There’ve been only thousands years of monogamy, that is–since agriculture got underway–according to the newish book, Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality. When people started farming, say the authors, they started thinking about things like ownership and where babies come from. Monogamy followed–meaning that lifelong pairing doesn’t necessarily come naturally to us.
Here’s Dan Savage getting very excited about the thesis as he interviews author Christopher Ryan on his podcast [with the usual explicit language]. Not for everyone, but…if it’s for you, there’s more where that came from on Ryan’s Psychology Today blog .