THE male portion of my married friends says "Why would I want two of them? This one's more than I can handle!" She just flashes a knowing, sly smile. ;)

Okay your joke - I just precis'd.

But I identify with his partner.
I am a whole lotta woman.

Yeah, I don't 'spect a guy would have a whole lot o' energy for another waffle-headed wife, if'n he's got me.

I'm a potato wife: big & common & knobbly & spread wide.
Y'all might only want me once a week. With increasingly exotic toppings. But I'm a staple and men have died from wanting me.

It may be fact that you took cultural anthropology, but it is absolutely not fact that mariage has always been 1:1. That isn't true now, let alone throughout history. Unless you beg the question by saying that anything that isn't 1:1 doesn't count for some reason.

Wow, this thread took some funny turns.

Clod, you made a very interesting point. Imma have to think about that.

Fresh ... WTF are you smokin??? And where was this course, the university of fundamentalist bs? No offence intended, but ... duuude... (or was this more tongue in cheek stuff?)

Do you know how brilliant you are? :)

Delicious!

You know what you don't find in the US? Baked potatoes covered in curry.

I love both those things and it never occurred to me to mix them.

Isn't she? No one paints a picture with words the way Sundae does. :)

My cockles? Consider them warmed.
What a lovely tribute to come back to!

Here is some strong evidence about human polygamy (technically polygyny) based on DNA analysis. It links to the original article if you want it all nerded up.

ETA: I'm curious about many things - where in Africa (tribal or Muslim or Christian areas, eg) these samples were taken, and how long the time scale is, i.e. 1,000 years or 100,000.

I also wonder if this method properly allows for the possibility of serial harem-polygyny, i.e. each male gets to breed with all the females in the group for a year or two before being ousted by the next male. That could create the genetic appearance of breeding parity, while still preserving polygyny.

So I did some digging.
The original article is here.

We really need Pie back to cope with this kind of maths, it is WAAAAAY beyond me.
BUT! There was a link to a criticial reply, here.

They pointed out that the original paper had double-corrected for some factor and the true ratio is somewhat higher - where the original gives 1.1, 1.3 and 1.4, the correct figures should be 1.3, 2.2 and 2.6! Thus leading to the conclusion of:
i.e females were rougly twice as likely to breed as males.

I should declare that the original authors then reply here with a bunch of stuff I cannot fathom, but they acknowledge and agree with the reply about double correcting. Either way, there is pretty good genetic evidence for widespread polygynous polygamy in human history.

Given that many societies and individuals have been monogamous, the remainder must have been definitely polygamous to make the averages work out like this.

It still does not address the serial polygyny question, though.

Is that like when you have multiple vaginas? :eek: