Sex, Time, and Power

by Leonard Shlain

  Eve grew thoughtful. “I think that it will be better for everyone after he has explained this concept to the other men. I can’t help feeling a little sorry for them. They’re going to have to change their ways and give up some of their precious freedom. They will have to learn how to live with us instead of just trying to take their pleasure and leave when they want. If they desire to know who their children are, they must treat us better.”

  Another woman chimed in, “You mean a man will no longer seek sex and, once he satisfied himself, abruptly leave.” They all laughed, and a young girl who had not yet been initiated into the ways of a woman tittered nervously.

  “But I fear that Adam’s discovery will bring us sorrow as well,” Eve added.

  “How so? What makes you think that?” one of the woman asked, puzzled. “What ill can come of a man’s knowing his own children?”

  Eve sighed as the other women formed a circle, their wet mats and hides forgotten. “Once a man finally understands that he can be a father to a special child, he will try to control the woman he has chosen to have his children. He will want her to take pleasure with him and only him.”

  An older woman snorted. “How is a man going to do that? As all of us here know, a woman can have any man, anytime, anywhere she wants. All she has to do is give the slightest look that she is interested and every man in the band lines up in a hurry. They are so easy!”

  The other women, laughing, all nodded in agreement.

  “I don’t get it. What does Adam’s discovery about children have to do with how we women have sex?” the young girl persisted.

  Eve drew in a deep breath before continuing. “As we all know, men don’t handle uncertainty well. They fear death more than we do. Just look at all these strange new stories, rituals, and elaborate burials they have invented to convince themselves that death is not the end of life. For such brave hunters, they can act like such frightened children when the subject is death. Knowing who their children are, especially their sons, is going to convince them that they can continue to live on even after they are dead. Men will call this their ‘lineage.’” Eve spoke with a conviction that impressed the other women. Evidently, she had thought long and hard about these issues. “The beneficial part of his belief for us is that, in order to protect his lineage, he will have to make sure his children live to have children of their own. Meaning”—here Eve paused for emphasis before continuing—“that a man will have to make some drastic adjustments in the way he conducts himself.” She grinned mischievously and added, “We will make sure of that.

  “You see, he can’t have it both ways. He can’t be free to come and go as he pleases, visiting us just long enough to get us with child, and then be off. If he does, he will never know for sure which children of the band are his, and even if he thinks he knows, unless he invests time and effort in their upbringing, his certainty will mean nothing, because his children will not know him and will not honor him in life or in death.”

  Eve continued: “A man must be willing to settle down with one woman. Oh, they’re going to try to convince us that there are other ways, but in the end, it will all come to this: A man will have to trust his woman. He will have to face the harsh fact that, if he wants to be as sure as he can be that he is a father, he must keep a woman from taking pleasure with any other man. And the best way for him to achieve his goal is to treat his mate so well that she won’t be looking around for another man.

  “You can be sure that a man will have mixed feelings about being a father,” Eve explained further. “He won’t be able to take his pleasure with a lot of other women, either. If he wants us to be true, then he is going to have to stop sleeping with anyone who takes his fancy. If he can’t control his desires, then we’ll take other partners. What is good for the buck is good for the doe.”

  “Eve, you are talking nonsense,” one woman interjected. “There is no way that what you propose will work.”

  Eve bristled. “I didn’t say it was going to be easy. The few men and women who understand what is at stake must convince everyone else to consent to these new living arrangements. They will need our cooperation in reorganizing the entire band so that we are all paired off. If one couple try to be faithful to each other while the other men and women in our band continue to seek sex based on their whims, then the mated couple’s good intentions will most assuredly fail. The temptations to join in on the fun with the others would simply be too great.

  “Therefore, all the men and all the women must join in the pact. We must all agree that this new way of life will be best for all concerned, especially our children.” She looked around the group. Several of the women were scowling.

  “What’s to stop a man from making us be true to him through threats and punishments?” asked one woman, who bore a bruise on her arm from an ugly fight with her lover.

  “That will always pose a problem,” Eve replied sadly. “A man might be able to get away with such behavior some of the time, but how many of us are going to put up with it all the time? Unfortunately, there will always be men who try it,” she added as the woman with the bruise hung her head. “I suspect the men may make it work in a few groups; we all know what it’s like in the band across the valley.” The women nodded again. A bully who mistreated the women ruled the neighboring band, and the other men took their cue from him. That tribe was one of the least successful bands in the area.

  Eve continued: “I believe most men will come to love and care for their partner. Cooperation and mutual respect benefit everyone. Men are smarter than most of you think. They will learn that love is more powerful than brute force.”

  One of the younger women said, “I don’t know if I like the sound of this. I don’t want to give up my freedom to stick with one man. That would give him too much power over me. Why would I consent to your new arrangement when I could have lots of men competing with each other to bring me meat?”

  “Well,” replied Eve, “you may change your mind when you learn what a man must do to get you to let only him and no one else monopolize you. He will have to persuade you that he is exceptionally deserving. He must prove to you that he is trustworthy and reliable and that he won’t leave you with a bunch of his children the minute his desire for another woman tickles him. It won’t be easy, though. Men will fight tooth and nail against the idea.”

