Climbing is a human strong point though, and was our main way of avoiding predators. Running for a tree, and then climbing it, would be harder for someone pregnant. Pretty minor point, though.
Well, I suspect humans were monogamous (like f.ex gray wolves) if the human population was scarce. However, we'd have more genes from the bigger groups of humans than the loners. I'm not really talking of a family unit as of such, though. What I meant by "After that, they have a child to look after for a long, long time before the child grows enough to be self-sufficient to some extent" is that by default, it's that. That's why they seek the strongest possible group/male (goes hand in hand, often - population density plays a part again, of course, but generally speaking it'd still work the same) for protection/help. Especially since the alpha is the one doing the impregnating, what choice does the female have? Sure, you can go around sleeping with betas and whoever you can find, but that's very unwise and you'll get left alone to die very, very fast. It just makes sense for survival to stick with one alpha male and his pack.
It's not the same, because the males run the packs. They can protect multiple females and their children. Or- they can just impregnate a woman and leave them. It doesn't matter - that's the point! They lose nothing. There is no commitment. Worst that can happen? The female and her children die. Okay. The male wasted a minute - best that happens is that the female survives. It's a win-win, whereas a female has to commit. And I was thinking of lions, yes. Not sure about other species and wikipedia articles are pretty lacking usually.
That depends how far back we are going. Fidelity, love and jealousy are born out of basic instincts.. the very same we are discussing. They've all become much more refined, of course, as our intelligence grew and we started getting manipulated more by outside sources. The very same intelligence that elevated us above other animals also can give birth to some really wicked ideas. I doubt there were social conventions or such that would make men think twice, quite the opposite... one could argue that the "man sleeps around is a king, woman sleeps around is a whore" thing is evidence for this. As to the last point of yours to my quote: I've said it before in this post with different words, but... you can do both. You can impregnate everything that moves on two legs and still look after one set of children. That is exactly the point I am trying to make. Women do not have the same freedom, due to both their physiology and their social status.
Hence, I've tried to compare the human species to others that are faintly similar - spiders eating their mates have really nothing to do with humans. The key points would be 1) being a pack animal, 1.1) being a mammal, 2) the males being stronger and dominant, 3) similar pregnancy/mating times.
Hmm. Ok, apologies for doing this again, but it will be a long post (its an area that interests me a lot):
Firstly, on the climbing - it isn't such a minor point. It would have certainly been very useful for getting away from certain predators. Again, the problem is that most animals that are capable of hunting and eating a human, are easily better at climbing than a human is.
Big cats and bears can all climb better than we can. I suppose with a large headstart you could get high enough up a tree that a wolf or some other large canine couldn't follow, but they can move very fast and can run up a tree (my dog does it all the time) if its at even a slight angle.
I think my main point here with the physical side of survival, is that humans are mediocre at everything. We're weak compared to almost every animal our size and many smaller animals, we're slow compared to most animals, and we're crap at climbing compared to a lot of animals. We can't swim very well (cats do it better and they loathe water), we don't have any natural weapons (we have herbivore teeth, and no claws, and our skin isn't very tough, we don't have any venoms or poisons etc etc). We have less muscle as a percentage of body weight than most other mammals, even herbivores (pigs have more muscle than we do!).
For survival, humans can't play the same game as other animals do. So we re-invented the game, and made different rules. Survival for humans is about being clever, not being able to chase down a deer or wrestle with a bear. We make tools, and plan tactics for hunting, and work out how other animals think and react so we can intimidate them or fool them into not attacking us.
And later of course we worked out how to use animals to provide labour and security. And after that we worked out how to breed animals and plants for the best possible benefit to us.
This is why we don't follow the same pattern of social interaction as other species. Human strength is only impressive when compared with other humans. To every other animal our size, we're puny.
There isn't an alpha male in human tribes. It isn't (and wasn't) how it works. In a gorilla tribe, the alpha male is actually capable of fending off predators (not that gorillas have many), and so he has a role beyond just fighting other males.
