EVIDENCE FROM THE HUMAN RELATIONS AREA FILES.

James W. Prescott, Ph.D.
Institute of Humanistic Science

In Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality," by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá, an examination of prehistoric sex (pre-agriculture where earliest evidence of agriculture dated to about 8000 BCE) where hunter gatherers/foragers dominated this planet revealed a pattern of sharing and egalitarianism that included multiple sexual relationships. For perspective, the authors observed, “the amount of time our species has spent living in settled agricultural societies represents just 5 percent of our collective experience, at most”. They cited Jared Diamond: “The shift to agriculture is a ‘catastrophe from which we have never recovered’ ”.