‘In following the history of civil society,’ Rousseau remarked, ‘we shall be telling also that of human sickness.’ [..] Virtually unknown in nomadic times, among pastoralists they began running rampant. Why? The reason is rather embarrassing. When humans began raising livestock, they also invented bestiality. Read: sex with animals. As the world grew increasingly uptight, the odd farmer covertly forced himself on his flock. [..] And that’s the second spark for the male obsession with female virginity. Apart from the matter of legitimate offspring, it was also a fear of STDs. Kings and emperors, who had entire harems at their disposal, went to great lengths to ensure their partners were ‘pure’. Hence the idea, still upheld by millions today, that sex before marriage is a sin. [..] In the very same years that Rousseau was writing his books, Franklin admitted that ‘No European who has tasted Savage Life can afterwards bear to live in our societies.’ He described how ‘civilised’ white men and women who were captured and subsequently released by Indians invariably would ‘take the first good Opportunity of escaping again into the Woods’. Colonists fled into the wilderness by the hundreds, whereas the reverse rarely happened. And who could blame them? Living as Indians, they enjoyed more freedoms than they did as farmers and taxpayers. For women, the appeal was even greater. ‘We could work as leisurely as we pleased,’ said a colonial woman who hid from countrymen sent to ‘rescue’ her. ‘Here, I have no master,’ another told a French diplomat. ‘I shall marry if I wish and be unmarried again when I wish. Is there a single woman as independent as I in your cities?’ [..] That’s how our sense of history gets flipped upside down. Civilisation has become synonymous with peace and progress, and wilderness with war and decline. In reality, for most of human existence, it was the other way around. [..] But is civilisation all bad? Hasn’t it brought us many good things, too? Aside from war and greed, hasn’t the modern world also given us much to be thankful for? Of course it has. But it’s easy to forget that genuine progress is a very recent phenomenon. Up until the French Revolution (1789), almost all states everywhere were fuelled by forced labour. Until 1800, at least three-quarters of the global population lived in bondage to a wealthy lord. More than 90 per cent of the population worked the land, and more than 80 per cent lived in dire poverty. In the words of Rousseau: ‘Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains.’

— Humankind by Rutger Bregman (Page 104 - 110)