Wired to Cheat?

TPI points to Dan Savage suggesting that the human race is not wired for monogamy.

Science tells us otherwise. Matt Ridley, amongst others has argued and pointed to evidence that the rise of our species on this planet only happened because of loving, monogamous pairs. The argument is this: If a male human has multiple female partners, he will (on average) have multiple children with them. This increases his odds of producing successful progeny. However, because of the long gestational time and adolescence of human children, if they do not have adequate nutrition they are at a significant risk to not survive. Malnourished children grow up to be small adults who might not fare well in the caste of the clan. So this polygamous father has a handful of weakling children who cannot compete with the children of monogamous fathers for a mate, and die.
Conversely, if a father devotes himself entirely to a single female and her offspring, he can not only time when his children are born through menstrual cycles, but also have a hand in their education and learning, and is better able to provide nutrition. Healthy children = bigger, smarter children, which means the father is more likely to become a grandfather before he dies at the ripe old age of 35.

There is other evidence as well. Anthropologists suggest that males, competing for females, learned to walk upright in order to carry treasures with them to tempt the females.
Other evidence exists as well, elsewhere in the animal kingdom. There is a linear correlation between a species longevity and the level of polygamy, in that polygamy drops in longer-lived species.

But perhaps the best - and most parallel in today's society - evidence that monogamous relationships have existed in our species since it emerged is this simple trump: what guarantee does a male have that while he is away from his home spreading his seed to other females some other male is visiting his home doing the same? Our species is so wily, most anthropologists agree that the only guarantee a male had that his progeny was his own (especially considering that tribes shared visible traits like hair and eye color) was to stick with his female and her alone; if for no other reason than to prevent another male breeding with his female.

No, our species was monogamous since its inception, polygamy is not a human trait, it is something that has become possible only in the guiled veil of civilization and the caste system we have lived in since Hammurabi's Code of Laws.


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