How much should a civilization lie to itself about the nature of human sexuality?
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Are you familiar with Bernard Chapais's theories about this in Primeval Kinship and his papers since then? One possibility is that there were single-male, multi-female groups between promiscuity and pair bonding, though he considers harems a form of pair bonding.
That would still have resulted in massive dimorphism, which is not what we see in humans, compared to other polygynous species like gorillas or elephant seals.
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Chapais argues that: "The primate data suggests that this transition [from promiscuity to monogamy] was not direct and that an intermediate stage was the multiharem type of group in which all families are polygynous and a fraction of males are unmated." (p. 171 Primeval Kinship)
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He argues that improved technology (i.e., weapons) likely provided an equalizer that made this transition period relatively short lived. He also argues that the fossil record indicates early hominids were more like Pan in size. But his papers since then offer various theories.
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