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Miller’s theory draws attention to several facts that have remained unexplained in other theories, namely the fact that dance, music, humour and sexual foreplay are all features unique to human beings. Following the Tooby–Cosmides logic we cannot argue that these are mere cultural habits foisted upon us by ‘society’. Plainly a desire to hear rhythmic tunes, or to be made to laugh by wit develops innately. Following Miller we note that they are characterized by obsessions with novelty and virtuosity and much practised by the young. From Beatlemania to Madonna (and back again to Orpheus), the sexual fascination of youth with musical creativity has been obvious. It is a human universal.

It is crucial for Miller’s theory that human beings are especially selective about their mates. Indeed, among apes, people are unique in that both sexes are extremely choosy. A gorilla female is happy to be mated with whoever ‘owns’ her harem. A gorilla male will mate with any oestral female he can find. A chimpanzee female is keen to mate with many different males in the troop. A chimpanzee male will mate with any female in season. But women are highly selective about the men they mate with. So indeed are men. True, they are easily persuaded to go to bed with beautiful young women – but that is exactly the point. Most women are neither young nor beautiful nor trying to seduce strange men. It is hard to overemphasize how unusual man is in this respect. Males in some monogamous bird species such as pigeons and doves56 do take care to select a female carefully, but in many other birds, the males are happy to have a fling with any passing female, as the evidence of sperm-competition theory has demonstrated (see Chapter 7). Although he may prefer variety more than females do, man is a highly sexually selective male as males go.

Selectivity by one or the other sex is the prerequisite of sexual selection. And as I have argued in previous chapters, it is more than that. It is the almost invariant predictor of sexual selection. Fisher’s runaway process for sexy sons and Zahavi–Hamilton’s Good-genes effect simply cannot be avoided once one or the other sex is being selective. So we should actually expect some exaggeration of some feature or other in man as a simple consequence of sexual selection.57

Incidentally, Miller’s argument draws attention to a little-appreciated aspect of sexual selection: it can affect both the selected sex and the selector. For example, among American blackbirds, those species in which the female is large are also the species in which the male is much larger. The same is true of many mammals and birds: among grouse, pheasants, seals and deer, a greater ratio between male and female size occurs in the larger species. A recent analysis of this effect concludes that it is caused by sexual selection: the more polygamous the species is, the more premium there is on large size in males; the more males are selected for large size, the more they inevitably leave large-size genes to their daughters as well as their sons. Genes can be ‘sex-linked’ but usually only imperfectly or only when there is a strong disadvantage to a daughter inheriting the effect – as in the case of female birds and gaudy colours. Thus, sexual selection by males of females for large brains would result in larger brains for both sexes.58

Obsessed with Youth

I believe that Miller’s tale deserves a special twist from the neoteny theory (though he is not convinced). The neoteny theory is well established among anthropologists. And the notion of human monogamous child-rearing is well established among sociobiologists. Nobody has yet put the two together. If men began selecting mates that appeared youthful, then any gene that slowed the rate of development of adult characteristics in a woman would make her more attractive at a given age than a rival. Consequently, she would leave more descendants, who would inherit the same gene. Any neoteny gene would give the appearance of youthfulness. Neoteny, in other words, could be a consequence