaneously in widely separated regions during the relatively short time span of a few thousand years.

  Although the insight could have occurred in places we now call South Africa, the Middle East, Asia Minor, and Australia, let us assume the first place that this thunderbolt struck was in Southwestern Europe, toward the end of the last Ice Age. Let us arbitrarily fix the time at somewhere around forty thousand years ago and grant that a human alive at that time was as intelligent as we are today. Human language, by this late date, was fully operational and as supple as present-day tongues. And let us assume that there had to have been one person who first experienced the third epiphany. For reasons that will soon become obvious, we will also speculate that the discovery made its deepest impact on a male.

  The first male who had his mind convulsed by this third insight belonged to a relatively new species called Homo sapiens, whose progenitors had established themselves in Eastern Africa 110,000 years earlier. Modern humans, as Homo sapiens are called, soon began emigrating from Africa, and pockets of them reached the Middle East approximately ninety thousand years ago. From there, some bands of these intelligent hunter-gatherers pushed north to Siberia, while others moved east to Asia. Fifty thousand years ago, a band of Homo sapiens crossed open water to inhabit the island continent of Australia, half a world away.

  For reasons that remain unclear, they avoided Europe until the relatively late date of forty thousand years ago. Perhaps one motive delaying their entry was the presence there of very large, big-boned hominid cousins, the Neanderthals, who had been entrenched in Europe for over two hundred thousand years. Within ten thousand remarkably short years after Homo sapiens arrived in Europe, the Neanderthals vanished. No one knows with certainty why.

  Imagine an enormous outcrop of limestone jutting from the upper slope of one side of a lush valley. The huge overhang protects a wide deep platform from rain and wind. The intervening wall between the overhang and the platform is honeycombed with limestone caves. Their entrances provide further protection from the elements.

  At this rock shelter, a band of sapients has encamped for the season. Sight lines from the base provide a stunning panorama of the cliffs opposite the entrance and egress from the valley below. Down the center runs a clear river whose banks teem with game. From their strategically located perch high on the valley’s side, hunters can monitor migratory herds entering or leaving the narrow valley.

  Let us attempt to reconstruct a crucial moment in the history of our species. Some of the thoughts I will attribute to my fictitious character may well have been discovered by many different people over many generations. In a bow to storytelling, let us suspend disbelief and imagine that they all occurred to one particularly insightful person during one long afternoon approximately forty thousand years ago.

  On a rock in the shade of the overhang sits a Cro-Magnon man.* He is a handsome specimen, tall and well proportioned. Sleek and well nourished, he looks vaguely familiar. Of course…it is Adam, the same fellow we had encountered perched on a rock in an earlier chapter. He is the first person to understand that he is doomed to die, and the revelation has made him morose. Since making his doleful discovery, Adam has suffered periodic bouts of existential angst. On this particular day, once again, he is lost in his own thoughts.

  While he is in this pensive mood, a young mother chasing after her toddler breaks his concentration. The little boy has just learned how to run and is testing the limits of his mother’s speed and patience. He squeals with delight at his newfound freedom. Annoyed by this intrusion, the Cro-Magnon glances absentmindedly at the boy.

  But then his eyes suddenly narrow. He notices, for the first time, that the child resembles him in an uncanny way. Peering closer, he concludes that there can be no mistaking the similarity. The boy has a mop of curly carrot-red hair; Adam’s hair is bright red and curly. The boy has a startling shade of green eyes; many women had previously commented to Adam regarding the arresting hue of his green eyes. The other boys had always kidded Adam about his freckles, dimples, and cleft chin when he was young; this child has freckles, dimples, and a cleft chin. But the clincher is the little boy’s bright-red birthmark that Adam caught a glimpse of on the back of the boy’s right shoulder; he, too, has a birthmark in the very same spot! Even the toddler’s impish behavior reminds him of his own sense of independence and adventure when he was a child.

  An unfamiliar thought begins to form tentatively in Adam’s mind: “There can be no mistake…. This child looks just like me. We men have often puzzled over how much some children resemble particular men in the band. I wonder how this magic can have happened? Most confusing…What does it all mean?”

  His thoughts drift to the child’s mother. “Her, I know well…. The womancalled Eve, how she beguiled me several snows ago.” Lost in a delicious reverie, he recalls the many instances when he had had pleasure with the boy’s mother, bundled up in the warm furs he had given her from his hunts. “How I enjoyed the hours of delight we experienced together…. Hmmm…” Adam’s brow furrowed, and then he started, almost speechless. “Could there be…?”

  In an explosive insight destined to change all future relations between the sexes, he grasps that he played a critical role in creating the squirming bundle of energy who had just been scooped up by his mother.

