Recently I happened to read a few articles from the domain of anthropology. They are moving towards findings and positions that are very different from the conclusions that the scientific world had reached earlier regarding the social structure of primitive humans. It is good to remember that most statements in anthropology are not theories, but inferences and therefore hypotheses. It was generally believed that in its early stages, the human race lived alone or in pairs, and that it has not been long since it began to form communities. It is probably only about thirty thousand years since humans began living as tribes. (A group can be called a tribe only if there are some thousand related people living together as a colony.) However, recent studies indicate that since the beginning of the human race, humans have always lived in small groups of fifty or a hundred people. Groups consisting of related females and males and males who are directly related to the majority of them, and the families they formed together.
Like all other species in nature, the continuity and survival of the species has always been the main interest of humans as well. Mothers are the ones who are most connected physically and emotionally to their offsprings. Mothers gave the highest importance to protecting and raising their children in every way they could. Realizing that they could not do it alone, women were more interested in finding men who could help them doing that. There were two types of males in any society. 'Aggressive competitors' and 'caring foragers'. The first group were men who were perhaps robust, handsome, and had similar other attracting qualities. They brought out all their attractive qualities and skills to attract and mate with females who were healthy, intelligent, and beautiful. Although the caring foragers did not have the physical fitness or attractiveness to compete with the above mentioned group, females preferred the latter who were more providing and caring.
There were many reasons for this. First, the second type of males were interested in children. Since "aggressive competitors" were more interested in sex, they tried to separate the mother from the child, and often endangered or killed the child. The other type of males, on the other hand, was attractive to females because they would forage and bring fruit, tubers, honey, or meat to her and her child. The second type of males would not only provide food for the mother and her child, but also would provide protection to the female and her children, seemed more desirable to the females. Thus, caring foragers had families and more children than aggressive competitors. The female who once fell for the aggressive competitor soon rejected him and sought a more caring mate.
Looking at it this way, it becomes clear that although humans were not originally monogamous, the desire to have and sustain a family was there from the beginning.
Because humans were intelligent, they were able to keep distance from predators, move away without provoking them, and remaining in hiding hunt in groups herbivorous animals. Their strength remained in their intelligence, care for the family and the group, and teamwork rather than their physical strength!
