What to Make of polygamy?

In South America there are still indigenous tribes that have a culture that is very different to modern Western Culture. An example is the Yanomami.

The Yanomami tribe practices polygamy. Girls are married off at puberty (12 years old). They are expected to bear children, and it is acceptable for husbands beat their wives if they don't meet this obligation.

Are these cultural practices by the Yanomami an example of rape? Is it appropriate to use the Western view of "rape" when trying to understand this very different culture?

These tribes have chosen to remain isolated from modern culture. Should they have this right in spite of the fact that their cultural practices (which we would call rape) are unacceptable to us?

Should we be going into these cultures and demanding that they change their practices and leave the lifestyle they have lived for centuries?

The point I am trying to make is that you can't understand other cultures using the values and beliefs our own culture. If we choose to impose our beliefs on this other culture, we will destroy it.

Nice post, thanks. My take is that a contextual definition of rape may be desirable but is not possible in this case. We know almost nothing about neolithic cultures, sexuality and politics... There is no reason to assume that they were all the same across the globe. It'd be quite ambitious if at all possible to reconstruct or even theorize the cultural context around rape in the whole world during the whole neolithic...

Instead, a operational definition of rape is needed, one that works for the study or enquiry at hand without coloring it too much with modern biases. "Forced sexual intercourse", like all definition, is imperfect and has its grey areas ("sexual intercourse when not technically forced but not particularly receptive either") but i'd like to see a better alternative before i drop it.

Any operational definition of rape is going to be culturally specific. I don't see this as a problem.

I live a perfectly good life within my culture. The sexual values (including the definition of rape) of my culture work fine for me. They work well our general cultural beliefs and narrative and they give me a way of defining my own identity and values within my culture. I don't need another definition of rape... except when I am trying to step out of my culture to understand something more broadly.

Different cultures including Stone Aged Europeans or current day Yanomami tribes have radically different values that worked for them.

Your definition of rape is perfectly appropriate within a modern Western context.

I don't think that's my viewpoint. You must have picked that up from someone else.

My position is that it is unwise to rule out any theories at this point.

In a book about sense of smell it is maintained people living mostly in monogamous families even millions of years ago.

The book, ‘Adam’s Nose and the Making of Mankind’, tells the story of how the sense of smell evolved from the earliest beginnings of life, and enabled humans to become the only animal on Earth to have developed a ‘smell culture.’

Writer Professor Michael Stoddart claims that our sense of smell evolved to make human pheromones undetectable, when compared to other species

The academic, based at the University of Tasmania, Australia, claims we evolved from species living in mostly monogamous small families and that over time our ancestors’ pheromone detectors were disabled.

‘Monogamy, which underpins the security of the one-female family structure, would not have withstood the sexual pressures of communal living,’ he said.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3009795/How-NOSE-shaped-human-race-Ancestors-lost-ability-detect-sex-pheromones-make-men-faithful-create-stable-family-unit.html#ixzz3WgkzyXmF

17 wifes and killing an animal this size all alone in lack of buddies
Gosh were men men in those days.

Yes, they did . And they saw everyone else as equally inferior, not because of colour but by ability . They gave citizenship to those deserving (in their eyes) and there was no discrimination .

Slaves that they increasingly gave rights to . Very few were black .
??Are you saying only the Romans had a penis and greed ? Or they only raped non-romans and this they did because of colour ??

When the Romans talk about the Numidians, they admire their fighting ability . I cant think of a ref where they even think of them as black, let alone a nigger .

You have totally misunderstood this...the Romans valued everything we do...family, courage, honour, and they saw other peoples as inferior . Not because of colour, but because of culture .

Rubbish .

We do that to our own culture everytime we introduce a new law .

There is a biological reason that any smart culture sends the men out to do the dangerous jobs such as hunting and fighting wars and keep women at home doing relatively safe jobs. Cultures that break this law of nature by giving these jobs to women will be less productive and less successful (and likely don't even survive).

If 17 men die in your tribe, you are weaker... but you can recover. If 17 women die, you are in big trouble. With 17 fewer women you have 17 fewer opportunities to reproduce each year. This can mean the end of a tribe.

That is why there are very few cultures that don't have the men do the hunting and fighting. Modern culture gets away from this law of nature because we have (unlike almost any culture before us) been freed from any biological pressure to reproduce.

I don't know exactly what you are getting at with this.

My point is that moral judgments and beliefs in one culture don't even make sense in into other cultural contexts. You can't use our values to understand other cultures, it breaks down pretty quickly.

I don't think you are disagreeing with this point.

Of course the men went hunting - a pregnant woman with small children around would not be good at hunting. She would do a good job in picking mushrooms and berries. The sound of human voices would probably keep certain animals on a safe distance.
4000 years ago the average Swedish man was 167 cm and the woman 156 cm.
The inhabitants in Eastern part were at least as big as a modern man, but on the Western Östergötland they were much smaller.
The Vikings were about 173 for a man and 150 for a woman - smaller than the stoneage women.
Around 1500 men were smaller and women taller than the Viking men/women.
Around 1800 borth were smaller than around 1500.
From there on they got taller and taller.

Saab, why are you glossing over the obvious biological fact?

Women have a uterus. Having functional uteruses is a crucial part of having a viable society. A Stone Age society that does not protect its uteruses doesn't survive. And, uteruses are more valuable than testicles because they a uterus can only be used once a year. A man can reproduce 20 times in the time it takes a woman to reproduce once.

Once you have modern medicine and food security there is less of a need for every uterus to be utilized. But in a Stone Age society, the loss of a uterus is a very bad thing for the long term survival of a tribal group. The loss of a penis is not so bad.

It is not surprising that many cultures have traditions that protect the lives of women and avoid dangerous jobs for women. This is a reasonable adaptation to biological reality.

Alright, my view entirely.

I note with interest how often in history the women end up doing almost all of the work, the men spending their time fooling around and getting drunk.......perhaps the majority of the men were unneeded, and the alpha males did away with them one way or another? I am not quite sure how 16 males could not take one male and his women in the village in a fight, but maybe they got food as a reward for not fighting. Or maybe they were dead.

Since the purpose would be to inform a study conducted by modern Western scientists, I don't see that as a problem either. We are not talking of trying to live in prehistoric societies, just trying to understand what would explain the 1/17 ratio. A few distinct strategies could have been at work. I would tend to agree that "rape" is vague as a category so it would need to be made more precise, e.g. "1. rape of captured females from an enemy tribe"; "2. marriage of most females of the clan to the sole ruler of the clan"; etc. Whether a modern judges would call any of those rape is not the issue. The issue is simply: what practices may explain such a small number of reproducing males.

Even if they did, it would not necessarily change the ratio. A new boss chases the old boss...

A couple of fights btween families/tribes are actually well documented.
The Talheim massacre is a very good example - it's actually the first sign [until now] of organized violence in Early Neolithic Europe.

Speculations as to the reasons for this massacre are now ... more focusing on kidnapping women.

Interesting stuff. The Roman attack on the Sabines also comes to mind.

... more than 4,000 years later