From what I understand from having read about the evidence we had of social structures and religious observances in prehistorical times, the sexes had more equality. Men were not ruling over women. In the rare cultures today that are not patriarchal, women get to choose who to have sex with, and no one is "forced" to take part in the orgy aspect of seasonal festivals. Surely children and the elderly, and anyone who is ill or just not in the mood would be exempt. As in any culture, it's the young or younger folk who would engage in sexual rituals (as in any nightclub today).
I'm not sure whom you thought was forcing women to engage in sex with Grandpa Timberskin. Women were and are forced into sex in the patriarchy. But women had more power in pre-patriarchal times. Women were valued as life-bringers and sustainers, as representatives of the great god, who was always female. I am not saying rape was non-existent, but rape would have been less necessary since there was a lesser degree of sexual exclusivity.
Women were not commodities to be traded. That happened in patriarchal times, and still does. Women could choose to go have sex with an attractive person in another tribe, at certain times of commingling and cooperation.
I don't think it's appropriate to go into this in more detail here. You can PM me for my resources if you wish.
Yeah... I have read Sex at Dawn as well.
I think it is important to acknowledge that evolutionary biology is a bit of a sketchy science. By that I mean that even as a community none of them can agree on anything... That in of itself makes it difficult for someone like me to navigate because I work in a field of absolute science. In my mind, thesis does not become a fact unless a correlation coefficient of something like 0.9998 is achieved. The likes of evolutionary biology and social sciences do not work that way...
I agree it unlikely that tribal communities would be obsessed with a woman's chastity the way the church/patriarchy is. If we can make any assertions from the study of tribal communities that lived into the 19th and 20th centuries it would be that sex rituals are about as varied as tribes themselves. Humans seem to be fairly flexible when it comes to mating practices and social orders...
Concepts like "consent" and "equality" get blurry in tribal life. Ryan & Jetha presented evidence in there book by describing studies conducted of tribes un-touched by the patriarchy. They wrote of ceremonies where a young woman would be expected to please all of the men in a tribe as a sort of puberty ceremony. In another example they wrote about a tribe that supported partnered relationships, where the women was expected to have sex with every man in the family linage (brother's, father, ect..) They also wrote about women who would provide sex as a reward for men who where successful in the days hunt.
Do you really think that *every pubescent young woman wanted to provide sexual pleasure to every man in the tribe?
Do you really think that *every woman who was expected to have sex with a hunter in reward for his catch of the day, desired to do so?
All of these examples fly in the face of monogamy. No doubt. But are they describing equality and egalitarianism? As I read Sex at Dawn I found myself asking "what happened to the women who didn't want to partake in puberty ritual, or have sex with the partners father???" The text conveniently did not cover how such cultural practices were enforced. In a tribe, where everything including ones self, ones own flesh, belongs to the tribe, perhaps the indoctrination was such that they simply weren't plagued with rebels daring to want something different.
Even if that were the case though, that doesn't sound like equality to me... Men may not have ruled with an iron fist as in patriarchal societies, but I haven't read anything suggesting that women had a high level of rights over there own bodies in tribal culture. Nor have I read that tribes transcended gender rolls; for example game hunters are typically portrayed as men in text; and they are even rewarded with prepared food and sex for daily hunting efforts. I think we can certainly look to tribal cultures for examples of non-monogamy, but equality? Egalitarianism? I think that might be stretching the facts a bit.
Perhaps it gets postulated for political reasons. One can make the patriarchy look even worse than it does already if we can make people believe that pre-patriarchy life was something of a free for all egalitarian utopia....