Which came first for fossil - food or sex?

Recent discoveries about human evolution explain several aspects of the way we live our lives. Somewhat.

Research now shows the human race began not 3.2 million years ago with our ancestor Lucy, but actually 4.4 million years ago with a fossil skeleton discovered at a site called Aramis in the Afar desert in Ethiopia.

What happened is pretty astonishing. A group of scientists found what appeared to be an early human skeleton in some mountain rock.

Because it was so fragile, they had to cut out the whole chunk of rock and take it to the lab where they meticulously put if together, often under a microscope.

It took 15 years to assemble it, rather like a jigsaw puzzle of a gazillion pieces except there was no picture on the box, the pieces had no shape at all and there was no clue as to how they fitted together. But, unlike most jigsaw puzzles, at least there was some research grant money and the incentive of scientific acclaim.

So, when the team finally put the 125 pieces of skeleton together, they found that they had the fossil remains of a 50-kilogram woman of a new species called Ardipithecus ramidus. The cause of her death wasn't specified but I think we can assume it was natural causes, unless maybe guns evolved before we did.

This 4.4-million-year-old woman, whose name was apparently Ardi, walked upright on two legs some of the time. But she had big toes that splayed out like some apes, which implies that she walked on all fours some of the time, for example in tree branches or to sneak under turnstiles at theme parks to get onto kiddie rides.

Two implications are even more astonishing.

First, this discovery shows that apes and humans are not descended from any missing link, but that apes probably evolved from early humans. Somewhere way back in the past, one surmises, early humans beamed with joy because their lovely babies were modern and "the new model" and antecedents of chimps and bonobos who, as we know, are extremely fun-loving individuals uninterested in war and very keen on sex.

Which brings me to the second implication: Apparently this woman when she was alive traded sex for food. I'm not sure how the scientists worked that out – perhaps they had access to footage from very primitive security cameras – but they are pretty certain that's how Ardi got along. Which accounts for a lot about the human race, now that I think about it.

This confirms what I have always suspected: that the human desire for sex in exchange for food predates pretty well everything else. Naturally there are many questions still unanswered. For example, what kind of food was involved? Was Ardi always taken out for dinner, or did they sometimes just relax and order in?

And, maybe the most important question of all, which came first, the food or the sex?

Did she insist on getting fed first to guarantee the future, or did they both enjoy the food much more in the afterglow?

That's the thing about evolution. It always produces more questions than answers.