Do you have any evidence it was a guiding force in society? Perhaps a specific example could allow us to analyze whether blood ties really were highly important and a "guiding force on society".
On the contrary I do believe that religion had an influence on politics and that the ruling class often took their religion and culture very seriously. But I don't believe that blood ties were nearly as effective as you portray them to be. The Buyid family immediately breaking apart and literally every single succession war in existence is evidence of that.
An exception or two doesn't prove anything given establishing blood ties was the foremost policy in practically every society ever, including groups such as business elites where who the business owner's children married was--is in some societies--important. Succession conflicts
proves it's important because it lets one branch of the family gain land and resources using the threat of violence and war. Warfare is a risky strategy, but sometimes it produces huge benefits.
You are arguing that polygamy is evolutionarily effective (which doesn't make sense because social practices aren't organisms so "fitness" doesn't apply at all) and was effective at creating blood ties but A. Europe built its entire political structure around blood ties and didn't use polygamy at all and B. blood ties weren't sustainable as stabilizing tools anyways.
If you're arguing a practice is necessary or required then exceptions to the rule, especially if exceptions can be found in entire continents (such as Europe or Japan), then your claims make little sense. Polygamy can't be argued to be necessary for establishing blood ties (of which it wasn't even commonly used) if you could establish blood ties without polygamy. Even in the Middle East polygamous relationships with multiple women weren't for forming alliances. It turns out that wealthy families don't want their daughters be the second or third wife of someone.
Polygamy adds additional potential links, like what happened in Mesoamerica among the Mixtecs for instance where they obsessively tracked geneologies (and elsewhere in Mesoamerica, check
The Postclassic Mesoamerican World). It also has an advantage over monogamy in that it is more likely to produce an heir. Yes, there are drawbacks (jealousy between wives) but otherwise it's a very effective social system hence why it shows up everywhere in history.
Prove it? This is another unsubstantiated claim. In the map, both men and women specifically have extramarital sex. Polyandry is a practice where multiple men marry the same women. The fact that it is extramartial sex is evidence enough that we aren't looking at polyandry. Furthermore, you are only assuming that all of those indigenous groups which tolerate extramartial sex are polyandrous. You have no idea.
Our culture tolerates extramarital sex more than ever, that doesn't mean it's correct to state our society is polyamorous or practices polygyny since male extramarital sex is more tolerated than female extramarital sex.
In a majority of the geographical locations of the indigenous peoples that permit extramartial sex, polyandry isn't even useful. Most of those locations are plains or forests, not heavily mountainous areas. Arable land is rather common. There is no incentive for polyandry. Over and over, you continue to display a significant amount of ignorance and presumptuousness in regards to how these societies function while knowing absolutely nothing about them.
You keep referring to that map (which honestly seems to be your only argyment), but I've pointed out flaws in the methodology which that map uses. Do you not understand there's a significant logical leap between "this society tolerates extramartial sex from both men and women" and "this society is polyamorous?" Or why anthropologists are insistent that "polyandry" is the best term for these societies for the same reason we don't call matrilineal societies with powerful female rulers/nobles "matriarchies?"
If your concern is in being right, what is the point in making assumptions and pretending as if these societies were all polyandrous?
What is the point in making assumptions and pretending as if these societies were all polyamorous?
No. It has to be popular. If people can find a way for the Monaco to take over France, you can find a way to make polyamory more popular. There have been polyamorous societies that do not practice polyandry (see the database Citrakayah posted) and polyandry is not a pre-requisite for polyamory. Biological justifications, thus far, have fallen apart throughout this thread (using that is the equivalent of using phrenology to explain why you can't make a POD for the Caliphate taking over Europe). Right now you're just denying the information (or rather refusing to look at it).
You are REALLY obsessed with that map, even though it's literally just a database anyone can add to as long as it has a source which can be literally anything, even centuries old anthropology notes. Did you actually look at it other than seeing the nice dots that appear to confirm your presupposition? Have you ever considered that it might be inaccurate, exaggerated, or any number of things?
