Primative tribes and modern dating

[wwwjd]

Although wasn't the plan, this is sort of an off shoot of that other thread.

 

While trying to dig past all of today's modern blocks against decent relationships, I wondered how things fall NATURALLY in today's current line up of completely primitive tribes. Why not seek the wisdom of a peoples who live more in harmony with the planet, than people you have to pay $99 an hour to, in a society that values greed over humanity, profits 1000 times more of FAILING relationships than keeping them together, and paves and destroys for the sake of "progress"?

They might be closer to our true nature than we are.

Yes our nature NOW, is as it is NOW, but what is it at the core of our being? I think guys know to us it is sex sex sex sex. And when you look at primitive tribal pics, there is almost always a pack of kids running about.

 

So, after poking about a while, I found some interesting stuff. I'm not any kind of Somethingologist that knows anything about historic psychology of ancient man or anything, no, I'm just a curious guy on a web browser with googled loaded up.

 

We've all seen the cartoons, stories and theories about the caveman clubbing the woman over the head and dragging her back to his cave. At which point, we can only assume they drank lots of coffee, traded CaveBook pages, enjoyed long hours of stimulating grunts (talking) and three clubbings later, started in with sex. Maybe this is where the "I've got a headache" thing originated?

But, after digging around a while, I never found any proof from the professors etc that the clubbing and dragging ever happened. I read it stems from someone's early newsprint cartoon that suggested it for fun.

 

Anyway, one of the more interesting things I ran across was that of cheating, or maybe it is not cheating in this tribe. If a guy wanted to "hook up" with someone else's hut-mate, all he had to do was make sure the man was out of the hut, plant his wooden spear in front of the hut door at an angle like blocking the entrance, and go in and get her done. I guess the man of the hut would come back, see that, and either wait patiently or wonder on down the path to another hut. Either way, it is obvious they had some sort of basic system down, even when they are barely even communicate with a language.

[insert guy planting spear joke here]

 

The stuff I'm reading might describe early "courship" like a village raid with raping going on. Advancing a little and they get teens doing various body paintings and piercings along with mating dances to impress and attract mates.

Later came the whole arranged marriage thing.

 

And a lot of that still goes on somewhere in the world today.

 

I wonder what it would be like, if we dropped ALL the charades we do, hoops we jump through, and got back to the basics, "Me man, you woman, me like you", and skipped the huge list of requirements both teams have for the other?

 

I'm hoping that other guy chimes in here, because it sounds like he's done a lot more research on this topic.

 

 

And before I click submit, I, PERSONALLY, do not think this is the BEST way everything should be, I'm not pushing it on anyone, not trying to convert anyone, nor am I trying to get dates here and impress girls with my DEEP topics... I enjoy the times in which I live, but think we do cloud ourselves a lot and CAN learn from the past. And maybe those primitive tribes ARE on to something.... to me, working hard to build stuff, and a life of nothing but eating, sleeping, laughing and sex doesn't sound too bad.

This is just a topic for fun and interesting conversation and nothing more.

[Ruby Slippers]

Romantic, monogamous love between two individuals is a relatively new concept in human history.

 

I was having this interesting fantasy with this sexy guy last year - I was imagining that we were living in a tribal village where everybody slept with everybody, and he, the sexy warrior guy, was at my place today. Then next week might be the wise medicine man, the next week the cute village clown.

 

It doesn't really sound that bad.

 

Basically, I think people just need to lighten up and BE HONEST about who they are and what they want. If you want monogamy, go for it. It comes very naturally for me to be loyal to one man, and that's what I would like. But if you want an open relationship, be honest about that, too. Just think for yourself, be true to yourself.

[wwwjd]

Gosh! I need to research monogomy in the tribes. That would be interesting. Didn't run across that part.

 

I read a bunch where science says we are kinda mentally wired to seek out ONE mate to stick with. Odd thing is, we have severed that primal connections with are actions of today. Being super picky, getting divorce a lot etc. I wonder if the primitives stick together for life, through thick and thin, various "Spear Plantings" and etc.

