The evolutionary mysteries of religion and orgasms

Kate Douglas, contributor

There are some thorny mysteries in the evolution of female sexuality. Is there a purpose to the female orgasm? What about menopause, menstruation and prominent breasts? Evolutionary psychologist David Barash jumps bravely into exploring these and other conundrums of human evolution in his new book, Homo Mysterious.

In searching for the "why" behind these unexplained oddities, Barash provides a wide-ranging survey of the territory, and he is at his most entertaining when describing his own ideas.

His handicap theory of female breasts is rather clever. He suggests that, like the peacock's tail, a permanently voluptuous bosom might be a woman's way of signalling her fitness by showing that she can thrive despite depositing so much valuable fat into cumbersome and mostly decorative appendages of a sort found nowhere else in nature.

Equally appealing is his favoured explanation for concealed ovulation - the fact that women's increased fertility is not broadcast. Barash suggests that once females became intelligent enough to link sex with babies - and babies with hard work - they could have tried to limit their birth rates. Those whose cycle was least discernible to themselves would have been least successful at avoiding pregnancy, so women with concealed ovulation gradually became more common.

But why are evolutionary mysteries of female sexuality far more numerous and prominent than their male counterparts? Barash remains disappointingly silent on this, although he does scrutinise some manly mysteries, such as why men are the more dowdy sex when sexual selection usually produces showy males, and why they tend not to live as long as women. There is also a very cogent chapter on homosexuality - although while Barash notes recent evidence pointing to its having different genetic underpinnings in men and women, he fails to consider that homosexuality might therefore have separate adaptive rationales in the two sexes.

Barash also takes on the weighty topics of religion, art and human intelligence. There is plenty here to inform and entertain, but he doesn't always marshal his eclectic material effectively. The chapters on religion make particularly frustrating reading, often just noodling around the subject instead of asking why this particular primate and no other evolved strong tendencies to spiritual thinking. No distinction is drawn between traditional, small-scale religions and today's predominant world religions. And Barash leaves a rather grudging explanation of evolutionary group selection until last, so that readers are not provided with a sufficient theoretical framework in which to assess some frankly iffy ideas from Freud and the like.

No mysteries were solved in the writing of this book. Instead, Barash argues that wisdom comes from learning about what we don't know. I agree, but I am not convinced, as he is, that these evolutionary puzzles are ultimately solvable.

We can use new insights from genetics, psychology, palaeoanthropology and archaeology to hone our ideas, but when it comes to human evolution there will always be an element of mystery.

Book Information
Homo Mysterious
by David P. Barash
Published by: Oxford University Press
?18.99/$27.95

Source: http://feeds.newscientist.com/c/749/f/10897/s/2145690e/l/0L0Snewscientist0N0Cblogs0Cculturelab0C20A120C0A70Cthe0Eevolutionary0Emysteries0Eof0Ereligion0Eand0Eorgasms0Bhtml0DDCMP0FOTC0Erss0Gnsref0Fonline0Enews/story01.htm

flip saunders academy award nominations cynthia nixon joe biden cspan state of the union drinking game oscar noms