putting on my thinking cap...

[RainDog]

So, reading about various forms of marriage is interesting.

One thing that's interesting is the idea that polygynous societies end up with a lot of men who don't have good chances of passing along DNA. Men don't share equally in the option to have multiple spouses with multiple offspring - this option is concentrated among a wealthy overclass.

This lack of diversity would make for a less robust gene pool over time - it would weaken a tribe and make it more vulnerable to disease or to survival in suddenly-altered circumstances.

On the other hand, polyandrous societies, even tho less common now, are still in existence in Tibet, Africa, India, South America, and notably existed among certain Celt tribes, pre-Roman conquest, across what are now continental Eastern and Western Europe, meant that more males had the opportunity to marry into woman's family.

both male and female polygamy is most often done with affiliative members of the same sex (female sisters or male brothers married to one of the opposite sex.) but this, as well, isn't the only model that has existed - it's just the most persistent.

But both female and male polygamy is connected to wealth.

So, this would indicate that gender, or the sexual equipment itself doesn't determine whether one or the other gender controls wealth in agricultural or hunter/gatherer societies.

The environmental conditions that exist for one or the other is tied to abundance - and when this is the case, a few men try to hoard women and wealth to exclude other males.

When environments are more difficult, birth control is more important, so one fecund female for many related males would satisfy a condition of affiliative reproduction advantage, b/c such arrangements would limit the population by preg/nursing cycles.

...which would seem to argue that humans evolved in spaces that were relatively abundant in resources (without actually having to have any contractual issues for paternity at all, even tho, in a society that allowed one or two families to amass a lot of wealth without sharing, this would occur.

and an environment that encouraged polyandry would be more likely to produce a founder effect in a population... right?

eta - and evidence of current changes in such arrangments indicate it's not too difficult to move to one or the other, depending upon the ability to support larger groups within an area.

[RainDog]

1. and another thing...

I've read where some say evidence indicates that polygynous societies have higher rates of violence among younger males - and the reason for this is because these males have no chance of ever marrying because a few males control most of the wealth (and, thus, the ability to sustain a situation with multiple wives and offspring.)

This is not saying that societies with higher ratios of males to females are more violent - it's saying that, historically, polygyny has created cultures in which wealth is concentrated among a few and young men end up fighting wars to help the few to accumulate even greater wealth.

and I only mentioned poly marriages, not (legally) monogamous ones. I qualify monogamous b/c we also know both males and females show, via paternity tests, that neither is monogamous as an essential feature of their existence as humans, tho most cultures these days are legally monogamous - which is also the form of marriage that creates the most genetic diversity because more males and females would be passing along their DNA.

is this totally offbase, you anthropologists here?