Except that you can't because, once again, there are more factors to why something might not exist especially if it is a social practice than "inefficiency" or because human beings are biologically incapable of it. Of course, arguing that something is inefficient is very different from saying its outcompeted however dumbing reasons for non-existence down to "it wasn't effective" with "effectiveness" being undefined makes no sense.
Even you are just arguing that it doesn't exist for a reason. What that reason is, you don't know but you assume it cannot be changed or that it is ingrained (ala environmental or biological reasons). You fail to consider other alternative explanations even though you yourself state you can only speculate on the reasons why.
As for partial exceptions, precedent is used all the time in ATLs to explain why this or that could be possible. Even if there is partial precedent, writers frequently leverage that precedent to expand it fully and examine its consequences. An ATL would look at pillbugs and use that as a base for a wheeled organism; to showcase how it is possible. In the case of polyamory, we have actual examples of men and women having multiple partners being normalized in societies. That is very different from a wheeled organism.
And we have no precedent of it being used outside of isolated areas, probably because of inefficiency and STDs.
1. What does that have to do with the printing press? The printing press is a piece of technology. It doesn't have anything to do with Europe. China invented it before Europeans, it just didn't use it because Chinese characters were too complicated. I was asking you whether the printing press was less inefficient compared to scribes because of this context and you talk about Europe? That makes no sense.
2. Printing press is not a culture bro. It's a technology. WTF are you saying here? What does "outcompete" mean too? What is your standard for "success"? You take for granted words which you do not define and which, outside of biological contexts, mean nothing. "Competition" in biology just refers to survival. It doesn't even mean resource competition or fighting, it just means survival. If a frog survives the winter while a bug does not, the frog has "beat" the bug. And European governments colonized the Middle East. The entire society obviously didn't and was probably suffering just as much as the colonized if the predominance of socialism in Europe at the time is to be of an indication.
Adoption of technology is part of culture, that's painfully obvious. Europe adopted the printing press. The Middle East did not. Europe prospered and later colonised the Middle East. Ergo, Europe adopted a trait (adoption of the printing press) made it superior in gaining resources, while the Middle East failing to adopt it made it inferior. That should be plainly obvious.
Ah yes, because successful societies are just biologically better than other societies.
This response does not address anything I've said. I wasn't even talking about biology but rather cultural barriers to different, new practices. Literally, the printing press example I gave is a good demonstration of this. The sanctity of the Qur'an and the difficulty of translating Arabic to printing presses led to their ban. These are cultural factors. Human biology is what allows society to emerge period. And existing practices and societies give us the tools to make a POD for more popular polyamory.
To be fair, I was drunk when I wrote that post because that's the only way I felt like responding to these massive walls of text that say nothing and continually berate me on the flimsiest ground. Yeah, I'm not quite sure what I was going for here.
What are you talking about?
The Nama, Manchu, Chukchi, Huron, Aweikoma, Mende, Maasi, Toda, Kazakh (well apparantly one specific Kazakh tribe), Lepcha, Andamanese, Hadza, and Lesu all allow for extra-martial sex for both men and women. They don't punish adultery for women more than men (and pointing this out is irrelevant to the conversation). I think it would be projecting too much to assume that it is adultery.
That's not irrelevant in the slightest. The Chukchi would be a polyandrous society for instance since their open marriages centered around women and each woman had a preferred husband. If we squint at it, sure, call it polyamory (the description Bogoras gave in 1907 sounds almost as much like men were okay with occasionally prostituting their wives out for favours). The Chukchi would not consider it akin to modern Western polyamory, but whatever.
Incidentally, Bogoras's ethnography explicitly notes the tradition died out in large part from the spread of syphilis which suggests that STDs would be extremely dangerous for anything approaching polyamory. That's likely why these societies are so isolated and often limited in scope of their polyandrous relations, since when venereal disease arrives it becomes a liability. This is similar to how European social mores were altered from syphillis or HIV in the 1980s.
