Sex at Dawn

How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships

By: Christopher Ryan, Cacilda Jetha

Narrated by: Allyson Johnson, Jonathan Davis, Christopher Ryan (Preface)

Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins

Publisher's summary

Earphones Award Winner (AudioFile Magazine)

Since Darwin's day, we've been told that sexual monogamy comes naturally to our species. Mainstream science - as well as religious and cultural institutions - has maintained that men and women evolved in families in which a man's possessions and protection were exchanged for a woman's fertility and fidelity. But this narrative is collapsing. Fewer and fewer couples are getting married, and divorce rates keep climbing as adultery and flagging libido drag down even seemingly solid marriages.

How can reality be reconciled with the accepted narrative? It can't be, according to renegade thinkers Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha. While debunking almost everything we "know" about sex, they offer a bold alternative explanation in this provocative and brilliant book.

Ryan and Jetha's central contention is that human beings evolved in egalitarian groups that shared food, child care, and, often, sexual partners. Weaving together convergent, frequently overlooked evidence from anthropology, archaeology, primatology, anatomy, and psychosexuality, the authors show how far from human nature monogamy really is. Human beings everywhere and in every era have confronted the same familiar, intimate situations in surprisingly different ways. The authors expose the ancient roots of human sexuality while pointing toward a more optimistic future illuminated by our innate capacities for love, cooperation, and generosity.

BONUS AUDIO: Includes a Preface written and read by author Christopher Ryan.

©2010 Christopher Ryan, Cacilda Jetha (P)2010 Audible, Inc

Critic reviews

"A surprisingly non-titillating book about sex among prehistoric people makes for a terrific audio adaptation...With their straightforward approach, the narrators show professionalism and authority in this anthropological discussion of sex." ( AudioFile)

“ Sex at Dawn is the single most important book about human sexuality since Alfred Kinsey unleashed Sexual Behavior in the Human Male on the American public in 1948.” (Dan Savage)

"My favorite book of 2010...it's the only book I read this year that proved that I was badly mistaken about something." (Peter Sagal, host of NPR's Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!)

Excellent analysis of modern day myths about monogamy

This book does an excellent job of providing evidence and scientific facts showing that monogamy is hardly the most “natural” shape of human bonding. Rather for over 200k years our ancient ancestors lived a much more egalitarian lifestyle with accepted promiscuity between both sexes. Examples such as chimpanzee and Bonobo bonding both including forms of multiple sex partnerships. Bonobos having the closest match to human DNA have an incredible gambit of sexual promiscuities with a matriarchal based society. With much more evolutionary and anthropological evidence deconstructing the myth of monogamy, the books most impressive feature is the ability to spotlight our own culture’s biases regarding the myth of monogamy. Enjoyable read.

Why

I love this book so much I've heard it over ten times. And why, why did they have to ruin so much when, in Chapter21, they contradict so many of their own arguments by portraiting men as the only gender responsible for infidelity and needed of multiple partners

Can’t help but agree

Everything the authors say seem so plausible to me - it really feels like that’s the way things are!
It was also really liberating to read such work.

Can’t wait before these ideas get wider spread and discussion.

interesting, sensible, and logical ideas

definitely a great book, I highly recommend it, but I cannot say I loved either of the narrator's voices. regardless, it's worth the listen.

Life changing

Already tackling a massive topic on its face, “Sex at Dawn,” manages to somehow address nearly every cultural dysfunction experienced in modern life. If you hadn’t already detonated your life and found this book as a result, I don’t know how you could do anything but afterward.

Fascinating, despite a handful of errors and some prejudice and overreaching

This is a fascinating read from the perspectives of anthropology, biology, and history. Whatever one thinks of the authors’ central thesis—that human monogamy is not the norm, not natural, and ultimately unhealthy and unrealistic—the book contains a ton of interesting information that is likely unfamiliar to most readers.

Just to clear one thing up now: this is not a book about sex, at least, not exactly. It’s about the biological and anthropological history of sex in humans, drawing at times from what we observe in closely related species. It does include information about sexual activities, of course, especially among primates, but it’s a relatively academic text, not as steamy as the title and cover art alone might imply at first glance.

