What to Make of polygamy?

@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

Am I the only one who wonders if the 16 non breeders were alive or not? slaves or not? Where they killed at birth or not?

I am hoping that someone wants to talk about possible power and control mechanisms that would have keep this going for even a few generations.

I propose a sustained process of territorial and demographic expansion of a population A, through warfare and other means, at the expense of another population B. All the males from B die and their civilization collapses (they lose) but many females from B are captured by population A and given as wives to, or raped by, a small number of A warriors.

Pop A= various waves of technologically superior people, eg for Europe the LBK people and the proto Indo-Europeans in the Kurgan hypothesis.

Pop B: various population technologically inferior eg mesolithic people, who vanished from (pre)history.

1 Reply

@Olivier5,

No, Oli, I am not a racist I just dont like you . As for disagreeing/agreeing with what you said, a native English speaker would see the difference .

Oli owes me an apology .

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@Olivier5,

Do the recognized haplogroups hold up with "Kurganizing"??

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@Ionus,

You owe the world an apology for being a xenophobic asshole.

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@farmerman,

From what I gathered, the Kurgan hypothesis is currently favored by most scientists (often in a revised form of a demic invasion), due to certain word roots common to all indo-european languages and pertaining to horses, wheel, plough, chariot, axis, etc., all things implying domestication of the horse. I am unaware of genetic studies but they must exist.

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@Olivier5,

exchanging mates is "gene flow"
expansion or migration is "invasion"
a combination of the two above is "demic diffusion"

so...what is

Quote:

a revised form of a demic invasion

Quote:

the Kurgan hypothesis

From 5,000-2,500 BC...what does that have to do with 8,000 BC ?

Orifice 5 fingers owes me an apology

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@Ionus,

Go to hell, ioio. Hope you like it there.

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@Olivier5,

the genetic stuff relates to the specific haplogroups on the Y and X . From what Id seen in the maps, mot of these haplogroups appear to be divided up based upon migrations from the Levant and through Asia
The British Isles have a series of these same groups but they seem to be arrnged through the presence and (later absence) of the glacial low stand known as Doggerlnd.

I dont know enough to have any educated guesses.

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@farmerman,

Did you check what I posted above?

A Predominantly Neolithic Origin for European Paternal Lineages
http://able2know.org/topic/272862-9#post-5931464

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@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

BS, Polygamy is one man being in UNION with more than one female, marriage is but one of a great many forms that this could take. I am surprised at you Thomas, I never had you pegged as an old fart with old ideas.

Whether I'm an old fart or not, words have meanings, and they are defined by general usage and documented by dictionaries. If you want to invent your own language just to avoid being an old fart, that's your choice. Meanwhile, my own choice is to stick to standard American English. And in standard American English, "polygamy" means "the state or practice of being married to more than one person at the same time". Like it or not.

Quote:

What did these 1 of 17 have that others did not and passed it on to me? [...] I'd kinda like to know.

The I recommend you study some animal species where harems are common today. I understand that the standard specimen for investigating the evolutionary genetics of harems are sea lions, seals, and family.

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@Thomas,

Considering that we are not in a position to know the mating contractual arrangements then we need to assume the we are using the social biology defintion, which defines polygamy as one man mating with more than one woman.

Btw this is increasingly also the modern definition as our society is rapidly discarding marriage. Like I said, you are behind the times.

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@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

Like I said, you are behind the times.

I don't care. Arguments from identity politics mean nothing to me. Moving on . . . .

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@Thomas,

Apparently you dont understand what the word " politics" means either....

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@Thomas,

Quote:

polygyny is the correct spelling of having more than one wife at the same time.

Polygamy is a broader term which includes any multiple union including polyandry, which is a woman having more than one husband.

http://wordinfo.info/unit/3322?letter=P&spage=10

I found this interesting since polyandry is the term de jour here - and most people seem to have confused it with polyamory.

http://www.torontolife.com/informer/features/2013/01/23/sex-without-borders/

perhaps that's why some people just refer to their relationships as poly - easier than figuring out which one they really mean

Quote:

Polyamorists (who should probably just go ahead and start their own dictionary) believe in “compersion,” which refers to the vicarious joy they feel when the person they love experiences emotional fulfillment.

language is fun

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@ehBeth,

And I have known quite a few people who consider themselves poly even though they are only married to only one of their partners, or none. Marriage still means something to most people, but less and less all of the time, and so definitions that depend upon marriage are getting out of date.

1 Reply

@hawkeye10,

By definition, none of the poly terms have anything to do with marriage in a formal sense. They are about sexual partnerships of various combinations.

Polygamy is the term which encompasses others that refer to particular gender combos.

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@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

I picture each mating male killing on average 16 males to get the right to enjoy sex, a lot. Picture Hunger Games if you will.

What say you?

Definitions aside, I picture a society much like the harems of elephant seals or gorillas. Dominant males fend off low-status males when they catch them trying to lure females out of the harem, hence they father most of the children. But not all. While females prefer dominant males, they don't mind the occasional quicky with the gorilla gardener or the seal plumber, so the low-status male gets to sneak one in from time to time. I don't envision a lot of killing --- too expensive for the evolutionary payoff in offspring. As long as a high-status male chases low-status tresspassers off his property, i.e., his females, that's good enough for him.

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@ehBeth,

Polyamory is the future, me think.

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What to Make of polygamy?

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