I think he is romanticizing too much. From what I remember reading, women get impregnated inside the body so that males can not be sure who ended up being the f

I think he is romanticizing too much. From what I remember reading, women get impregnated inside the body so that males can not be sure who ended up being the father. This evolved because of a battle of the sexes. It is common in the animal world for the new male to kill the offspring of the old male, and not knowing who is the father is a strategy to prevent. So there is no reason to assume that traditional societies just didn't care and loved all children equally. It's just that they might not have another choice. And also this is probably why virginity is so important in many cultures, because it promises to guarantee the man to become the real father. I just read Jared Diamond's latest book and I think he wrote that most wars (in New Guinea) between tribes are about women or pigs - so they do care about possessions (not implying women should be treated as possessions, just making a counterpoint to the article). There also seems to be the concept of marriage in many traditional societies, also kids being promised for marriage for later when they are old enough, and stuff like that. What is probably true is that we are not build for monogamy: both sexes would prefer to "not put all their eggs into one basket" (women want to have kids from multiple fathers, men want to have kids from multiple mothers). On the other hand Nassim Taleb mentioned in "Black Swan" that by assigning one man to one woman and vice versa, the church might have done a lot for peace - before that system, there would have been more men without any mates at all, resulting in jealousy and fighting.