Civilization: It's All About Sex

What is it that makes one person “civilized” and another “barbaric” or “primitive?” I suggest that civilization is essentially synonymous with rules or controls, and that most of those rules arise to determine when it's OK to fight, and how the fighting is to be done. With civilization, fighting becomes something more than a physical contest. With civilization, there arise legal systems, courts, and institutionalized methods to resolve disputes without resorting to physical fighting. Yet, the central issue is still about fighting or arguing.


So, why do people fight? Why did humans need to develop civilization in the first place? Plants and animals managed to “get along” on this planet for literally millions of years without civilization. What's different about humans?


I propose that it has a lot to do with sex. Animals fight over the right to mate. When I say that, I'm talking about fighting within their species, and often within their specific herds or groups. Beyond mating, animal fighting is limited, as far as I can tell, to practice fighting or play fighting, either as a way to learn hunting skills or to prepare for mating challenges.


I used to think that only humans the ability to engage in recreational sex, and that all other life forms were limited to procreational sex, but it turns out that that isn't entirely true. A number of animals, bonobos and dolphins are two examples, do engage in recreational sex; ie: sex for pleasure rather than procreation.


What remains of my errant observation, and what I believe is at the root of mankind's argumentativeness, is that man appears to be the only life form, plant or animal, that doesn't know whether it's engaging in procreational or recreational sex. In other words, one of the things that makes humans different from all the other life forms on Earth is that he's lost the ability to know whether and when his female is fertile. This, in turn, means that any sex is potentially procreational sex. And that, in turn, leads to incessant fighting over mating rights, even when mating isn't the intended goal. And that leads to civilization.


While I'm on the subject, I want to make two related points. One is that fighting is too restrictive a term. We compete. Fighting is about competition, and competition can be intellectual or emotional, as well as physical. We compete to prove our prowess, to score “points” in social status, and thus the right to mate. We compete to dominate. We compete to rule, even when rule is determined by election -- or should I say, especially when it's determined by election.  Not only do rulers generally gain the right to mate, they gain the right to make the rules about who can mate.  Note also that females compete for the right to choose, or be chosen by, the “best” male candidate. Even Cinderella is a story about competition for the right to mate.


The other point I'd like to raise here is that I think this inability to know whether we are recreating or procreating is a fairly recent development in the evolutionary history of mankind. There is little, if any, evidence of what we would call civilization; including agriculture, writing, and building on any significant scale; prior to the end of the last ice age; specifically about 12,500 years ago. There appears to have been art, and there appears to have been spirituality before then. Even Neanderthals demonstrate those attributes. Certainly, that is true for Cro Magnon, or early-modern-humans. But civilization, as such, is a relatively modern development.
I would ask, “What happened to change us?” If it was a genetic change, it might be discoverable through DNA analysis, but I suspect it was epigenetic. Epigenetics isn't about gene changes, per se, it's about gene expression. In other words, while dogs share the same genes, one variety of dog exhibits short, curly hair, while another exhibits long, flowing hair. One looks like a pug, while another looks like an Irish wolf hound. These differences are epigenetic. If that turns out to be the difference between civilized man and so-called primitive man, then I doubt that science will ever be able to learn when or why the change took place, or even to prove that it did. Still, I raise the question: “What happened?”



One final note:


According to the latest published DNA research (as of 2012), there is evidence that modern humans carry DNA from Neanderthals. This is very recent, and is in direct opposition to a previous announcement that there is no DNA carryover. On looking into this, I've learned that the earlier “no carryover” announcement was based on analysis of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). MtDNA is inherited only from the mother. Thus, it would appear that Neanderthal males could and did mate with early modern females, but that early modern males did not (successfully) mate with Neanderthal females. Was that because Neanderthal females were incapable of carrying such children to term, or might it have been that modern human males knew when Neanderthal females were fertile, and avoided sex with them during that time? Again, it's something we'll likely never answer with certainty, but I raise it, nonetheless.