We're just swingers after all (SMH)

Interesting research confirming that small, interdependent groups, wherein everything was shared (including sex, partners, possessions) was once practiced, widespread.

Seems quite sensible. Raises the question: how much do we constrain our natural creative urges, due to religious or cultural strictures?

Using anthropology, anatomy, archaeology and primatology. Ryan takes aim at what he calls the "standard narrative", the idea that men and women evolved in families in which a man's possessions and protection were exchanged for the women's fertility and fidelity. This notion, what the anthropologist Helen Fisher calls the ''sex contract'', has long dominated our thinking about sexual evolution.

But it is a myth, according to Ryan, who points out that for 2 million years our ancestors lived in small, interdependent, highly egalitarian groups who shared everything, including sex. "Evidence suggests that our pre-agricultural ancestors would have had several ongoing sexual relationships at any one time," Ryan says. "These overlapping, intersecting sexual relationships strengthened group cohesion and could offer a measure of security in an uncertain world."