Thanks for that, really good!

What I mean by the former is that the status hierarchy for females is more diffuse and has fewer strata; there are coalitions of females, and typically eldest females occupy a de facto "alpha" position.

As to paternity certainty -- yeah, bonobos don't form any sort of exclusive or permanent sexual connection. Male/male, male/female, female/female and group sex are all standard behaviors (they're also the only nonhuman primate species seen engaged in mouth/tongue kissing and oral sex). Instead of "securing access" to desirable mates, you pretty much don't know who's going to be the parent of your future children, and it doesn't matter; both males and females will socialize, care for and protect children.

Pre-human male hominids, we infer from observing bonobos and chimpanzees, were dominated by one alpha male per group, who got the best food and most of the females.

Um. Bonobos don't work that way. They're "dominated", if you can use the term, by less-vertical coalitions of comparitively high-status females. Food is shared widely, paternity certainty is a nonissue.

We're equidistant from them and chimps, talking divergence from common ancestors, so it's really less clear-cut than you think how well chimp analogies suffice to model proto-hominids -- both are equally-close relations, but their lifestyles and social strategies differ tremendously.

Thanks for bringing this up. It seemed that much of the feedback on the first post was that it was too much anecdote and too little content closer to the ultimately useful stuff, like results and methodology. This post has less history and more discussion of things like "okay, what's the result," so I think that that issue isn't so present (and for whatever these very small numbers are worth, this post seems to be doing a little better).

I do expect that this post puts the previous one in a slightly better context. Mostly, my intent with these posts is for them to be seen and for people to get a few ideas out of them - and while it would be good for all sorts of reasons to make these posts high quality in other ways, if people get some ideas out of them but don't think it's that great a post, or even down-vote it for valid reasons of style and content-type, that would mostly be a win.

I may well delay the next posts based on feedback and votes, but so far it seemed like the right move to go ahead.

Now this isn't a comment on the content of the article itself but, given that your first part in this series has negative votes (at the time of this comment and, most crucially, at the time this part 2 was posted), I question the wisdom of pushing on before addressing the perceived problems with the first post. On the other hand, perhaps you believe continuing to the next instalment will place the first part in a better context. Another theory is that you don't care about the negative votes or comments and are writing for those who do like what you're doing, and the downvoters can disembark the boat if they choose. Enough speculation from me, what's your stance?

I love the bit at the end where Ibrahim (market trader) says it's "the hardest money I've ever had to work for" and Nick (charity worker) jokes "he obviously hasn't worked in the charity sector to try and get money", then the look on Nick's face when Ibrahim says he's going to respray his yacht!

I felt that Nick displayed a good mix of hot and cold rationality.

Why "summary for impatient readers" not "summary"?

Taken.

Who was there, in the end?