If a baby is the result, no one sees any reason to fuss: the child will simply have two dads (AKA partible paternity). With the Himba men periodically away at remote cattle stations, their wives keep busy by “going to the far place to collect water” – another way of saying they bunk off to meet their lover.

Scelza’s research on the semi-nomadic Himba tribe of Namibia provides a window into alternative ways of dealing with what anthropologists call “extra-dyadic sexuality” (AKA consensual cheating). Some of Martin’s authorities, such as Brooke Scelza of UCLA, work with human subjects. If a boy wanders up at this point, he’s likely to be seen off with an exasperated nip for being far too late to the party.Ī one-week-old baby bonobo with its mother. Together they have a lovely time, rubbing their enlarged clitorises together, with murmurs of pleasurable excitement. Pretty soon, though, she gets exasperated by his coyness and turns to one of her girlfriends instead. If he moves away the female follows him for a bit. They wander around in a girl gang and, when they fancy a bloke, go up and put their arm around him. Bonobos are, as is well known, shameless sexual gluttons, especially the females. However that prissy hair-do is misleading. They are fine-boned, with pink lips, proportionately long legs on which they can walk upright and hair that falls into a neat centre parting. Certainly, they resemble us more than the common chimp. Once known as pygmy chimps, these primates are the closest thing we have to a living ancestor.

A ccording to Wednesday Martin, if you want to know how early humans organised their sex lives, before prudery, habit and agrarian production got in the way, you should take a look at bonobos.

Untrue by Wednesday Martin