Your entire argument against this being the case is "powerful women could bend the rules" which doesn't make sense since this is a standard applied to all men and women and you'd be making a huge assumption based on nothing to claim that powerful women, in every single society that allows extramartial sex, made this rule. That is a huge assumption that you're only making because the evidence doesn't conform to your existing beliefs.
So powerful people don't bend the rules in practically every society? Yeah, no. Now let's keep in mind, you're the one trying to assume polyamory is found in all of these societies and accuse me of not having looked at the map when you probably haven't done anything BUT look at the map and smile, content it validates your existing beliefs.
Could you perhaps cite the specific account? I would like to read it myself. I also want to know how you know it is a French and Russian account as I couldn't find any such information on the database. I believe that this is actually a really strong argument you've made but doesn't invalidate the other examples.
The French source was 17th century, meaning it came from either a fur trader or missionary which can be riddled with bias and misunderstanding that it's difficult to read in isolation without more modern sources illuminating how they came to their assumptions. The 19th century source is almost certainly typical of anthropology from that era, a mixture of truth, racial stereotypes, and misunderstandings.
Perso-Arabic culture only exists in Iran and its adjacent areas. It doesn't exist in the Arab world. It was also something that emerged over time and didn't exist until much later. Either way, the Arabs literally imposed inefficient cultural practices that would've otherwise been destroyed because they didn't want to get rid of them. That is evidence enough that there is no such thing as a hierarchy of "social practices" where some are better than others.
To say Perso-Arabic culture (perhaps I'm using the wrong term) doesn't exist in the Arab world is lunacy given the obvious influences on architecture, dress, music, etc. That's why it's a cultural
fusion. And clearly the Arab lifestyle was efficient enough for the environment they found themselves in. You brought up wheels, but not having wheels means you don't need roads meaning money and labour saved. We can obviously tell that some social practices are better than others because societies add or drop them all the time, like for instance social hierarchy.
As an example, during times of plenty in the American Southwest, societies were more hierarchal (i.e. Chaco Canyon), but in the 13th century, major drought ensured societies based on egalitarianism and cooperation became dominant, enforced at times by violence and new religious ideologies (i.e. the Puebloans as encountered by Spain). Although there likely was an opportunity cost in their society evolving that way, which means they needed to accept the inefficiency which might be lethal in times of trouble. Therefore we see the Puebloans accepting a more hierarchal model imposed by the US in the 19th century, since it let some families gain greater resources.
I'm talking in general actually. What comes to mind is Middle Eastern societies. Furthermore, shotgun marriages are super rare. It is more rare for the man to dip than to marry the woman who they had sex with or raped.
And, if evolution was a sentient deity, surely it would've figured out that abstinence was a long term bad idea. Or, perhaps, evolution has nothing to do with social practices. Evolution might actually only apply to biology rather than human societies because, of course, human social practices don't work like organisms.
Human societies work like organisms, while social practices are akin to traits. You've also failed to give any evidence that abstinence is not an effective trait other than saying "well it doesn't always work". For instance, the rate of HIV in the Middle East is lower than in Western Europe or the US, and while HIV isn't just about sex, that's one of the major contributing factors and we can assume something similar about other STDs in the past. That's likely why promiscuity is widely frowned on globally, since part of the reason promoting abstinence is a successful strategy is because less people end up infertile or die an early death.
Lol. Ok sure. Totally.
You are absolutely assuming that evolution is sentient because you ascribe to evolution a level of intelligence it doesn't have. Evolution only applies at a species wide level and it only cares about survival. It doesn't matter whether a woman was raped and she can't provide for her child, as long as someone out there is having children then the species survives. Evolution continues to exist. It doesn't matter whether or not you have a super tough, alpha male who is super cool or sway, if they die to a falling tree they have no fitness.
And, once and for all, evolution does not apply to social practices. Social practices do not obey the dynamics of organisms because they are not organisms. Treating them as organisms and treating aggregations of organisms as single organisms is ridiculous. Evolution only explains how species change, it isn't a value system nor does it apply to anything which does not have cells.
