What to Make of polygamy?

A Predominantly Neolithic Origin for European Paternal Lineages
Patricia Balaresque et al.

The relative contributions to modern European populations of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers and Neolithic farmers from the Near East have been intensely debated. Haplogroup R1b1b2 (R-M269) is the commonest European Y-chromosomal lineage, increasing in frequency from east to west, and carried by 110 million European men. Previous studies suggested a Paleolithic origin, but here we show that the geographical distribution of its microsatellite diversity is best explained by spread from a single source in the Near East via Anatolia during the Neolithic. Taken with evidence on the origins of other haplogroups, this indicates that most European Y chromosomes originate in the Neolithic expansion.

[...] Much debate has focused on the origins of agriculture in Europe some 10,000 years ago, and in particular whether its westerly spread from the Near East was driven by farmers themselves migrating, or by the transmission of ideas and technologies to indigenous hunter-gatherers. This study examines the diversity of the paternally inherited Y chromosome, focusing on the commonest lineage in Europe. The distribution of this lineage, the diversity within it, and estimates of its age all suggest that it spread with farming from the Near East. Taken with evidence on the origins of other lineages, this indicates that most European Y chromosomes descend from Near Eastern farmers. In contrast, most maternal lineages descend from hunter-gatherers, suggesting a reproductive advantage for farming males over indigenous hunter-gatherer males during the cultural transition from hunting-gathering to farming.

Citation: Balaresque P, Bowden GR, Adams SM, Leung H-Y, King TE, et al. (2010) A Predominantly Neolithic Origin for European Paternal Lineages. PLoS Biol 8(1): e1000285. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1000285

Nothing extraordinary about this simple way to find a solution to evade extinction.

I wish that I remembered more.....maybe this study was about an attempt at farming that greatly predated the time that we are talking about.

The LBK people settled on fluvial terraces and in the proximities of rivers. They were quick to identify regions of fertile loess. On it they raised a distinctive assemblage of crops and associated weeds in small plots, an economy that Gimbutas called a "garden type of civilization".[25] The difference between a crop and a weed in LBK contexts is the frequency. Crop foods are:

Triticum dicoccum, emmer wheat
Triticum monococcum, einkorn wheat
Pisum sativum, pea
Lens culinaris, lentil

Species that are found so rarely as to warrant classification as possible weeds are:
Hordeum, barley
Panicum miliaceum, broom corn millet
Secale cereale rye
Vicia ervilia, bitter vetch
Vicia faba, broad or field bean

[...] Hemp (Cannabis sativum) and flax (Linum usitatissimum) gave the LBK people the raw material of rope and cloth, which they no doubt manufactured at home as a cottage industry. From poppies (Papaver somniferum), introduced later from the Mediterranean, they may have manufactured palliative medicine.

The LBK people were stock-raisers, as well, with cattle favoured, though goats and swine are also recorded. Like farmers today, they may have used the better grain for themselves and the lower grades for the animals. The ubiquitous dogs are present here too, but scantly. Substantial wild faunal remains are found. The LBK supplemented their diets by hunting deer and wild boar in the open forests of Europe as it was then.

so what is your theory? That humans were under great pressure from something at the time? Was it maybe a population problem, too many people to feed?

Until recently, having another child was only hypothetical to most Chinese parents. But now that the government has relaxed its one-child policy to permit second children if one parent is an only child, her theoretical question is a real one.

Permitting more than one child is surely a step toward freedom, one that will curb the forced abortions and fearful abandonments that have characterized so much of family planning in China for the past 35 years. Still, many Chinese aren’t going to rush to have more children.


Zheng Zhenzhen, a professor at the Institute of Population and Labor Economics in Beijing, told me that less than 2 percent of parents cite the state’s policy as the reason they have only one child. When Zheng and her fellow researchers asked parents of only children who were eligible to have a second, they initially said they wanted two. But when asked about the logistics of having a second child, they changed their response and said they intended to stop at one.

I would say yes. Monogamy implies greater equality between husband and wife. When Mohammad capped the number of wives a muslim can have to 4 at any given time (if he can provide for them and their children), he did so in part to civilize his people, by improving women's rights.

Christianity became monogamous because the Greeks and the Romans among which it spread were monogamous. It's one of these pagan things in Christianity, me think.

The article mentions that all the other men were available so they were alive .

It is difficult for one man to control 16 so I am guessing it was voluntary .

it could be that some of the other 16 did mate, maybe as a reward for good behavior, but all of their babies were killed.