The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution

by Richard Dawkins

For those of us with a distaste for sexual inequality, it is a consoling hope that cultural polygyny, as distinct from brute-force polygyny, might be rather easy to get rid of. On the face of it, this seems to have happened in those societies, such as (non-Mormon) Christian societies, which became officially monogamous. I say ‘on the face of it’ and ‘officially’, because there is also some evidence that apparently monogamous societies are not quite what they seem. Laura Betzig is a historian with a Darwinian turn of mind, and she has uncovered intriguing evidence that overtly monogamous societies like ancient Rome and medieval Europe were really polygynous under the surface. A rich nobleman, or Lord of the Manor, may have had only one legal wife but he had a de facto harem of female slaves, or housemaids and tenants’ wives and daughters. Betzig cites other evidence that the same was true of priests, even those who were notionally celibate. These historical and anthropological facts have been seen by some scientists as suggesting, together with our moderate sexual dimorphism, that we evolved under a polygynous breeding regime.