 

My hut would have a freaking cement front porch so no spears could be planted

[somedude81]

Humans are definitely not a "for life" species.

[threebyfate]

This is where Internet sociologists fall flat on their faces. Regardless of our archaeological roots, why is it that the human race can evolve over time with everything else and yet, according to these armchair evo-psychsters sex remains at primitive levels?

 

It's not natural for us to crap in toilets, use computers, wear clothing or cook our meat but we do these things daily.

[ja123]

Humans are definitely not a "for life" species.

 

Why do you say that?

[fortyninethousand322]

I'd actually prefer arranged marriages. Make a lot of things easier for many people.

[somedude81]

I'd actually prefer arranged marriages. Make a lot of things easier for many people.

I'd prefer an actual matchmaking thing were people are match on compatibility by somebody who knows what they are doing.

 

Then you go on a couple of dates with that person and then each of you can decide to go on, or part ways.

[fortyninethousand322]

I'd prefer an actual matchmaking thing were people are match on compatibility by somebody who knows what they are doing.

 

Then you go on a couple of dates with that person and then each of you can decide to go on, or part ways.

 

That's how my Muslim friends "arrange" their marriages. Your parents (or other adult) suggests someone to you and then you go out a few times and decide.

 

Seems like a pretty good system.

[ThaWholigan]

That's how my Muslim friends "arrange" their marriages. Your parents (or other adult) suggests someone to you and then you go out a few times and decide.

 

Seems like a pretty good system.

I heard they also have timed marriages, where you can marry a girl for 3 months, or even for a week. It's almost like having an FWB.

[fortyninethousand322]

I heard they also have timed marriages, where you can marry a girl for 3 months, or even for a week. It's almost like having an FWB.

 

That's only for Twelver Shiites (like in Iran). It's basically "dating" but by another name. Most of the time it's actually used for economic purposes (like to save money on hotel rooms if you're traveling). Why they just don't say "dating" and skip all the legal stuff is beyond me.

[wwwjd]

This is where Internet sociologists fall flat on their faces.

 

Thanks for adding depth to this discussion.

I'm not an armchair anything, just making conversation.

 

I can see where arranged could work ok. It eliminates all that "They have to be THIS or THAT" and just deals with the basics: Can we TOLLERATE each other to do fun stuff? No fretting or hunting or comparing or failing to live up. Ya want "A MATE", right? There ya go: a living breathing mate.

 

And if you didn't live in Westernized "HERE LOOK AT THIS MUCH BETTER SEXY MODEL ON TV AND MOVIES THAT YOU WONT GET" frame of mind, there is nothing wrong with what ya get arranged*.

 

 

 

*not saying I'm for or against the practice, not forcing it on anybody, saying anyone is wrong or dumb, just making general conversation

[Buck Turgidson]

The book to read for this is "Sex at Dawn," but if you're looking for advice about modern monogamous relationships, look elsewhere. All the biological and cultural evidence is that monogamy didn't exist before agriculture. There are no monogamous primitive hunter-gatherers on the planet today and probably never were. Even considering agriculture, only about 17% of current cultures are monogamous.

[wwwjd]

So, then why is Divorce a profitable industry? Shouldn't divorces just be a dime-a-dozen normal thing? Maybe we should have marriage licenses simply expire in 3 years and skip billions in attorney's fees?

[somedude81]

So, then why is Divorce a profitable industry? Shouldn't divorces just be a dime-a-dozen normal thing? Maybe we should have marriage licenses simply expire in 3 years and skip billions in attorney's fees?

That's exactly what I think.

 

Marriages should be 3, 5, or 7 year contracts with options to renew. The terms of the contract would stipulate how assets would be divided once the union expires.

 

Acts like abuse, infidelity and sex refusal could cause a breach of contract and could be punishable by fines and a limitation on forming new contracts for a certain period of time.

