[Fis] Emergence of Human Sexual Behaviour. Anxiety management

[Rainer Feistel (IOW)]

Dear Christophe,

Thank you for your support and additional suggestions.
It seems to me that your description is perfectly consistent with my 
scenario, and a possible fruitful extension.

In my fictitious narrative, the transition to bipedal gait lowered the 
reproduction rate to a subcritical level.
Only a series of severe transitions in sexual behaviour could keep 
hominins away from the brink of extinction.
Among those have likely been the concealed oestrus of females and the 
resulting permanent sexual interest of males.
The consecutive instabilities and innovations in this chain ended with 
the grandmother effect that ensured survival
in a final stable sexual regime. This is actually the end of my narrative.

This process had established frequent mating activities in excess of 
just a few required for siring offspring.
As you say "it was possible for our ancestors to extend sexual pleasure 
by developing its occurrence independently of reproduction concerns".
Sexual interaction, consequently, became a relevant part of the social 
life of hominins, to serve for emotional
comfort, individual bindings, friendship and mutual assistance in 
feeding or personal hygiene, etc.
Your list of sex-based relations and behaviours fits very well to this.

Thank you for your contribution,
Rainer


Betreff:     [Fis] Emergence of Human Sexual Behaviour. Anxiety management
Datum:     Wed, 18 Feb 2026 13:25:37 +0000
Von:     Christophe Menant <christophe.menant at hotmail.fr>
An: rainer.feistel at iow.de <rainer.feistel at iow.de>
Kopie (CC): fis at listas.unizar.es <fis at listas.unizar.es>, 
pedroc.marijuan at gmail.com <pedroc.marijuan at gmail.com>


Dear Rainer,
Your focus on the transition to bipedal gait as supporting pre-human 
sexual evolution is original and interesting. It highlights a complex 
subject that may be influencing our human behavior much more than 
assumed. Regarding this last perspective, let me propose a possible 
development of human sexuality based on sexual related pleasures that 
our pre-human ancestors may have been looking for in order to limit a 
specific pre-human anxiety.
You may know the hypothesis about evolution of our ancestors toward 
self-consciousness bringing them to face new anxieties coming from 
identifications with suffering conspecifics 
(https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://philpapers.org/archive/MENEOS-5.pdf__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!QXxzbqXW085SQucIFw1M1-rAZAzPmNqM_9vnKmXLibvAWGv1Z1wEkf0SzcY6P0SHy0E_a9BeNBWPj_LWkOv8PkB9aW4$ ). To limit that mental 
suffering our ancestors may have been obliged to look for new anxiety 
limitation processes. Pleasure, as naturally limiting anxiety, could 
have been a candidate for various developments in that perspective. More 
precisely, it was possible for our ancestors to extend sexual pleasure 
by developing its occurrence independently of reproduction concerns. 
Developing and amplifying sexual relations could have been an easy, and 
quite natural,  way for our ancestors to limit the anxiety increase they 
were facing.
What is proposed here is that our ancestors have capitalized on sexual 
pleasures to develop sources of anxiety limitation. This could have led 
pre-human sexuality to become highly ritualized and very different from 
chimpanzee’s sexual behaviours.
For instance, here are some human sexual specificities the 
implementation of which could illustrate the search for more pleasure by 
our pre-human ancestors:
- No mating season, sexual pleasure possible at any time. Permanent 
breast as signal.
- Sexual behaviors embedded in symbolic, emotional, and cultural 
systems. More emotional sharing by face mating.
- Sexual pleasure layered with self-consciousness, fantasy, attachment, 
anxiety, and meaning.
- Sexual pleasure more intense as psychologically deeper, more 
elaborated and more cognitively amplified.
The above hypothesis brings sexuality and anxiety limitation to be at 
the forefront of human motivations. This subject is not new but deserves 
being developed a bit more, I feel.
Thanks again Rainer for having introduced it.



Am 18.02.2026 um 14:25 schrieb Christophe Menant:
> Dear Rainer,
> Your focus on the transition to bipedal gait as supporting pre-human 
> sexual evolution is original and interesting. It highlights a complex 
> subject that may be influencing our human behavior much more than 
> assumed. Regarding this last perspective, let me propose a possible 
> development of human sexuality based on sexual related pleasures that 
> our pre-human ancestors may have been looking for in order to limit a 
> specific pre-human anxiety.
> You may know the hypothesis about evolution of our ancestors toward 
> self-consciousness bringing them to face new anxieties coming from 
> identifications with suffering conspecifics 
> (_https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://philpapers.org/archive/MENEOS-5.pdf__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!QXxzbqXW085SQucIFw1M1-rAZAzPmNqM_9vnKmXLibvAWGv1Z1wEkf0SzcY6P0SHy0E_a9BeNBWPj_LWkOv8PkB9aW4$  
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://philpapers.org/archive/MENEOS-5.pdf__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!QXxzbqXW085SQucIFw1M1-rAZAzPmNqM_9vnKmXLibvAWGv1Z1wEkf0SzcY6P0SHy0E_a9BeNBWPj_LWkOv8PkB9aW4$ >_). To limit that mental 
> suffering our ancestors may have been obliged to look for new anxiety 
> limitation processes. Pleasure, as naturally limiting anxiety, could 
> have been a candidate for various developments in that perspective. 
> More precisely, it was possible for our ancestors to extend sexual 
> pleasure by developing its occurrence independently of reproduction 
> concerns. Developing and amplifying sexual relations could have been 
> an easy, and quite natural,  way for our ancestors to limit the 
> anxiety increase they were facing.
> What is proposed here is that our ancestors have capitalized on sexual 
> pleasures to develop sources of anxiety limitation. This could have 
> led pre-human sexuality to become highly ritualized and very different 
> from chimpanzee’s sexual behaviours.
> For instance, here are some human sexual specificities the 
> implementation of which could illustrate the search for more pleasure 
> by our pre-human ancestors:
> - No mating season, sexual pleasure possible at any time. Permanent 
> breast as signal.
> - Sexual behaviors embedded in symbolic, emotional, and cultural 
> systems. More emotional sharing by face mating.
> - Sexual pleasure layered with self-consciousness, fantasy, 
> attachment, anxiety, and meaning.
> - Sexual pleasure more intense as psychologically deeper, more 
> elaborated and more cognitively amplified.
> The above hypothesis brings sexuality and anxiety limitation to be at 
> the forefront of human motivations. This subject is not new but 
> deserves being developed a bit more, I feel.
> Thanks again Rainer for having introduced it.
>
>
>
-- 
Note: New Email Address:rainer.feistel at iow.de
Dr. rer. nat. habil. Rainer Feistel
Physicist (emeritus)
PS Gustav Hertz Prize, Berlin 1981
CITAC Best Paper Award, Paris 2011
IAPWS Honorary Fellow, London 2013
BIPM Metrologia Highlight Articles, Paris 2016
EGU Fridtjof Nansen Medal, Vienna 2018
LS Daniel Ernst Jablonski Medal, Berlin 2021
IAPWS Gibbs Award, Boulder, Co., 2024
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