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Comment by chillacy | Hacker News Reader

That's historically the case: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/sep/24/women-men-dn...

The other implication of polygamy is that a lot of men simply didn't have a chance to pass on their genes at all.

I sometimes wonder if a big reason why monogamous marriage exists as a concept in human society is as a strategy for mitigating violent upheaval. By using cultural pressure to force single-partner relationships (at least on the surface), you no longer had a large group of sexually frustrated men with nothing to lose looking around and wondering how to get a piece of what the elite have that they don't.

I personally belive this to be the case.

I cam across an interesting article here on HN posted about the link between polygamy and upheaval in the Economist https://www.economist.com/news/christmas-specials/21732695-p... .

Whilst its not evidence, it certainly makes the case.

A lot of what we think of as “marriage” comes from the entirety of human history where women were bought and sold as bargaining chips in their male family member’s lives. They were used to ensure inheritance, line of succession, and to cement business relationships. Not until just the past couple centuries in western society has there even been a concept of marrying for romantic love.

Behavior you describe is traditionally attributed to the upper classes of pre-modern nobility. At least that's how popular imagination paints it (see Game of Thrones).

I am not so sure this was modus operandi for commoners when it came to marriage. Caste-bound poor village dwellers, with few prospects and no family wealth to maintain, I imagine married for love more often than not.

Poor village workers had to work physically and strength mattered a lot. Also, you paid taxes per household making it very hard for single women to make it. E.g. girl has to marry cause living without man is super hard.

You dated two weeks at 15 and then announced marriage and then it was for live.

And that somehow precludes marrying for love?.. You are a village girl, you've been around the village, you know all the boys you age. You marry the one you like. Love.

I am not denying that pre-arranged marriages are a thing, and that they played a more prominent role in the past, but to say that genuine love played no part in the match making process until 200 years ago, like the OP suggested, is an exaggeration.

Love is a part of human evolutionary toolbox, it's been around for a while. Accordingly, the subject of love, and marrying for love, comes up in literary works since the start of recorded history.

>I sometimes wonder if a big reason why monogamous marriage exists as a concept in human society is as a strategy for mitigating violent upheaval.

Yes, many anthropologists have theorized the same idea. William Tucker (journalist) wrote a whole book about marriage being a social mechanism to reduce violence:

https://www.amazon.com/Marriage-Civilization-Monogamy-Made-H...

Related to this, as a bit of cause and a bit of effect, is that std deviation intelligence/posperity/success is significantly wider for males.

Mentally ill people and geniuses are overwhelmingly male.

Could that just be an observational effect? That it's maybe been historically easier for mentally ill women to hide at home, and for genius women to not be discovered? I realize I'm asking a question we can't answer at the moment, but I bring it up because we've "recently" (I'm old) learned that girls can struggle in school just like boys, but their problems go undetected because they behave in class and teachers are less likely to look for problems. The crisis has always been the 7th grade boy who can't read- it turns out there are a lot of 7th grade girls who can't read either, but they were undiagnosed.

Doubtful. It's pretty well established that alcoholism, autism, psychopathy, and to some extent downs syndrome predominantly affect men. (And counterexample: depression is twice as common among women.)

Alcoholism rates change over time. And the gap between men and women was getting smaller.

Heck, even today, I've noticed a lot of people don't know women can have austism/aspergers.

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