Contents

Preface: A Primate Meets His Match (a note from one of the authors)
Introduction: Another Well-Intentioned Inquisition
– A Few Million Years in a Few Pages

Part I: On the Origin of the Specious
1. Remember the Yucatán!
– You Are What You Eat
2. What Darwin Didn’t Know About Sex
– The Flintstonization of Prehistory
– What Is Evolutionary Psychology and Why Should You Care?
– Lewis Henry Morgan
3. A Closer Look at the Standard Narrative of Human Sexual Evolution
– How Darwin Insults Your Mother (The Dismal Science of Sexual Economics)
– The Famously Flaccid Female Libido
– Male Parental Investment (MPI)
– “Mixed Strategies” in the War Between the Sexes
– Extended Sexual Receptivity and Concealed Ovulation
4. The Ape in the Mirror
– Primates and Human Nature
– Doubting the Chimpanzee Model
– In Search of Primate Continuity

Part II: Lust in Paradise (Solitary?)
5. Who Lost What in Paradise?
– On Getting Funky and Rockin’ Round the Clock
6. Who’s Your Daddies?
– The Joy of S.E.Ex.
– The Promise of Promiscuity
– Bonobo Beginnings
7. Mommies Dearest
– Nuclear Meltdown
8. Making a Mess of Marriage, Mating, and Monogamy
– Marriage: The “Fundamental Condition” of the Human Species?
– On Matrimonial Whoredom
9. Paternity Certainty: The Crumbling Cornerstone of the Standard Narrative
– Love, Lust, and Liberty at Lugu Lake
– On the Inevitability of Patriarchy
– The March of the Monogamous
10. Jealousy: A Beginner’s Guide to Coveting Thy Neighbor’s Spouse
– Zero-Sum Sex
– How to Tell When a Man Loves a Woman

Part III: The Way We Weren’t
11. “The Wealth of Nature” (Poor?)
– Poor, Pitiful Me
– The Despair of Millionaires
– Finding Contentment “at the Bottom of the Scale of Human Beings”
12. The Selfish Meme (Nasty?)
– Homo Economicus
– The Tragedy of the Commons
– Dreams of Perpetual Progress
– Ancient Poverty or Assumed Affluence?
– On Paleolithic Politics
13. The Never-Ending Battle over Prehistoric War (Brutish?)
– Professor Pinker, Red in Tooth and Claw
– The Mysterious Disappearance of Margaret Power
– The Spoils of War
– The Napoleonic Invasion (The Yanomami Controversy)
– The Desperate Search for Hippie Hypocrisy and Bonobo Brutality
14. The Longevity Lie (Short?)
– When Does Life Begin? When Does It End?
– Is 80 the New 30?
– Stressed to Death
– Who’re You Calling a Starry-Eyed Romantic, Pal?

Part IV: Bodies in Motion
15. Little Big Man
– All’s Fair in Love and Sperm War
16. The Truest Measure of a Man
– Hard Core in the Stone Age
17. Sometimes a Penis Is Just a Penis
18. The Prehistory of O
– “What Horrid Extravagancies of Minde!”
– Beware the Devil’s Teat
– The Force Required to Suppress It
19. When Girls Go Wild
– Female Copulatory Vocalization
– Sin Tetas, No Hay Paraíso
– Come Again?

Part V: Men Are from Africa, Women Are from Africa
20. On Mona Lisa’s Mind
21. The Pervert’s Lament
– Just Say What?
– Kellogg’s Guide to Child Abuse
– The Curse of Calvin Coolidge
– Ten More Reasons Why I Need Somebody New (Just Like You)
22. Confronting the Sky Together
– Everybody Out of the Closet
– The Marriage of the Sun and the Moon

Acknowledgments
References and Suggested Further Reading
Notes
Index