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Originally Posted by Big Papa Goat
Coming of Age in Samoa was one of the most important books in modern anthropology, in that it established the claim that human nature is entirely malleable and based on culture alone.
It was also very poorly researched considering how relied upon it was. Supposedly Mead didn't even speak to or live with any Samoan adults and based her account of an idyllic, sexually and socially liberated Samoan culture on the statements of a few adolescent Samoan girls who were probably just exaggerating their sex lives and making fun of her.
Regardless, the book is pretty much entirely wrong about Samoan culture, and more importantly, about the broader sociological and psychological claims it makes.
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We will probably never know the exact nature of Samoan culture. The claims that the subjects interviewed by Mead were lying were brought by a man who interviewed them after they had been converted to Christianity by missionaries. I don't think it's likely that such women would speak frankly about sexual experiences to anyone, least of all an older man. (Mead was a graduate student at the time of her research)
Also, it's pretty well known from a wide body of anthropological research that certain non-western cultures are far more sexually permissive compared to cultures of the west.
There probably is an evolutionary root to human behavior, but no one seems to know exactly what it is yet. We do know however, from comparitive ethnography, that cultural constants are few and far between.
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