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I have both in my "Saved for later" bucket on Amazon but never really got around to actually buying them. I'm just not sure whether they will be interesting and

• IgorPartola 9y ago
  Sex at Dawn basically boils down to this: when humans evolved to be what we essentially are right now, we were polyamorous and sexually promiscuous. Everyone had sex with everyone all the time because tribe mentality was not what we picture it to be today (strong had all the things, weak had to look to the strong for food, shelter, and protection; in exchange they offered sex). The authors claim that this shift happened much later, about 10k years ago when we switched to predominantly agricultural societies. They offer evidence in the form of Bonobos, who are as related to humans as chimps but are much more promiscuous and less territorial and violent, and in the fact that we have big penises with lots of sperm, meaning evolutionary selection happens primarily through sperm competition, not through sexual partner selection (e.g.: females have sex with lots of males, but only one sperm survives.) There, that's basically the whole book. There are interesting tangential things in the book if you are a factoid junkie, but this is the main argument. Mating in Captivity is much much harder to summarize like this, and is a better book. It talks about a whole lot of different situations and solutions that did and didn't work for specific couples as their sex life started to dwindle. It touches on non-monogamy, but also proposes other solutions to the problem of decreased sex in long term relationships. If you are choosing between the two, do this one.