Also, from what I've read: - DNA testing of hunter / gatherer societies show different dispersion of parentage - much more of the supposed alpha-male-in-a-commune kind of patterns, with no discernible lineage of the two-parents-in-mutual-fidelity kind
- this two-parent-in-mutual-fidelity lineage begins to get visible from times when men settled down and became agrarian - i.e. recent centuries / millenia - this begets the theory that fidelity is a recent construct that was actually implemented by males, to ensure their property (i.e. land) went to their heirs, and not to the heirs of their partner that were not provably from their sperm. I.e. the threat of withholding hereditary property was used as a threat to keep potentially wayward females in line. - which begets the theory that the religions with the most proscriptions on female behaviour (of the thou-shalt-not-stray kind) are those run by rich old males - ie. Christianity and Islam - which seems to neatly back up Ingrid's point that fidelity is a relatively modern social construct that is designed to preserve hereditary property in patrilineal societies. - Fidelity doesn't need to - and indeed doesn't - exist in property-agnostic cultures (i.e. the very poor / very rich classes and hence the adage about fidelity being the hobgoblin that haunts the middle class) and also in cultures that are matrilineal, like modern Iceland / parts of Kerala / Bengal / the North East of India etc. - Fidelity is an aberration from the point of view of evolutionary biology, where fidelity is not indicated as a means to produce the fittest offspring. - If you were to consider humankind as merely another specie, then the female's best chance of producing a child that survives is to (a) find a mate that provides the best nest (loosely speaking: a rich, stable guy) and (b) to do so with the best sperm (which is usually from the alpha male kind - and those are rarely the types to be stable nest providers). - Virtually no species on Earth display fidelity - and most display some variant of this live-with-nest-provider-but-get-sperm-from-alpha-male indicated behaviour that is most preferred from an evolutionary point of view. This behaviour is not uncommon among humankind either, with it offering sufficient grist-for-the-mill for soap operas around the planet. My $0.02, Mahesh On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 8:53 PM, ss <[email protected]> wrote: > On Wednesday 11 Mar 2009 6:46:40 pm Ingrid wrote: > > maternity is usually a provable fact. paternity, without DNA testing, a > > claim. > > this is not a significant issue when resources and responsibilities are > > jointly owned or shared by a tribe/clan/commune/kibbutz/joint family. > > it is also not an issue once private property is institutionalised when > > property is handed down the maternal line. > > it only becomes an issue when a) there is private property to be > > inherited/bequeathed and b) this is done down the paternal line since the > > risk of a 'cuckoo in the nest' kicks in. > > from a female perspective the upside to monogamy is not being left alone > to > > raise the offspring in which she has invested greater genetic, time and > > effort resources than the sperm donor has. communal living and resource > > sharing arrangements address this more or less adequately. > > all the hunter-gatherer/pastoral communities i'm aware of fit this > pattern > > i.e. they are polygamous/polyandrous and do not have severe proscriptions > > against what monogamous cultures term promiscuity. > > hence my conclusion. > > Very interesting. Thanks. > > shiv > >
