362 
SEXUAL selection: man. 
Part II. 
American species, and each family lives separate. 
Even when this occurs, the families inhabiting the 
same district are probably to a certain extent social: 
the Chimpanzee, for instance, is occasionally met with 
in large bands. Again, other species are polygamous^ 
but several males, each with their own females, live 
associated in a body, as with several species of Baboons.'^ 
We may indeed conclude from what we know of the 
jealousy of all male quadrupeds, armed, as many of them 
are, with special weapons for battling with their rivals, 
that promiscuous intercourse in a state of nature is 
extremely improbable. The pairing may not last for 
life, but only for each birth; yet if the males which are 
the strongest and best able to defend or otherwise assist 
their females and young offspring, were to select the 
more attractive females, this would sufiSce for the work 
of sexual selection. 
Therefore, if we look far enough back in the stream 
of time, it is extremely improbable that primeval men 
and women lived promiscuously together. Judging from 
the social habits of man as he now exists, and from 
most savages being polygamists, the most probable 
view is that primeval man aboriginally lived in small 
communities, each with as many wives as he could 
support and obtain, whom he would have jealously 
guarded against all other men. Or he may have lived 
with several wives by himself, like the Gorilla ; for 
all the natives agree that but one adult male is 
“ seen in a band ; when the young male grows up, a 
contest takes place for mastery, and the strongest, b 
^ Brehm (‘Illust. Thierleben/ B. i. p. 77) says Cynocephalus liama- 
dryas lives in great troops containing twice as many adult females as 
adult males. See Kengger on American polygamous species, and Owen 
(‘Anat. of Vertebrates/ vol. iii. p. 746) on American monogamous 
species. Other references might be added. 
