Study: Monogamy arose thanks to males with poor fighting skills

The only thing for certain is that this study arose thanks to males with poor fighting skills.

karlant on May 29, 2012 at 10:54 PM

Can’t argue that!

Seriously, though, the entire field of evolutionary psychology is nothing more than a collection of scientific-sounding “just-so” stories.

Since our distant ancestors are no longer alive to actually, you know, study, we end up with nonsense like this.

I’m sure that with enough time, I could come up with any number of plausible explanations for the development of monogamy. And after studying mathematical modeling for a while, I could probably find a way to replicate these results for any one of them. Best of all, no one could ever prove me wrong! “No prehistoric hominids were available for comment on this study.”

sadarj on May 29, 2012 at 11:03 PM

More seriously, a “collection of scientific-sounding ‘just-so’ stories” may be the single best description I’ve ever heard of the speculation that gets treated like science that is often called evolutionary psychology.

Who needs the scientific method? Just postulate till you come up with something plausible, then everybody will have to accept it as “science” and therefore fact. It’s not like you can be proven wrong.

There Goes The Neighborhood on May 30, 2012 at 12:40 AM

No. Monogamy arose in our current culture due to Pope who got tired of all the drama associated with estate settlements where someone died with multiple wives. Even after it was decreed that there be only one official marriage, the notion of concubines and mistresses continued for centuries. Polygamy wasn’t outlawed in France until the 1990′s, in fact. Human beings never have been particularly monogamous. But the real factor is that average duration of a marriage today is almost exactly the same as it was in the 1500′s … about 10 years. Only back then one or the other spouse was likely to die within that time period. A person who lived to be old (in their 70s) had most likely had two or more wives in that time. These days the expectation of some is that a marriage would last 50 or 60 or more years. That has never been the case in all of human history until the past 80 years or so.

When Charlemagne was crowned by the Pope as Emperor of the Romans in AD 800, he had anywhere from 4 to 10 wives according to who you read. Which were wives and which were concubines is in a bit of a dispute but he had a large house with 20 children.

It was the Puritans who gave us the notion that even concubines and mistresses were “wrong”. Europe continued with that tradition until only very, very recently (as in the last 50 years) and it is still practiced today albeit very quietly. Concubines have legal rights in much of Central and South America. Many of the wives of the miners stuck for weeks in a mine in Chile met the concubines of their husbands for the first time at the mine.

crosspatch on May 29, 2012 at 11:07 PM

Where was the Pope when Jesus said this?

Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, 5 And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? 6 Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.

That predates any pope you want to name. How did the pope institute monogamy, when Paul wrote this?

let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband.

And again,

A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach;

Obviously, the Pope didn’t just invent monogamy to make his life simpler.

I don’t know why you try to use kings as an example, anyway. As men of wealth and power, they obviously had far more ability to ignore social mores and standards than the rest, which makes them bad examples.

The Puritans were hardly the first to reject concubines and mistresses. That’s been a feature of Christianity from the first. Rather, there were those who ignored Christian morals to go their own way. As if that’s a surprise.

There Goes The Neighborhood on May 30, 2012 at 1:12 AM