I think it's just arrogance to downplay the struggles of our ancestors while living in the comforts of what modern civilization can provide. Yes, their priorities were basic and straightforward to achieve but this entailed some skills and responsibilities that pushed them to become efficient with their limited resources or they die trying. You don't have to go hunting for days to provide food, a convenience store is nearby to satiate your hunger. You can have all the sex you want provided you don't get killed by competition within your tribe or outside your tribe. Now you can just pay for sex and not bother with mating rituals. People were prone to diseases back then and they had little choice on the matter in contrast to how much we can have an assortment of antibiotics today.
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I knew it! I knew someone was going to misunderstand something about what I'm saying here 😂.
Alright, here's the thing, I'm not comparing our struggles with the struggles of the early man and downplaying the struggles of the early man, I'm only talking about the aspect of keeping the specie going and how it had way more to do with sex than the skills, valour and strength the early man had. Survival/keeping the specie going should not be confused with battling all the challenges they had to battle because reproduction was the true MVP and played a way bigger role than their fight against nature.
Have you considered they were able to have sexy time because escaped predators or killed competition for resources to get sexy time?
Escaping and the capacity to eliminate threats were more important because these were prerequisites to reproduce. You cant reproduce effectively in a resource scarce environment. You eliminate those that compete with your territory for resources or run away to have sex another day.
You're right, but this still doesn't mean sex didn't play the biggest role because imagine sex was not as easily accessible as I've described in the post, imagine reproduction wasn't in geometric progression like I also explained, no matter how good they get at escaping predators and gathering resources they wouldn't have kept the species going! Their chances would have been zero if sex wasn't so easy and reproduction wasn't in geometric progression.
Ok, which do you think became first priority?
Escape predators, eliminate competition, and securing resources to live another day?
Or
Have sex, bear children that will compete with food, get those children eaten by predators or starve to death.
I don't know, seems like the first line had a greater role and your supposed "sex had the biggest role" argument was a secondary consequence for the first.
The thing is, escaping predators, eliminating competition and securing resources were being carried out alongside having sex and reproduction. So no matter how they fail at the former, the latter was always there to keep things going.
Your logic is correct, though, you have to survive to a certain age or for a while first before you can reproduce so staying alive was a priority. But something being a priority doesn't mean what comes after (the secondary consequence) can not play a bigger role than the first.
When we say the early man was able to stay alive till they gave birth to children it might seem like the early man was such an expert at staying alive but he might have been terrible at it, only making the bare minimum score, and it wouldn't matter because sex and reproduction is so easy and in geometric progression.
The requirement of staying alive was fulfilled even if one only barely managed to stay alive. One didn't have to stay alive for so long in order to reproduce. Everyone could have died in their twenties and it wouldn't matter. It's just like a man telling his son that if he makes the minimum grades he would make him CEO at the company then his son makes minimum grades and becomes CEO. Without him making minimum grades would he become CEO? But that doesn't mean making minimum grades plays a bigger role in the equation than his dad.
That's how it was for the early man. Sex and reproduction told the early man that all he has to do is live long enough to birth and it would make sure his specie never goes extinct. Staying alive is commendable, making minimum grades is commendable, I'll never down play them but what came after was just deus ex machina! An insane game changer.
Why would they prioritize sex when their threat to safety is at risk?
Am I reading this right? without first event, second event can't occur yet second event still wins?
Sex and reproduction weren't easy, in order for males to get laid, they had to be selected by females and mating selection requires competent strong males to protect the offspring for survival. Males didn't have it better and weren't just slacking, they had competition and even the reproduction had it's own hurdles beyond shooting the hoop. Have you seen how females pick their mates? they needed to have sex with the fittest.
I think you mixed up some priorities there. You need to prioritize survival first to have sex another day but all I'm hearing from you sex first for the win while prioritizing actual prerequisites to survive and have sex comes second. Do you see the flaw in this? putting reproduction first over mechanism that ensure you even get a chance to reproduce? because that's how it sounds like on the article.
I'm not saying they prioritized sex, but in their daily life even as their safety was at risk sex was still part of it. When you've retreated to the safety of caves a lot of sex happens. The urge for sex is like hunger it comes and requests satisfaction.
It's quite tricky, take this example: a guy shows up at the gym and does all the difficult workouts and at the end of the year he's built perfect muscles. Which of his actions played the bigger role in his muscles? Is it the first action which is showing up at the gym or is it the second one which is doing the actual difficult workouts? Of course the workouts played the bigger role. Without showing up at the gym he wouldn't be able to work out in the first place but that doesn't mean showing up is the real MVP here because that's the easier part in relation to doing actual work out. You see?
That's how secondary can outshine the first. In the case of the early man staying alive was important but nothing compared to the insane effects of easy sex and reproduction.
It doesn't matter how females picked their mates because at the end of the day they picked someone. Even if all the women picked one man, that one man was still able to father 100 children. Also I'll refer you back to the post, to the part where I talked about how easily accessible sex was.
Even what you said about females chosing their mates and rituals are quite inconsequential when you consider the fact that civilization was poorer and rape and men having their way with women due to the superior physical strength of the males was the order of the day. Even with all the civilization and police we have today rape still occurs how much more in a lawless jungle?
I agree with you, survival first, but remember this survival didn't even have to be properly done, didn't even have to be for so long. What comes after this survival which is sex and geometric progression is so insane and deserves most of the glory the same way working hard at the gym would take more glory than showing up at the gym.