[Vote for the Fire Here!]
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I wondered at the long processes of evolution that had
nurtured over thousands of generations what had in time become the human kind. I
wondered of the struggles of my own world as well as on Gor, struggles which
over millennia had shaped the blood and inmost being of my species, perhaps
conflicts over tunnels in cliffs to be fought with the savage cave bear, long
dangerous weeks spent hunting the same game as the saber-toothed tiger, perhaps
years spent protecting one's mate and brood from the depredations of carnivores
and the raids of one's fellow creatures.
As I thought of our primeval ancestor standing in the mouth of his cave one hand
gripping a chipped stone and perhaps the other a torch, his mate behind him and
his young hidden in the mosses at the back of the cave I wondered at If among
them would not be the strength and the aggressiveness and the swiftness of eye
and hand and the courage of the male and on the part of the woman ----- what?
What would have been the genetic truths in her blood without which she and
accordingly man himself might have been overlooked in the vicious war of a
species to remain alive and hold its place on an unkind and savage planet?
It seemed possible to me that one trait of high survival value might be the
desire on the part of the woman to belong--utterly--to a man.
It seemed clear that woman would, if the race were to survive, have to be
sheltered and defended and fed---and forced to reproduce her kind.
If she were too independent she would die in such a world and if she did not
mate her race would die. That she might survive it seemed plausible that
evolution would have favored not only the woman attractive to men but the one
who had an unusual set of traits---among them perhaps the literally instinctual
desire to be his, to belong to him, to seek him out for her mate and submit
herself to him. Perhaps if she were thrown by her hair to the back of the cave
and raped on furs in the light of the animal fire at its mouth this would have
been to her little more than the proof of her mate’s regard for her, the
expected culmination of her innate desire to be dominated and his. …I thought
of the small things on my old world that at such remoteness perhaps re-enacted
the ancient ceremony of the caves, the carrying of the bride over the threshold,
perhaps as a prisoner, the tiny wedding bands, perhaps a small reminder of the
primitive thongs that bound the wrists of the first bride, or perhaps later of
the golden manacles fastened on the wrists of daughters of kings, captive
maidens led in triumph through cheering streets to the bondage of slave
girls."
Priest-Kings
Pages 204-206
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