Re: [tied] Stock Breeding & Patriarchialism.

----- Original Message -----

From: Mark Odegard

To: cybalist@egroups.com

Sent: Thursday, September 14, 2000 9:02 PM

Subject: [tied] Stock Breeding & Patriarchialism.

It was Bronislaw Malinowski who reported, in his famous study of the sexual life of the Trobriand islanders (The Sexual Life of Savages), that -- keenly as the Trobrianders were interested in lovemaking -- they didn't understand the connection between having sex and having babies. I like to think that the Trobrianders' confessions to Malinowski were not quite in earnest, and that they had a jolly good laugh at the scholar's credulity behind his back.

 

Piotr

 

 

Mark wrote: I don't remember reading anything that says this explictly, but it seems to me that humans did not really fully understand how babies were made, beyond the fact it took two to tango. The fact that breeding groups were rather closely related and generally looked alike added to this. I suspect men and women both were just as ignorant.