  “But what has pleasure to do with creating a child?” he asks himself. He keeps pondering the point. “Somehow my essence gets inside the woman. But how?” Then it strikes him. “The fluid…It’s the fluid I squirt at the height of my pleasure!” he exclaims. “My essence lives in the milky white liquid.” His next conclusion is so obvious he doesn’t understand how he could have overlooked it before. “That must be it—my essence gets inside of the woman and it mixes with her essence when we have pleasure together. The combination of the two makes her belly grow large and round with a baby!” Dumbstruck by his insight, but in a moment of prehistoric genius, he makes yet one more cerebral leap. Since he was the only one who had pleasure with her before her belly began to swell, then it was his essence that helped create this particular child who looked so much like him.*

  Adam hurriedly set up his new If = then tool. “If my vital sex fluid somehow contributed to siring this child,” he reasons, “then it follows that this child is a part of me,” he concludes. “Hmmm…I knew my brothers and sisters came from our mother, but I did not understand just how exactly a man fit into the web of kin. If there is a special connection between a man and a child, then I can have a special child who is a part of my blood. That child would have more of my essence than any other man. He would be closer to me by blood than even my brothers.”

  Energized by his train of thought, he begins to pace. “If this child a
nd I were entwined by blood, then when I die a portion of my life force will continue to live on. If I leave behind an heir, then I could snatch a small victory from the clutch of death!” Like two exposed high-voltage wires coming into contact, a blinding flash of sparks explodes in Adam’s head. Two insights, one about sex and the other about death, intersect and synthesize into a third—the concept of paternity. To assist him in gaining control over this astounding concept, Adam invents a new word to describe this new kin relationship: “I will name this new role for men ‘father.’”

  The symbol-making primate’s thoughts come in a tumble as he runs through the myriad implications of his discovery. “The story the shaman told me about the soul’s journey to an afterlife was comforting, but now I know I will live on.” Now that it has sunk in that his immortality depended on his child’s survival, the intrepid Cro-Magnon concludes, “I must see to it that my son has every advantage so that he will not die. If he dies before he becomes a man, the part of me in him dies with him.” Adam exults, “As long as the child lives, I will not really die after all.”

  Knowledge of their fatherhood made men more loving.

  Further implications of his insight continue to flood his consciousness. It occurs to him that if he had an heir he could confer his name on the boy. The power to name, he knows, is a magical act that confers on the namer a mysterious claim on the named. Once a name insinuated itself into the fabric of a culture, it took on a life of its own often outliving its namer. “Suppose my child lives long enough to have a child of his own? That child would also bear my name. Even when I am no longer physically here, my name will live on!” The very thought makes him shudder with excitement.

  Adam continues in his reverie. “And wisdom—what about all the knowledge I have accumulated in my life? All those stupid mistakes I made, especially those that nearly got me killed. If this child were my blood, then I could teach him how to avoid these errors.* The secrets and lessons I have learned in my life will not die with me. They will be treasured and guarded by someone whose blood is linked to mine. And when my son gets older, we will be constant companions. Why, having a son will be like growing my very own friend!” Adam looks out on the valley as the shadows of dusk begin to lengthen, and a broad smile lights up his face. For the first time since our hero discovered that he was doomed to die, the gathering darkness does not seem quite so filled with gloom.

  Adam has to sit down as his mind races through the other ramifications of his discovery. “And what about my weapons? All the time and effort I put into fashioning my spear thrower! How lovingly I carved, polished, and decorated it. I will bequeath it to my son. When he uses it, it will be as if a part of me is in on the hunt, as if my spirit permeates the objects I created or owned. Perhaps, each time he notches it with his spear, he will think of me.”

  Another thought occurs to him. “And what about my other possessions? Instead of having them divided among the others when I die, I will pledge them to him. My son will cherish these objects because they link us together. And when he grows old or dies, he will pass them on to his sons with pride.”

  While relishing the idea of having a son, an unexpected thought suddenly confronts him. Not all babies are boys! “Holy Auroch!…Suppose my child was a girl child?” The elation he was just experiencing gives way instantly to a sense of dismay and disappointment. But then, as he rolls this new idea around in his mind for a while, he gradually reconsiders. The women call the young girls that issue from their bellies “daughters.” Daughters, Adam thinks, maybe would not be so bad after all. “A young woman who grasps that she owes me her life will be indebted to me.

  “My goal has always been to have sex with as many young women as possible.” He brightens. “When she begins to bleed, I shall start having sex with her.” Then his brow furrows as he tries to think this through. “Can there be harm in that?” he wonders. “What am I to do about having sex with my own daughter? This is hard thinking.”

