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    that it remained as common as ever in the Europe of the 1600s.

    In fact, the restless effort of human males to find more wombs

    that will carry their seed has been dignified by the forefathers of

    western civilization.  The rape of the Sabine women, a bit of Roman

    history anyone with a modest classical education can recount, was a

    stunt very similar to those frequently pulled off by the Yanomamo.38

    The heroes of the tale--a gang of early Romans--invited the neighboring

    tribesmen and their wives over for dinner and entertainment.  The

    entertainment turned out to be a display of Roman weapons.  The

    hosts pulled their swords, grabbed the girls, then attacked and chased

    away the husbands.  There was a high time among the Roman

    founding fathers as they indulged merrily in sex with the weeping

    captives.  And nine months later, there was more weeping as the

    kidnapped ladies gave birth to a fresh crop of infants--the babies of the

    banquet hosts.39

    The Trojan War also ended with a scene that any Yanomamo

    warrior would have understood.  It started as a battle over one woman,

    a lovely creature who behaved very much like Konrad Lorenz' female

    duck.  You remember, the aquatic female who triggered a fight, then

    ran back to her mate and tried to get him to join in.  The instigator, in

    the case of the human conflict, was Helen of Troy.  When the fighting

    was over, the winning Greeks were rewarded with a Yanomamo-esque

    bonanza--captured plunder and conquered Trojan females.  The

    warriors took the women home and ravished them.  But you can be

    sure they didn't bother to carry many Trojan infants on the trip back

    across the Aegean Sea.  (As Troy was going down in defeat,

    Andromache, one of the Trojan wives, told her baby that the odds were

    good "some Achaean will take you by the hand and hurl you from the

    tower into horrible death....")40

    Less than a year later, the fresh crop of babies from the Trojan

    captives fattened the Greek bloodline.41

      u'd attacked was common in the days of the Old Testament.  And

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