[mesmerized]

That's exactly what I think.

 

Marriages should be 3, 5, or 7 year contracts with options to renew. The terms of the contract would stipulate how assets would be divided once the union expires.

 

Acts like abuse, infidelity and sex refusal could cause a breach of contract and could be punishable by fines and a limitation on forming new contracts for a certain period of time.

 

lol, now that's utterly stupid. Sex refusal should be punished by fine? lol

 

You might want to look into becoming a muslim.

[aj22one]

lol, now that's utterly stupid. Sex refusal should be punished by fine? lol

 

You might want to look into becoming a muslim.

 

My wife is Muslim. If I tried to pull that sex refusal stuff on her she'd laugh at me.

 

Actually, she'd probably pull that on me. haha

[threebyfate]

This is where Internet sociologists fall flat on their faces. Regardless of our archaeological roots, why is it that the human race can evolve over time with everything else and yet, according to these armchair evo-psychsters sex remains at primitive levels?

 

It's not natural for us to crap in toilets, use computers, wear clothing or cook our meat but we do these things daily.

 

Thanks for adding depth to this discussion.

I'm not an armchair anything, just making conversation.

Quote the rest of my post, dude. It adds to the conversation.

[maysj18]

lol, now that's utterly stupid. Sex refusal should be punished by fine? lol

 

You might want to look into becoming a muslim.

 

Exactly. Lol

 

You don't have to get married..?

[wwwjd]

yeah, why is there even a marriage "License" anyway? So the state can make more money? People can just live together, skip teh licnese and get out whenever they smell greener grass. nevermind that option leaves both sides on edge about not being good enough, or being alone suddenly.

 

So, why do all these silly people continue to GET MARRIED? Seems like it is the majority out there still. You;'d think wed learn by now? or "evolve"

 

you are right FATE, I couldn't see that beyond your arm chair internet psychters remark. It's just a fun discussion here.

[aj22one]

yeah, why is there even a marriage "License" anyway? So the state can make more money? People can just live together, skip teh licnese and get out whenever they smell greener grass. nevermind that option leaves both sides on edge about not being good enough, or being alone suddenly.

 

Music to my anarchist ears. haha

[Els]

I don't think it's a charade so much as that we're genuinely changing, for the most part. That isn't impossible. It's the smallest, MOST possible part of evolution, in fact.

 

There are plenty of things our ancestors did that most people would be genuinely repelled at today. Incest, for instance. Not all that long ago, certainly much more recent than the caveman days, it was a completely natural and acceptable thing in many societies to have sex with your sister and have children. But now, in most cultures, you'd literally feel nauseous at the thought of having sex with your sister. Even if someone were to tell you, "It's all good, drop the PC stuff, it's natural", you most likely wouldn't do it. It isn't just a 'charade'. Human beings are very adaptable creatures.

 

Equally so, I think some people have genuinely evolved with regards to monogamy. Their personal ethics against sleeping around are so strong, that it is as 'natural' for them to refuse doing such a thing as it is for most of us to refuse sexing up our brother/sister.

[Mme. Chaucer]

I'm pretty certain that the purposes served by "mating" among primitive tribal people, today or in the past, are and were vastly different than ours.

 

Survival would be key. "Fun" would probably not be so much.

[Buck Turgidson]

I'm pretty certain that the purposes served by "mating" among primitive tribal people, today or in the past, are and were vastly different than ours.

 

Survival would be key. "Fun" would probably not be so much.

 

Well, you see, that would be wrong. Primitive life wasn't nasty, brutish, or short. What makes you think survival for primitive hunter-gatherers is any harder than survival in modern society? In fact, they "work" about two hours a day finding food, compared to your likely 8-12. They don't have to pay a mortgage, store food, or maintain the house or other possessions. The vast majority of a hunter-gatherer's time is leisure.

 

Sex for survival would hardly be key, since the key to a successful hunter-gatherer society is to keep the population density down, not up. Women suckle children in such societies for a long time, as a birth control measure. When that fails, babies are left exposed to die if the tribe is already at capacity.

