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06 November, 2010

Territoriality

Robert Ardrey postulated that territory for early humans was a function of the pair bond.  Extrapolating from stamping ground behavior of certain ungulates, wherein males possessed of territory ignored available females outside of their personal territory, he developed the idea that territory was not for sex but that sex was for territory.  While early humans lived in communal groups, the greater and longer dependency of the human infant required greater care giving organization than that utilized by chimpanzees or baboons.  This required some modus of identification for the community sub-group unit known to us as family.  For this then territory was the glue which cemented the pair bond and kept family units from dissolving into the communal group as a whole.

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