An excellent example is lions. The male lion is crap at hunting (his mane makes it difficult for him), but he can stay at home while the females hunt, and protect the cubs. Since he is larger than the females, and his mane makes him look larger still, he can intimidate anything that wants to kill or eat the children, and has more of a chance in a fight against anything big enough to be hunting lion cubs (buffalo for example). He has a proper role beyond just fighting other males.
In a human tribe, there are many males. There isn't just one who's duty is protecting the children because he is the strongest. Predators who see humans as potential prey aren't going to be intimidated by a guy who is a few inches taller and a bit more built than all those other puny humans.
A lot of evolutionary theory is concerned with the conservation of energy - you need to consume more energy than you expend, or at least balance it. If all the human males in a tribe spent their time competing with other males, there would be no energy to do other socially productive things (hunting, building etc). It works for lions, because the male lion has very little else to do, and the pride isn't full of other male lions, so he doesn't have to compete that often (and also only in mating season).
Another very important point is that when we talk about females of the human species, we aren't talking about a baby production machine. If a woman dies, the whole tribe has lost (as well as potential future children) a hugely valuable asset to the tribe's survival. The women contribute to the tribe's survival in the same way as the men do - hunting, making tools, gathering food, etc etc.
Division of labour based on sex is a luxury that comes later with agriculture and settled tribes - it isn't possible in a hunter gatherer society.
A human male loses a huge amount if a woman dies (the whole tribe does), even more so than if the children die.
The social conventions I was referring to are things like marriage. Every current human culture (and historically most human cultures) has some version of a ritual that is a similar version of marriage. Not only that, but other conventions such as familial interest and protectiveness about their children's partners.
Also, its a bit difficult to talk about the growth of intelligence in terms of evolutionary theory. Intelligence is very difficult to define, to begin with. And even more difficult to relate to biology or anatomy. The hunter/gatherer tribes that we are discussing were of the same species as us, and therefore had the same level of intelligence.
I've said it before in this post with different words, but... you can do both. You can impregnate everything that moves on two legs and still look after one set of children. That is exactly the point I am trying to make. Women do not have the same freedom, due to both their physiology and their social statusBut this assumes that there is only one male in the group. The male can only do that if a) the other women don't want him to look after their children as well and b) the other males who are partners with the other women don't get angry at having to look after children that aren't theirs
This would only be possible if there were only one male. As I've said before, human tribe population is 50/50 female to male ratio. There isn't an alpha male, it's impossible with so many other males around. If there were, the other males would work together and kill him.
To clarify, I mean an alpha male in a sexual sense. Its impossible with a 50/50 ratio. The supposed alpha male simply can't make sure that the other males aren't sleeping with 'his' women, and wouldn't be able to fight or intimidate all the other males (assuming that they want to pass on their own genes as much as he does his).
This is ignoring the role of women in the scenario of course. They would have selected mates whom they preferred, and the alpha male system wouldn't work for their selection (they want to pass on their genes too, so other women's children are competition for this, in the same way that other men's children are for men).
To sum up my point:
Humans are social animals. Survival depends on co-operation, not conflict. The male/female ratio means that males can't compete for mates in the same way that other animals do. The evolutionary strengths of humans are not physical (everything else is stronger and more dangerous), they are intellectual and co-operative. Having an alpha male system in the human species doesn't make sense, and is counter productive to the species.
Essentially we don't work (physically or socially) in remotely the same way as any other species. The alpha male thing is an observed phenomena in other species that was later applied to humans. It fit in with the theories of many social Darwinists (the worst kind of darwinist).
Your last point: 1) We're not a pack animal in the same sense that other animals are. Our internal social structures work very differently.
1.1) true
2) This is debatable, but the argument for it involves an argument against social and biological evolution, so it'd take a long time
3) Most animals don't have monthly cycles of maximum/minimum fertility, they have a mating season.
Poll