Excellent.

A well researched book (with academic references)

Gives an deep insight into human behaviour ( )

Well written and comprehensive, but not exactly aas I thought it would be. Still, I learned some things. ( )

Ok, I haven't finished this book, and maybe never will, but I'm going to start writing a review anyway. It's really slow going because it seems like every other page I have to stop reading and write down something they said that I'm skeptical about.

The book in a nutshell: The natural state of humanity is an idyllic communist utopia where we just pick up food off the ground, share everything, including sexual partners, never fight, and live forever. Then some asshole invented agriculture and we consequently settled down in villages, exploded in population, and developed the evils of capitalism, war, patriarchy, and monogamy.

Don't get me wrong; I've got nothing against the idea of non-monogamy being natural or good. It may or may not be. I guess the problem I have with the book is that it's not honestly attempting to answer that question. Like the creationism I grew up with, the book is starting from the conclusion ("non-monogamy is awesome!") and then working backwards, trying to find evidence that it's "natural" in order to support the predetermined outcome, while off-handedly dismissing others' life work if it contradicts it. Whether true or not, it just comes across as shoddy axe-grinding rather than objective science.

If I understand correctly, the "standard narrative" of human relationships that actual researchers actually use is something like "serial monogamy with opportunistic cheating". Sex at Dawn repeatedly conflates this with a Puritan ideal of lifelong monogamy, which seems to be just setting up a straw man that they can then easily knock down.

Also, the whole thing is just a giant appeal to nature, isn't it? What's natural is good and what's unnatural is bad! Except not really. It is good to research and understand what's natural for us, because it helps inform our decisions and helps us understand our own reactions to things and work through them, but it shouldn't dictate our behavior. We're rational creatures, and perfectly capable of thinking and deciding which behaviors we want and which we don't.

And uh, the Mosuo are a feudal, agricultural civilization. How are they more representative of what our ancient ancestors did than, say, the Mormons? ( )

The authors' central contention is that human beings evolved in egalitarian groups that shared food, child care, and, often, sexual partners. Weaving together convergent, frequently overlooked evidence from anthropology, archaeology, primatology, anatomy, and psychosexuality, the authors show how far from human nature monogamy really is.