What to Make of polygamy?

Another way to reach these results, not already mentioned, would be for the dominant male to kill not other adult males but their offsprings.

Clearly, there are more than one possible solution to this enigma.

Thank you for taking the time and find the original study.
WOW 100 researcher and 66 institutes check 456 now living people and then they know exactly what happened 8000 years ago.

I have several stoneage tools - took for granted they were made by men, but now I have to guess they were made by women as the men had disappeared.

Either way the line ends and there is no contribution to the gene pool going forwards. I know that the geneticists cant tell me what happened to all of the missing males, and I doubt very much that anyone else can either.

no - the men had not disappeared - they were not contributing to the gene pool

it was one of a series of genetic bottlenecks

that is one of the other suggestions

more research is needed

I say that whatever marriage was 8000 years ago, it is a contract today. Whatever terms in this contract any number of consenting adults agree on is fine with me. Our Bronze-age past is irrelevant to my views on marriage.

I dont believe that either the study or anyone in this thread has made any claims about marriage. How would we even go about knowing what intimate relationship looked like then? I suppose the few isolated tribes that remain offer a clue, but not an answer.

Whatever ..they did not contributing to the gene pool or they disappeared out of the gene pool.
Somebody got screwed.....a modern scientist

More research on what? If only 1/17 males contributed to the gene pool then we already know that 16 did not produce daughters with the sons killed. The one who was fathering kids might have killed his sons or he might have run them off( he certainly did one or the other), but the geneticists cant tell me which happened.

Have you followed any of the links that talk about the types of research that is proposed? In terms of scientific research, 4000 - 12000 years ago is not really that long ago.

I'm reading an interesting book right now

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/dec/31/alexandria-last-nights-cleopatra-stothard-review

well, sort of odd but interesting.

In any case, one of the things that really caught me was this from page 73




the reminder to look at old data with open minds at the same time as considering new data - I thought it was useful in a lot of ways.

We don't have that much source material about what happened in the Stone Age, but we can look across cultures that we do understand to gain an insight into human nature.

There are things we know for certain.

1) There are many cultures where powerful men had more than one wife. Examples of this span continents and are seen in cultures that had no contact with each other (e.g. early Americans to biblical Hebrews). There are few (if any) cultures where women had more than one husband.

2) There are many cultures where women had no input into who their mate would be. There are some smaller number of cultures where neither partner had a choice.

3) In primate species (a group that includes humans) polygamy correlates very well with the difference between the physical size between males and females of the species. Humans males are on average 15% bigger than human females.

I think it is wrong to reject the simplest explanation, that powerful men during this time were polygamous. This explanation correlates with the advent of agriculture (which would have allowed men to consolidate power), and it matches all of the facts and is consistent with human nature throughout our history. The other explanations being offered here are far-fetched.

The size of the number of women mating with each powerful male is a bit surprising. But the fact that polygamy has existed throughout human history is no surprise.

We also know that babies of the "wrong,"sex are sometimes killed at birth.

We know that modern polygamist societies run the unwanted men off at age 16 or so.

We know that sometimes women are considered property of men.

We know that humans are often willing to trade freedom for security

We know that sometimes the balls of men are cut off

We know that food scarcity has been a consistant problem so the person who can provide food tends to have a lot of power.

And will always be...

I agree with Hawk that given the 1/17 ratio, it's unwise to rule out violent practices such as war, rape or murder. I agree with you that it is also unwise to rule out non-violent explanations. Given the size of the ratio, there's room for more than one explanation.

Yet if that study is correct, the same thing happened on all continents of the old world, pretty much at the same time give or take 1000 yrs... so there must be a core reason for it, a main overall cause. Probably increased power and wealth concentration resulting from the spread of agriculture.

At least, that's what the authors are saying and it makes sense to me.

As for "what this says for our modern psychology", it's too early to draw conclusions from that particular study, but if Hawk just wants to argue that rape has shaped our genome, I would agree. Over and beyond this particular period (3000-8000 BP), we all know that rape has been around and is still around, and that some rapes lead to pregnancies and births. Therefore it stands to reason that rape has played a role in our evolution.

Olivier. What definition of rape do you use when you are speculating about Stone Age culture?

In many of these cultures marriage was arranged and sex was not optional. Our modern ideas of consent don't apply in earlier cultures. I would certainly make a difference between rape of prisoners of war and forced marriage when considering cultural practices. Both of these are considered "rape" in a modern culture.

What's wrong with "forced sexual intercourse", as a definition?

I did not mention rape. I did mention women being seen as the property of men, but so long as the woman considers herself property rape is not possible so long as it is her owner who is having sex with her.

My main interest in this thread is exploration of what would drive the 1/17 result, and in what happened to the 16/17 men who did not contribute to the gene pool.

You mentioned war and rape as a weapon of war.

and so I did.....I had forgotten.

Because many cultures view forced sexual intercourse differently than we view it. If you are trying to gain insight by looking at other cultures, you have to leave your own cultural beliefs and attitudes behind.

Modern Western culture has very unique views on sexual freedom. We have invented new rights and new ideas about equality and freedom that would be completely foreign in earlier cultures. Many of our beliefs on sexuality are very recent and quite radical (from a historical perspective)

Our modern views on sexual freedom may not have even been possible in the Stone Age. You don't have the luxury of allowing people to say "No" in an environment where if people don't reproduce the community dies (especially since throughout most of history infant/child mortality was relatively high). Many societies forced people to have sex in marriage... this was even part of our own culture until very recently.

We come with a cultural bias. If we are going to understand things across cultures we need to be willing to consider other perspectives in the context of other societies.

Happens to the best of us.