  “A woman is not made of stone, either,” the same young woman persisted. “Why would we give up our pleasure with many to have pleasure with only one?”

  “Because,” Eve continued, “although we love our freedom, after we have borne children we will love them even more than our pleasure. There are many footsteps between a ‘woman’ and a ‘mother.’ Having one committed man promise to help you raise your children who he is sure are his is better than depending on the whims of many.”

  The young woman, still unsatisfied, raised yet another concern. “How can we be sure he will follow through? How do we know that a man is even interested in having children, or that he is willing to help us raise them? After all, we women know that men will tell us just about anything to get us between the furs. After they get what they want, they often lose interest and look for another conquest.”

  “To keep that from happening,” Eve answered, “we women must agree to lay down some very strict rules. First and foremost: absolutely, positively no granting of sexual favors until a man passes a test.” She gazed across the river. “Let us call this test ‘courtship.’ We must make this test so difficult for him that by the end we will have a pretty good idea whether he has what it takes to satisfy our needs.”

  “Unlike that of all the other animals, our courtship will not just be for a few days. We all know how many turns of the moon it takes before a child can walk or find food. So we must take our time in choosing our mates. All the while, we will judge their health, their ability to bring us meat, and what kind of lovers, companions, and fathers they have the potential to become.

  “We will prevent a man from having
his way until he is mad with desire.” She laughed a little. “Then we will demand that he stay at our side. If we arrange it just so, by then he will want to have pleasure with us so badly he will agree to almost anything.”

  She paused for dramatic effect. “Many of you may have wondered why I kept shoving Abel under Adam’s nose. I had a hunch that when Adam finally grasped that he was Abel’s father he would willingly consent to this new ultimatum.”

  “Ultimatum?” asked the youngest girl.

  “Yes. I will tell him: If you want sex from me, then you must assist me with the children that will result from our union and favor no other woman, ever again.”

  Eve went on: “Once a man decides that he wants to be with only one woman, I suggest that we have a large public ceremony and have the man stand next to his intended before all his family and friends. In front of such an assembly, he will have to swear publicly, by a solemn oath, that he will honor, cherish, and provision his bride with a supply of resources beyond many seasons, so that she can concentrate on raising their children.”

  Eve smiled, and then lowered her voice conspiratorially. “The man will bask in all the attention on him on this special day, and he will only be vaguely aware that this ceremony is the women’s idea. We will insist on it, because, once he makes this proclamation before all the people he cares about, he will be less likely to break his oath.

  “As we women know,” Eve continued, “it is one thing when a man whispers sweet promises in a woman’s ear, and quite another when he has to say it out loud in front of both his mother and father and her parents, too. He will be more inclined to honor his commitment, because he will not want to lose face by appearing untrustworthy, especially when he has sworn his oath in front of those people whose respect he most wants to retain.”

  The women were gradually beginning to understand Eve’s line of reasoning. Then, as they exchanged glances and talked excitedly among themselves, it became clear to Eve that they were coming around to her perceptive assessments.

  But one woman remained unconvinced. “You point out that we play an important role in choosing a man. But isn’t he making a similar judgment about us? If he wants us for the children we can give him, I can see that he will look us over carefully to figure out if we are young enough, pretty enough, fertile enough, and motherly enough for him.”

  “Are you kidding?” another woman interrupted, laughing. “All a man wants is sex. He’s not going to be thinking about those other things.”

  “Not entirely true,” Eve responded. “As men begin to realize the importance of knowing who their children are, they will increasingly care about how we mother. But there is another factor you are overlooking. Men fall in love. For the majority of young men, all common sense disappears when they are in love.”

  A fit of laughter momentarily stopped the discussion as one woman cut in: “We’ve all heard men brag about how they are more logical and reasonable than us girls. But when it comes to love, men are much bigger fools than women.”

  “What is this thing called love?” the teenage girl asked wistfully.

  Eve smiled and looked at her. “Someday, you will know love yourself. It is an emotion every human yearns to experience. I cannot explain the experience to you, because it is beyond words. But I do know that men have a more difficult time figuring out what they are feeling than we do. When they first experience love, it seems a very foreign feeling to them. I’ve seen it beginning in Adam. If other men are like him, love will so addle them that they won’t be able to think of anything else. A man will do almost anything to convince us that he is the only one we should choose to father our babies.” Eve laughed with the other women. “A man in love will do many silly things that he wouldn’t ordinarily do.”

  “But won’t we be as susceptible to the same sort of delicious madness?” asked one of the women.

  “Of course we will. Some of us, at least. But I don’t think lovesickness will disorient women as much as men. After all, love, as we all know, is more our province.”