The book does have a few glitches and errors. For example, the audiobook narrator mispronounces “erudite” each of the numerous times it is used in the text, which is just odd.

More importantly, the book does come across as a bit prejudiced against the many reasons humans *have* adopted monogamy as a norm in various times and places, including religious motivations. That is, the authors more or less dismiss as unenlightened, repressed, or even malevolent all attempts to adopt or enforce monogamous norms. This includes, near the end of the book, treating spouses who leave a marriage in the wake of the other spouse’s affair as irrational, unrealistic, panicky, uninformed, and generally clueless. Biology, we’re told, just dictates that this is how it is: humans aren’t wired for monogamy, and monogamy is really just an accident of the shift from hunter-gatherer societies to agricultural ones, with the accompanying rise of the ideas of property and territory in human thinking. So, it’s obviously best if we all just accept that, get realistic about it, and move on into a more flexible future. The authors give little consideration to whether there are good, salutary, or moral reasons for monogamy. I will grant that such speculation would have been outside the scope of the book or of the authors’ expertise, but that’s exactly why they should have avoided weighing in on such questions at all. The book would have been much better had the authors simply presented what we empirically know within their fields and perhaps raised the questions for other fields prompted by that knowledge, without wading so deeply into their own opinions as to the answers.

All that said, this is one of the more interesting books I’ve read in the past few years. Readers interested in why we act the way we do and whether humans at other times and places have seen things differently will find a lot to enjoy and ponder here if they approach with an open mind. And regardless of whether you agree with the authors’ conclusion—better to throw off the shackles of monogamy in the name of being true to ourselves—or hold to monogamy’s continued value, you have to admit that our species does seem to have some struggles with the monogamous standard. This book offers at least some reasons why that might be.

Mind Blowing.

One of those books that will change the way you think about yourself and others. Well read and performed. Intensive research. A science book that reads like a thriller. Amazing.

A Serious Subject Made Interesting

This is the first somewhat serious scientific book I have listened to. A different experience from fiction or memoir. And this book is still written for a general audience, not a scientist, so it wasn't difficult to understand. It has some humor, which the reader was very skilled at presenting.

The subject is certainly controversial, but I thought the authors did a great job of making their point. They include many quotes from other scientists, both to support their theory, and from the other side. Then they point out the errors, or inconsistencies from the contrary position. Anyone with an interest in human sexuality would find this book to be interesting.

So good I went out and bought the hardcover too.

Everything I always thought and couldn't quite say at polite dinner parties! Brilliant and keeps your interest all the way through. One of the best non fiction I've read.

Transformational, controversial, funny

I like that the authors didn't pull any punches and took a very comical approach to deliver very taboo and controversial content that may have been heard with a different method of delivery. Our modern day social constructs have programmed us humans to exhibit behavior that is not congruent with our natural tendencies. "Sex at Dawn" exposes this programming as well as our nature.

I don't think there are other books that are this comprehensive on the history of sexuality. I would suggest that people read books on the PICKUP ARTIST MOVEMENT and Psychology books at large to better understand some of the content herein.

I'm usually not a fan of most audio book voices. I think the narrator was the right choice in this case because he was one of the writers and he clearly understood a great intonation to make it flow well. I thought the speed was pretty slow though, I listened to at 3x the speed and most all of it was intelligible although a few times I had to rewind.

I digested the book over a few sittings. I would suggest the same for a reader since the content might be pretty out there for a lot of folks.

I did not exactly agree with the way a lot of the content was portrayed. The authors did a good job of exposing the listener to new concepts of sexuality that they may not have heard. The next step is really drilling down into the different time periods of sexual progression in human evolution and helping people determine what relationship structure is most natural for them as individuals so that they can start planning sustainable relationships. I don't think this book is the bible on sexual evolution but is a great start and might be the best thing we've got to date. In our present day I can see this book alleviating a lot of concern of its readers who may wonder why they have urges that contradict their social programming. I can see this book being looked back upon as a major milestone in the shift of understanding in human sexuality.