 

Why do you think sex was less fun 20,000 years ago than today? I imagine it was the funnest thing around.

[NeverDated]

Sorry in advance for returning to the OP. I was looking forward to this after wwwjd mentioned it, and was rearranging rooms all afternoon/evening.

Anyway, one of the more interesting things I ran across was that of cheating, or maybe it is not cheating in this tribe. If a guy wanted to "hook up" with someone else's hut-mate, all he had to do was make sure the man was out of the hut, plant his wooden spear in front of the hut door at an angle like blocking the entrance, and go in and get her done. I guess the man of the hut would come back, see that, and either wait patiently or wonder on down the path to another hut. Either way, it is obvious they had some sort of basic system down, even when they are barely even communicate with a language.

[insert guy planting spear joke here]

Most primitive cultures don't have any concept of "cheating". They are monogamous by choice. There are some, more matriarchal, tribal societies in which the women will, at their discretion, ditch their current mate for a new one. There are other societies where the women are known for such a voracious sexual appetite even the young men routinely take natural enhancers, simply to avoid being ditched because he cannot perform his duties twice daily.

 

The thing with life-mating (I saw it tossed around somewhere in here) is it's totally by choice. Much like other pack species, women tend to seek the most powerful male in the group. It's stifled as socially unacceptable in monogamous cultures, but pretty much encouraged in others. If a male can retain his position and ability to meet needs, his mate(s) will remain happy. If he begins to lose power in the pack, though, he runs the risk of losing his mate(s). Some would argue this is why men are the naturally competitive gender, as a kind of evolutionary protection against losing his status.

 

Personally, I find it a little odd that our culture demonizes this behavior, as it's totally natural when compared to other societies as well as similarly organized pack species. But, as a society grows, it has to maintain order somehow, and dictating power and family structures is one of the simplest ways to do it.

 

The stuff I'm reading might describe early "courship" like a village raid with raping going on. Advancing a little and they get teens doing various body paintings and piercings along with mating dances to impress and attract mates.

Later came the whole arranged marriage thing.

 

And a lot of that still goes on somewhere in the world today.

Bah...hrm. This was a point I was trying to make in the other thread, that there is no "norm" for how things work. Attempting to trace anything anthropologically is a lot like masturbation - it's a ton of fun, but nothing gets really accomplished.

 

Gender roles, courtship models and anything else man and woman related stemmed mostly from the availability of resources. You see monogamy (or polygyny) popping up in more hostile areas because those were areas where a man's evolutionary perk of brute force was beneficial. More fertile areas tended to see a more matriarchal society. Hostile areas led to more innovation to overcome the hardships, and innovation has historically tended toward patriarchy - males innovate to gain power, to attract mates, so an innovative society would ultimately become male dominated.

 

In any case, there's a general progression of courtship rituals if you follow the common thread from the Middle East to Western society, but then there's a whole range of outlying dots that make a commonality impossible.

 

I wonder what it would be like, if we dropped ALL the charades we do, hoops we jump through, and got back to the basics, "Me man, you woman, me like you", and skipped the huge list of requirements both teams have for the other?

Because the "basics" are pretty brutal and not too friendly to the majority of men. In early Spartan society, a man could have a woman as long as he could overpower her. This trend was (and is to a degree) also seen in many tribal cultures. I've read of existing primitive cultures where it is perfectly socially acceptable for a woman to publicly mock and degrade a substandard suitor. Therefore, only the strongest males could mate with the strongest females.

 

As a strong woman, this is a good thing - I get a stronger mate and my children get a stronger protector/provider. For the weak male, though, this is a distinctly bad thing - it's estimated that, before the rise of monogamy/polygyny, fewer than 40% of men reproduced. (There's some interesting genetic support for why this would be the case, by the way, if you ever feel like looking up epigenics.)

 

And guys think they have a hard time getting a date now...