Ever since Adam and Eve

Eminent scientists Malcolm Potts and Roger Short view the broad panorama of human sexual and reproductive behaviour to reveal an inextricable mixture of nature and nurture - a combination of innate actions which have evolved over the millennia to adapt us to a nomadic, hunter-gatherer lifestyle, overlain by more recent cultural constraints imposed by civilization. For each of life's milestones - sexual intercourse, conception, pregnancy, birth, puberty, love, marriage, parenting, menopause and death - they describe the biology behind our actions and consider how pressures imposed by various historical and contemporary cultures have further influenced our behaviour. By looking back at the past they attempt to make sense of the present, to see how and why these cultural modifications arose, how they have contributed to the richness of human sexual behaviour, and what our biological and cultural inheritance can teach us about safeguarding the continuation of our species.

ISBN 0521470420   Pages 368 ISBN13 9780521470421 (What's this?)   Volumes 1 Publisher Cambridge University Press   Weight (grammes) 1295 Imprint Cambridge University Press   Published in Cambridge Format Hardback   Height (mm) 246 Publication date 14 Feb 1999   Width (mm) 189 Library of Congress HQ12 .P68 1999   Spine width (mm) 31 DEWEY 612.6   Academic level General, Tertiary education DEWEY edition DC21

		Preface
		Acknowledgements
		Introduction		1
1		Beginnings		5
2		The polygynous primate		24
3		Sex and gender		50
4		Love and marriage		81
5		Sex and pregnancy		104
6		Birth and breastfeeding		131
7		Growing up		161
8		The civilization of sex		186
9		Sex and power		210
10		Dying for love		236
11		Sex and mortality		256
12		Too many people		283
13		The animal within us		310
		Bibliography		335
		Index		347

'Fascinating and often brilliant ... Aimed at a popular readership and lavishly illustrated, it comes up with much of its best material in little boxed off sections.' Humphrey Carpenter, The Sunday Times '... a comprehensive and fascinating study ... he is to be congratulated for so elegantly opening up this world.' Expository Times '... a tour de force.' Helen Fisher, The Quarterly Review of Biology 'This is the kind of book that has already generated great discussions among my friends and associates. It will make a wonderful gift, even for those with no more than a passing interest in biology or science. The authors are to be congratulated for having put together a book that that is at once thought-provoking, entertaining, and sumptuously attractive.' Abraham Morgentaler, The Lancet

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