Ever since Adam and Eve : the evolution of human sexuality / Malcolm Potts and Roger Short.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Potts, Malcolm, 1935-

Contributor:

Short, R. V. (Roger Valentine), 1930-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Sex customs--History.

Sex customs.

History.

Sex--History.

Sex.

Physical Description:

x, 358 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 26 cm

Place of Publication:

Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Summary:

Few would argue that sex is a great preoccupation of humankind. In our private lives, sex can contribute to rewarding companionship, or conversely, the lack of it, to utter loneliness. With so much at stake, it is no wonder that sexuality is the most feared and repressed of our characteristics.

Human sexual behavior is a combination of innate behavior patterns that evolved over the millennia to help us adapt to a nomadic, hunter-gatherer lifestyle, and recent cultural constraints and expectations imposed by modern society. All cultures make rules about who can have sex with whom, and where, when, and how.

In this fascinating book, eminent scientists Malcolm Potts and Roger Short attempt to make sense of our increasingly complicated sexual situation. For each of life's milestones -- sexual intercourse, conception, pregnancy, birth, puberty, love, marriage, parenting, menopause and death -- they describe the biology behind our actions and consider how pressures imposed by various historical and contemporary cultures have further influenced our behavior. By looking at the past, they attempt to make sense of the present, to see how and why these cultural modifications arose, how they have contributed to the richness of human sexual behavior, and what our biological and cultural inheritance can teach us about safeguarding the continuation of our species. The authors examine how sex relates to diverse topics such as love, power, and mortality. The result is a lively and thought-provoking discussion of one of the most complex elements of the human condition.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 335-346) and index.

ISBN:

0521470420

0521644046

OCLC:

39985597