Čím se lišíme a co máme společné? Lidská sexualita v evoluční perspektivě

Abstract

Humans as a species have numerous unique characteristics. Do they also include sexuality? Here we use cross-cultural approach to find out whether some traits could be labelled as highly prevalent or nearly universal. We further employed comparative perspective to analyze whether these traits are unique in humans or whether they are shared with our evolutionary relatives. This led us to formulate eight broad spheres which are reported cross-culturally. These include 1) building long-term sexual relationships and expected or enforced sexual exclusivity; 2) sexual activities not restricted to fertile period and 3) prevalent through the year which suggest other than reproductive functions of the sex in humans; 4) in contrast to chimpanzees attractiveness is relatively stable across the cycle; 5) humans appear to be the only species with exclusive male homosexual orientation; 6) similarly, presence of menopause is unique to human females, which was linked to relatively risky delivery and extreme altriciality of human children; and finally, 7) humans do not commonly perform sexual activities in the presence of others. All of the addressed phenomena are interpreted in the evolutionary perspective.