  As he ponders the startling prospect of having sex with a woman he helped to create, a dark foreboding begins to intrude. The more he turns the idea over in his mind, the more he concludes that there is something inherently wrong about it even if he can’t exactly put his finger on what it is. He recalls how mothers absolutely refuse to seek pleasure with their sons, and sons seem to instinctually abhor the idea of approaching their mothers for sex. After a convoluted internal argument with himself, Adam rejects the idea of having sex with his daughter. But it is a close call.

  After coming to terms with this temptation, Adam moves on. “Because she is my daughter, I will teach her, too. Hmmm. There are not nearly so many lessons for me to teach a girl child. It is unlikely she will ever use the secrets I could teach her concerning how to balance my spear thrower nor will my tricks for how to track reindeer be of much use to her. On second thought, having a girl who feels connected to me, and I to her, might have other benefits.” Soon, another thought brightens the prospect of having a daughter. “Maybe, when she grows up, I can control her pleasure. I shall have a say in choosing the man who gives her his essence. That way I’ll make sure that he is a brave, skilled hunter. I will also use her kinship to me to forge advantageous alliances with men who want to have pleasure with her.”

  It is then that the thought strikes him that, if he had something to do with the creation of the little boy who looks like a miniature version of himself, then there must have been one particular hunter who joined with his mother to give him life. “If I can discover which one of the old ones gave me his essence, I will care for and protect him in his old age.” He resolves, “I will begin a tradition to be handed down through the ages. I have always respected my mother, and saw that her final years were as pleasant as I could make them.” Adam realizes that there would be an added benefit to his newfound obligation regarding his father. “If I set an example by caring for my father, then my son or daughter will care for me!”

  As his thoughts turn to the future, he ruminates, “And illness—who better than my own child to care for me when I am sick, old, or feeble?” Pondering his inevitable infirmity leads him ineluctably to the ramifications of his own demise. “And then there’s death, that mysterious journey I must embark on into the unknown. I dread even thinking about it. Yet having a child that shares my very essence is a comforting thought. Instead of friends or kin, I can rely on my children to carry out the rituals that are so important, especially that crucial moment when my spirit is still imprisoned in my flesh and my body is unable to obey my soul’s instructions. My children will position my limbs, close my eyes, wash me, dress me in my finest, and provision me with the things I need for my journey. They will not send me to the other side unprepared. A man’s children must attend to his funeral rituals with respect and tenderness. They must solemnly recite incantations in his honor.

  “And who better to honor me in the seasons that follow one another after my death than my own children? Each year, in commemoration, my children will speak the words of remembrance. I honored my mother when she died because I had no doubt that she was my mother. Now I will teach all in our band to honor their fathers.

  “And best of all, my son and daughter, knowing that I am the only man who gave my essence to them, will continue to ask my council after I am gone. They will believe that I can still hear their prayers. Who knows for sure? Perhaps I will be able to visit with them from the other side. I shall exert an influence on the living long after the flesh has fallen from my bones.”

  And so our previously depressed, forty-thousand-year-old Homo sapiens dances with joy at his discovery. So many troubling questions answered by just cranking up his new-fangled if = then algorithm device. He returns to the center of the camp to catch another glimpse of the little boy he is now certain is his son. He watches him proudly from a distance, not sure yet what to say to the mother or how to behave toward the little boy. Nevertheless, he beams. “Imagine that…. A son. My son. How delightful! How significant!”

  A se
nse of profound wonderment washes over Adam as he continues to reflect on his discovery of the secret behind paternity. From this insight, a subsidiary but equally momentous thought begins to form in his mind, one that will as profoundly affect future relations between men and women as Adam’s initial understanding of fatherhood.

  “If my son was the result of one pleasurable episode between the furs with his mother, then what about all those other times we made love and Eve’s belly did not swell?” He thinks about one woman who has never had a child, and all the men who have taken pleasure with her. “Apparently she does not have what it takes to make a baby,” he thinks. “How sad for the men who mate with her.”

  Then, a more disturbing thought creeps into his mind. “Suppose it is the men’s essences that are not strong enough to make a baby? What if their fluids are not potent enough to pull off this magnificent feat?” Adam’s chest begins to swell with pride as he realizes that his essence had a quality that made it feistier than other men’s. Masculine egos are easily subject to self-puffery, and Adam’s is no exception. He experiences a feeling of manly superiority.

  And then it strikes him: “My manhood is somehow tied to whether my essence can produce a child—no, not just a child, a boy child. A son. Up till this moment, I had thought that the two things that most proved a man’s virility were the number of animals he killed and the number of women he convinced to let him take pleasure.” Adam’s thoughts drift to the other powerful male animals he has observed. Fighting and mating have been the two major criteria by which he and the other men judged the strength, courage, and heart of male animals. But Adam’s new insight about the potency of his essence forces him to consider another criterion. “A man’s virility can be measured when he proves to all that his essence is powerful enough to make a son!”