For all intents and purposes, social practices are far too immaterial to be applied to evolution. if you apply it outside its context, all you get is a vague metaphor which you could apply to literally anything and use to justify anything. You aren't some down-to-earth realist because you apply evolution to the world like paint on a wall, you're either stupid or have been misled.
Okay, now I see the problem. You are falsely conflating biological evolution with cultural evolution, the application of the principles of evolution to societies. That explains why you don't have any clue what you're talking about and continue to make stupid assertions like this.
If you can't see why a society that prizes certain values that are best suited for its environment will outcompete societies that don't, then, well, why am I having this conversation when I can just say "I'm right, you're wrong."
That isn't specific enough because tribes can be composed of multiple groups. "Groups" are artificial, they're made up. I can break down any body of people into groups. I also wouldn't call tribes governments because governments are something specific and aren't composed of the entirety of a society.
My point is that human beings are interdependent. That is what decides what groupings we should be focusing on and this interdependency makes group vis group competition make no sense. Even if you focus on scarcity, once again, scarcity doesn't go away if your group appropriates some resources. Then you have to fight inter-group and by that point I wouldn't call that one single group nor would I say there is much benefit to the grouping. It just makes no sense.
Actually yes, scarcity
does go away if you appropriate some resources at the cost of increasing scarcity somewhere else. This is simple economic logic that applies to all societies. Inter-group competition is a fact of nature.
Market competition, of which is informed more by property laws and exchange norms (i.e. firm-based organization), says nothing about how interdependent human beings are. A majority of capitalist scarcity isn't even real; just look at how a majority of food goes wasted because it isn't profitable to keep them on the shelves while people starve on the streets or how homes are left empty because they have value to their owners that way than if they were occupied while homelessness hits record highs. This is entirely artificial, borne out of social structures rather than nature.
And, once again, I must state that social factors influence behavior just as much as environmental factors. Conflating the two or ignoring the former doesn't change the fact that they are distinct.
I agree social factors impact human behavior, but so does the environment. And no, the flaws of capitalism (which are actually
successes from the point of view of the people making the artificial scarcity) do not change the fact that market behavior exists in every human society based on inherent factors found in the environment.
Patriarchy is a social structure, specifically a hierarchy. It can't be established through force. Authority is command not force. Being "stronger" means nothing, especially given how human beings are highly dependent upon other people for their survival. A man, for all intents and purposes, is incapacitated without other people. Even hermits live in proximity to towns. Women aren't the only ones dependent upon other people. Also, in nearly every patriarchal society, men do not fight other men over who gets to marry whom. Women generally get to choose and, if they don't, then men wouldn't have a reason to fight in the first place.
Patriarchy's popularity cannot be reduced to this. I suggest you find a better explanation.
There are obvious instances of societies shifting to be more or less patriarchal, so yes, it was "established." If it wasn't established by force, then it didn't need to be because it's natural for every reason I stated. I'm really not sure how you think that humans being interdependent on each other means is actually an argument.
Who said anything about wars? I was talking about human sacrifice of which has religion reasons behind it rather than evolutionary ones. You need to explain that and also you need to provide evidence rather than armchair history.
You wanted an evolutionary explanation for why human sacrifice existed in Aztec society, I gave you one. Do you have an actual reason why I'm wrong other than accusing me of reading "armchair history?" Are you trying to somehow minimise the role of human sacrifice and ritual cannibalism outside of religion in Aztec culture?
Harems only existed among rulers. Do you have any evidence of harems being popular among everyone with wealth in Islamic society? A wealthy individual would literally bankrupt themselves if they tried to have as many wives as the Ottoman sultan. A majority of concubines were foreigners rather than native Muslims. You were literally not allowed to enslave Muslims and they certainly wouldn't be wives if you did.
Sure, nobody bought female slaves at slave markets. Wealthy people have owned harems since time immemorial.
