From Dick Frost
Kate Douglas writes of Homo sapiens that “males and females form
long-term, monogamous relationships within large social groups, with both sexes
cooperating to care for the children”
(13 October, p 42).
Fine, but it is wrong to push that structure back into prehistory.
There is no evidence that any Palaeolithic female knew the father of her
child(ren). Some hunter-gatherers did not connect copulation and conception.
Cooperation in child rearing is a guess.
I guess that young children were reared mainly by their mothers within
largely female groups. It is likely that people lived in small groups (25 to 50
people) in the Palaeolithic, in environments that offered such abundant
nutrition for big brains that women could provide for themselves and their kids.
They didn’t need to swap sex for prime cuts of mammoth—though why not, if
you like mammoth?
Finally, there doesn’t have to be a Darwinian (that is, functional, useful)
explanation for make-up. Some things just happen.
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Appleby, Cumbria