  Much has been said of the superiority of one human trait after another when compared with other animals. Language, intelligence, abstraction, and foresight are commonly trotted out to justify our dominion. Strange, is it not, that we are also the one animal that can love the longest, deepest, and best of all creatures. Our capacity to love one another, to care for one another, to nurture, protect, minister to, and grieve for one another, also sets us apart from the other animals. We alone among the creatures can crawl into the mind’s cave belonging to another person and understand him or her so completely that we can become one with the other. Although love can also be twisted and grotesque, it is our capacity to love one another and the power to change each other through that love that makes the bond between two people in love so exceptional.

  Many biologists and ethologists have observed what appears to be behavior consistent with the human definition of love between other mated pairs of animals. This is especially in evidence during their courtship phase. In a few species, love appears to be the glue binding a couple for a lifetime. In general, the intense, white-hot phase of love between two animals seems to be instinctually coordinated to peak at the height of the female’s ovulation. Human love differs from that expressed by a few other species in that its acute phase can persist over a much longer duration and then shade into a love that endures. Dostoyevsky, moved by the human need to love, wrote, “Fathers and Teachers, I ponder the question, ‘What is Hell?’ I maintain it is the suffering of being unable to love.”3

  “Come!” Eve clapped her hands, wanting to change the subject. “Let us make a list of what we want in a mate.”

  “Any man I’d choose has to be strong and brave,” said one of the women.

  “I agree,” said Eve. “But what else? What other things should we look for in a mate?”

  One older woman who had been silent spoke up: “Before I let a fellow court me, I insist that he be clean.”

  “He should be cute!” one young woman added.

  Another piped up, “He should be witty and clever, too! He must make me laugh.”

  “Don’t leave off the list a hairy chest and a tight behind.”

  “Definitely!” Eve agreed. “We’d all agree that cleanliness, looks, and laughter are important. Anything else?”

  “Has anyone mentioned kindness?” the old woman of the band interjected. “How considerate a man is foretells what kind of father he will make. And mark my words, the best way to learn how a man will treat you is to pay attention to how he treats his mother. Beware of men who dislike their mothers. And also avoid those men that are too attached to their mothers.”

  “Thank you,” Eve said to this last woman. “You’re very wise.”

  And then, addressing the younger women, Eve began: “All of the traits we’ve talked about are important for a good relationship between a man and a woman. But we must also be able to gauge a man’s potential to be a father; that is more important than the way he looks or how strong, brave, or funny he is. The land is full of good-looking, strong hunters who would make sorry husbands and terrible fathers. Any woman who chooses one of them for her mate will be filled with regret.”

  “How are we to choose the best?” the youngest girl asked.

  “You are forgetting ‘women’s wisdom’—our special knowing,” Eve answered. “Men are not so adept at this knowing as we are, and most men will never understand it. It is our birthright as women. But alas,” she said sadly, “some women do not have it. Women who do not use their intuition will most likely choose a mate foolishly. Their poor decision will ultimately endanger their babies. Therefore, it is important that we pay attention to the voice that speaks to us from within.”

  The other women grew silent and thoughtful.

  Their sense of deeptime separated Gyna sapiens from the females of other species. Not only did she know the connection between sex and pregnancy, she was also able to anticipate her long-term needs. This knowledge woul
d make the process of mating, for both men and women, considerably more complex. No other female animal found it necessary to take into account so many different factors when choosing a mate. Absent among the other sexually reproducing creatures, complex, protracted negotiations over sex became the norm in the human line.

  One of the women piped up, “I think I’ve understood you so far, but exactly what is it that you are saying we should expect from a man in exchange for promising to sleep only with him?”

  Eve turned thoughtful. Slowly, a wry smile crossed her face. “It is,” she answered, “a promise. A promise we shall call from this day forth ‘commitment.’ The word will send shivers down the spine of the boldest hunter whenever we drop it into a conversation. We should require it of him before we let him kiss us, before we let him have sex with us, and before we agree that we will not have sex with any other man but him.”

  “What exactly is it that we want him to commit to?” the same woman pursued.

  “That will be our prerogative. We will get to decide—and we can change our minds. It will drive the men crazy trying to figure it out. But, in general, the kind of commitment we require for a stolen kiss will be considerably different from what we will expect from a man before we promise to bear his children. That will be the big one. He’s going to have to promise to keep his manhood in check. And,” she added, “he is going to have to promise to provide us with whatever we need to raise the children we have together. He must swear that he will love, honor, and cherish us.” Eve grinned. “I suspect ‘commitment’ is going to cause the boys a great deal of distress, indecision, and anguish. They are going to be faced with a whole series of choices they would just as soon not have to make.”

  Had Eve paid a visit through time travel to the present, she would find her suspicions amply confirmed. The current version of Homo sapiens has had many millennia to evolve and mature gradually. During these years, he has slowly come to terms with the kind of compromises he would have to make before a woman would agree to have his heirs. (Just as she has had to make her peace with the compromises she would have to make to ensure his ongoing commitment.) Many a contemporary young man, if asked why he wants children, will say it is because he loves children. But love was not the precipitating motive that originally initiated an ancestral man’s quest for offspring. At the outset there was an awful dread—the fear of death, the loss of identity, the erasure of his ego. These fears stirred him more than his love of toddlers.