Female selective infanticide is literally prohibited in the Qur'an. If it was practiced, it was not practiced enough to completely reduce the number of women in the Middle East. It is even less practiced in contemporary times. There is absolutely no possible way polygamy is the main reason for social unrest throughout Islamic history. The minute Islam emerged, it would be impossible.
So because the Quran says it that means no one did it? That means that there weren't obvious female imbalances
It isn't though. The Zanj Rebellion was a slave rebellion caused by the maltreatment of slaves in the swamps of Iraq. The Abbasid revolts were against the tyrannies of the Mut'azila. Polygamy barely existed during the emergence of ISIS.
There are plenty of polygamists in the modern Muslim world (plus Syria and Iraq both had lopsided sex ratios prior to the 2010s), along with the obvious inability to get a wife. Hell, even if it wasn't true, the very
perception there was an inability would be enough to add that as a factor.
You have no evidence for your claim, you're just talking out of your ass and coasting off of Western stereotypes about Muslim societies hoping no one calls you out. And then you assume I'm the dumbass for questioning your claims when all evidence points to polygamy not even being common during its heyday let alone in 2014.
I have plenty of evidence for my claim, your only counterpoint is saying "no, you're wrong" and insinuating I'm racist. You claim polygamy isn't common, but present no evidence and try and minimise the very real existence of polygamy in Islam past and present.
Also, ISIS fighters are very different from suicide bombers. Most of them are affiliated with tribes and are married. Furthermore, obviously a young person is more likely to take on risky behavior than older people. Most anarchists in 20th century Europe were young but had relationships (whether they were married or not is another question) and yet bombed cafes anyways.
And that's exactly my point, people settling down produces less risky behavior.
You're moving goalposts. You said polygamy caused this. You said, and I quote:
Which obviously indicates that, if Middle Eastern societies were monogamous, they would not have these problems. However, nearly every revolt in the Caliphate had nothing to do with polygamy nor is polygamy even common enough in the contemporary Middle East to explain Islamist extremism. You backpedaled and made an argument completely different from what you initially said.
So does monogamy
not deal with those problems? Sex ratio is an actual valid concern, and you've given no evidence that suggests otherwise.
So what? It's more complex because there are more people involved? Really? Your standard for complexity is very low.
So you're saying that for instance a typical pre-contact Amerindian society which might have a few dozen occupations and a couple of restricted societies for politics, warfare, etc. and a small hierarchy of councils and chiefs is somehow just as complex as our own society which has thousands of occupations and millions of corporations and endlessly large bureaucracy? A single American town of a few thousand people is probably as complex as any society that existed until 8,000 years ago or so, and that one town is part of endless larger organisations. There's no comparison.
Bro you think everyone had multiple wives. That is evidence enough you don't know jack shit. You think Islamist extremism is caused because Islamic societies weren't monogamous (when, by the time ISIS came around, no one was polygamous). You're completely out of your depth.
And you have no reading comprehension whatsoever because you're just cherrypicking my arguments to "prove" how "ignorant" or "stupid" I am. In the future I'm probably not going to reply to these long-ass posts with anything except "I'm right, you're wrong."
If you don't mind explaining this a bit more - is it just the sheer size here, or more (pardon the word) complicated?
Wanting to make sure I understand your point.
It's the sheer number of different components that form our society today. If you had 500 pages, you could give a very good and detailed description of, say, a 19th century Plains Indian tribe (which might have 10K people total) with its relation between individual groups and villages and various societies within the group, all sorts of nuances about the tribe, its foreign relations, etc.. If you spent 500 pages doing so with the modern United States, you'd barely scratch the surface. You could devote 500 pages to the relationship between, say, Apple and the US government, yet if you removed Apple from existence, society would go on almost unchanged unlike if you removed one of the religious or warrior societies from the Plains Indian tribe. That's complexity.
Some would argue society is too complex for it's own good, hence our vulnerability to supply-chain disruptions (the most radical positions would be anprims and many hard green ideologies). There are plenty of examples of societies going from more complex to more simple because of disasters (i.e. post-contact Amazonia).
