You are preaching to the choir here, Ellen, I agree with you that humans are not monogamous. Personally, my wife and I have been polyamorous for many years. I read and loved “Sex At Dawn” by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha. Is that where you got these ideas? If you haven’t read it, you’ll love it. It is easy to read and some parts are very funny.

However, I do not agree with some of your arguments. In particular, I have a lot of trouble with the “Myth of the Noble Savage”: the idea that humans were less violent before the Agricultural Revolution. I used to believe in it, but I was convinced otherwise by “The Better Angels of Our Nature” by Stephen Pinker and “Sapiens” by Harari. There is evidence that humans killed each other at a fast clip while we were hunter-gatherers. But I think that they were not monogamous.

My point is that most modern anthropologists remain stuck in the monogamy myth. For example, “Evolution and Human Sexual Behavior”, by Peter B. Gray, is a response to “Sex At Dawn”, unconvincing but still pro-monogamy. I have only browsed through the books by Helen Fisher: “Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love” and “Anatomy of Love: A Natural History of Mating, Marriage, and Why We Stray”, but she seems to be firmly on that camp, too. Maybe I’ll read them now. In my opinion, it is better to be cautious when arguing that humans are not monogamous, we are far from a consensus in this matter.