alpha males in many species. But Christianity reversed this, thanks to the one man–one woman rule. Later, Islam came to limit the number of wives to four. Judaism, which had been polygenic, became monogamous in the Middle Ages. One can say that such a strategy has been successful—the institution of tightly monogamous marriage (with no official concubine, as in the Greco-Roman days), even when practiced the “French way,” provides social stability since there is no pool of angry, sexually deprived men at the bottom fomenting a revolution just so they can have the chance to mate.

