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From: g-rh@cca.CCA.COM (Richard Harter)
Newsgroups: soc.men,sci.bio
Subject: Re: Sexual selection
Message-ID: <25746@cca.CCA.COM>
Date: 19 Mar 88 21:49:49 GMT
References: <1566@mmm.UUCP> <3138@arthur.cs.purdue.edu> <1164@microsoft.UUCP> <25701@cca.CCA.COM> <4368@blia.BLI.COM>
Reply-To: g-rh@CCA.CCA.COM.UUCP (Richard Harter)
Organization: Computer Corp. of America, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 34

In article <4368@blia.BLI.COM> heather@blia.BLI.COM (Heather Mackinnon) writes:
>There have been many human societies with baboon-style alpha male
>mating patterns.  [Examples of polygamy deleted.]

	Not the same thing.  Human polygamy is tied to support.  The
male with several wives must be able to support them all.  In these
societies I believe you will find that polygamy was pretty much restricted
to a relatively wealthy minority, with most people being monogamous.
In baboons, et. al. the alpha male does not support the females and
the young.  Only the alpha males breed.  The situations are quite
different from a selection viewpoint.

>This leads to an interesting question:  when did the move towards monogamy
>happen and why?  Did it happen when agriculture replaced hunting and 
>gathering?  Did it happen with the growth of cities?  Did it happen when
>the male and female populations became more even?  Does it have anything
>to do with Christianity?  (In India, Hinduism permits polygamy, but
>Mohammedism forbids it.)

I'm a little skeptical about this idea that the male and female populations
were ever out of balance as a regular thing -- on one hand the males lead
riskier lives, on the other hand females died with great regularity in
childbirth.

I would phrase the question differently, as "when did polygamy become
unacceptable?".  I rather suspect that wide spread polygamy came into
being with agriculture, just because it became economically feasible
(i.e. wealth suplus and larger, more differentiated society.)  It is
an interesting question, though.
-- 

In the fields of Hell where the grass grows high
Are the graves of dreams allowed to die.
	Richard Harter, SMDS  Inc.