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Comment by tycho-newman | Hacker News Reader

There's lots of variations across cultures. You could make the (lazy) generalization that men do not want to invest in propagating genes belonging to another man.

But then the Himba have a high level of extra-pair paternity (EPP). How does this make sense evolutionarily? Maybe a high level of EPP means that more members of the community share your genes? Which gives you an incentive to care for offspring that are fathered by another man (you and that man may share genes to begin with).

Maybe this reduces violence between individuals, which in turn reduces violence more socially? A more peaceful kinship group may have a competitive evolutionary advantage in the long term.

Given the levels of gendered and sexual violence I've seen in many societies, I can see several advantages to the Himba way.

Of course I'm just speculating.

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Sometimes it helps to just remember that we're talking about people.

Like most people, Himba men mostly adopt the norms of their culture, and structure the way they think about the world through that lens. For a Himba man, it is normal to love children that were born via another father. Half of them were raised by fathers who were not their own bio-parents! It doesn't represent a threat to his masculinity, because his own father and every man he knows in his social groups has children this way, too. He never expected otherwise. And it doesn't even reduce his number of offspring, because he's having extra-pair children with other women, too.

In the west, on the other hand, the offense in cases of "extra-pair paternity" (to use the article's term) is not usually about genetics. It's a social violation. It offends the husband because his wife has broken an implicit or explicit promise of exclusivity. He can't go have kids himself outside the pair without committing another social violation. It's not normal or accepted in his world, so it makes cultural sense to react negatively to it.

You can ask why Western culture and Himba culture differ in how they think about these things, but then you're not really doing raw EvoPsych - you're doing cultural anthropology.

This sounds to me like western men would be better off in Himba society. They get more sex and less misogynistic!

Are the Himba known for high investment in their offspring? Do they send their children to school and college for two decades? Or do they put them to work immediately?

I am.wondering though, would a more kinship based society be less tolerant ofotherness/outgroup ?

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