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From: biagioni@capella.cs.unc.edu (Edoardo Biagioni)
Newsgroups: sci.bio,alt.romance,soc.men,soc.women,soc.singles
Subject: Re: Are Humans Naturally Monogamous?
Summary: yes and no
Message-ID: <17086@thorin.cs.unc.edu>
Date: 26 Oct 90 15:02:51 GMT
References: <1990Oct24.175532.9407@pmafire.UUCP> <15490@netcom.UUCP> <1990Oct26.000754.24765@odin.corp.sgi.com>
Sender: news@thorin.cs.unc.edu
Reply-To: biagioni@capella.cs.unc.edu (Edoardo Biagioni)
Organization: University Of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Lines: 34

The question:
>>Without cultural training would human being by there biological nature
>>be monogamous or is it culturally ingrained from childhood?

milt@waynes-world.esd.sgi.com	(Milton Tinkoff) writes:
>I think it is culturally ingrained.  Men can impregnate as many fertile
>women as they can have sex with.  This allows men to 'spread their DNA
>around' as much as they can.

There is an unspecified assumption here that if a man impregnates two
women he is more reproductively successful than a man who only
impregnates one.

This is a false assumption for two reasons:

(1) a woman can bear many children, so a man with two children by
two women has fewer than a man with three children by one woman.

(2) The ultimate reproductive success depends on the reproductive success
of the offspring; in many cases this is at least partly dependent on the
physical the offspring gets from BOTH parents during development. This was
probably even more true in prehistorical times than it is now.

So depending on the environment, it may or may not be evolutionarily
advantageous for a man to 'spread [his] DNA around', especially if that
means men are no longer sure of the paternity of their offspring and
offspring, neglected by one parent, has fewer chances to reproduce.

To the best of my knowledge women and men both have some monogamous
and some polygamous tendencies, with cultural influences usually
tipping the balance.

Ed Biagioni	biagioni@cs.unc.edu 		Department of Computer Science
		(919)962-1954			Chapel Hill, N.C. 27514, USA