In the beginning, there was hair, lots of hair, and the vagina and penis were not visible, while the breasts were merely functional appendages for feeding offspring. In his book The Prehistory of Sex: Four Million Years of Human Sexual Culture, anthropologist Timothy L Taylor makes some fascinating “discoveries”. 


Some of which apparently still comes into play in our present-day mating and parenting rituals. I often find these “discoveries” interesting or even amusing, because in the final analysis there’s no real proof of anything. 
However a lot has to be said for informed arguments and the powers of intelligent deduction. If you’ve ever been on a date which involved dinner, whether you are a willing participant or not, at some stage of the date both of you will feel an inexplicable expectation of intercourse after the dinner. 

And do you know where this completely irrational expectation comes from? Picture this scenario: Four million years ago a pregnant female ancestor of yours finds herself in the precarious position of not being able to be equal to the hunt. And as a consequence starts to miss out on meal times and slowly begins to starve.

However, all is not lost. A young buck in the community of monkey boys wants to get his groove on with her and although she’s not the least bit interested, somewhere in the back of her ever evolving brain a plan begins to form. Back then, apparently, the connection between copulating and pregnancy was a mystery, as was the concept of being faithful. I say apparently because, I wasn’t around to be absolutely sure.

Anyway back to monkey boy meets pregnant monkey girl. She decides to give up the booty in return for food, and through a series of a combination of stern and seductive grunts, including a few timely batting of the eyelids, communicates to monkey boy that he can have some sugar as long as he brings home a dead animal every now and then. Timothy L Taylor would have us believe that this practice is still somehow hidden in our DNA and is in-fact the stimulus that sets off our modern day expectation for sex after dinner, in the dating scenario. Whether or not this actually happened is at best an informed hypothesis, however we all know that in today’s mating ritual, if you’ve made it to the third date and it includes the partaking of a meal, one of you is probably thinking of getting some, or putting out. 

What fascinates me is our sometimes incredible means to adapt in the face of life threatening scenarios. And I would argue like most seasoned parents I’m sure, that parenting is often indeed a life-threatening state of existence. To be a half-way good parent is to be prepared for any scenario, which is of course impossible to do with kids ‘cos you never know what’s going to happen next. I was recently engaged in an email conversation with one of the readers of my column, a widow of four kids ranging in ages from 4 to 19. 

She had recently had to deal with a series of events which forced her to call upon that ancient reservoir of intuitive female nous. How do you cope with your eldest son being run over and nearly killed in a car accident, your four-year-old little girl having a heart-stopping moment after crashing into a wall during playtime with a friend, the other son being arrested for vandalism and your young teenage daughter collapsing from a diabetic seizure, all in the space of a few months? 

Suffice it to say that she did not have to resort to anything quite as extreme as our hairy friend in Tim Taylor’s story, but she pulled through admirably. And I for one had to ponder the instinctual emotional intelligence she had to draw upon to get through this ordeal. I’m not going to go into the specifics of her triumph over adversity, but the point is she knew, on a subconscious level that surrender was not an option, and that somehow she had to and would prevail. I think this is the lesson all parents have to learn. In the pursuit of raising and nurturing your offspring to adulthood and beyond, there is no surrender and no quarter.

Trust your instincts and it will get you through. So what do you think? Can our instincts be traced back to four million years ago? Are good parents equipped with pre-programmed responses to ensure the survival of their children? And how do bad parents abdicate that responsibility so easily?


 
 
 


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