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From: jag@cello.mc.duke.edu (John Graves)
Newsgroups: sci.bio,sci.med,sci.psychology
Subject: Re: The persistance of homosexuality in a gene pool
Summary: Early is a long time ago.
Keywords: homosexuality, history
Message-ID: <21096@duke.cs.duke.edu>
Date: 30 Jul 90 16:07:25 GMT
References: <1990Jul23.022511.28161@mtcchi.uucp> <11095@netcom.UUCP> <10615@cs.utexas.edu> <1990Jul29.050038.24791@wolves.uucp>
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Reply-To: jag@cellbio.duke.edu (John Graves)
Organization: Duke University Medical Center -- Durham, NC
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In article <1990Jul29.050038.24791@wolves.uucp> wolfe@wolves.UUCP (Wolfe) writes:

In replying to a previous article which noted that 

>>Mr Hamilton is confusing the practicalities of today with the
>>realities that shaped human evolution.  Throughout most of the
>>human past, the desire to have children did not mean diddly
>>squat.  People copulated for desire or social reason, and lo and
>>behold the kids came along.  Planning births or avoiding it was
>>not really a factor.  Indeed, there is good reason to think that
>>early humans did not even know the connection between sex and
>>pregnancy.  
>>
>>Russell

Wolfe answers:
>	Sorry to disappoint you, but there are very clear indications in the
>earliest known records that indicate that the relationship between sex
>and pregnancy were well known.
>	It is also clear that there was a crude understanding of
>heredity as well.  Early man used selective breeding to modify the
>animals that were domesticated.  The "9 months" period of human
>gestation was well known in early records.


>
>*OPINION*
>	Just because the sexual immaturity of modern america leads many
>people to be unaware of their own bodies, we should not assume that
>"early humans" did not know about sex.  There are some indications in
>early writings that there was a (suprizing to the modern mind) level of
>sophistication in terms of sexual and procreational knowledge in several
>places and times.
>
It is common among creation scientists to think of the world as relatively
young and human history as filling quite a bit of that creation.  It should be
apparent to most that the period called history is quite small in regard
to that known as prehistory.  Even the most conservative of estimates about
the existence of homo sapiens places the beginning period back tens of
thousands of years.  While there have certainly been paradigm shifts during
recorded history which makes misreadings of early human records, for all
intents and purposes here, any human record or writing is that of later
human beings.

Truly early humans cannot be judged on the basis of any symbolic artefacts
that are known to exist at this time.  If we are to assume that man or woman
understood the gestation period from first consciousness we are making a
creationist assumption.  Knowledge of this sort needed to have been learned
in a trial and error method and may have been passed down through oral
traditions once known.  But it would also have been necessary to have an
understanding of time to do this.  It is highly unlikely that early humans
knew what nine months were and while they may have noticed a time correlation
with pregnancy they would not have thought it nine months from conception since
there would have been no apparant connection with copulation and increasing
size that would have signified the coming of birth in the future.  Humans
would have had to have been fairly sophisticated to make a connection between
one act of copulation and gestation since it is likely that several acts of
copulation may have followed the fateful one.  For all we know record keeping
may have come about because of the need to plan births but highly unlikely.

We simply do not know anything about the sexual practices of early humans other
than that heterosexual sex occurred.  It is highly likely that homosexual 
experiences occurred too.  In fact it may be that early men were constantly
having sex in all combinations since it appears that primates and humans
naturally engage in large amounts of homosexual sexual experiences.  Natural
here meaning that it occurs.  

It may indeed be that original male human behavior can be expressed as
"fuck it if it moves".  

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