I wonder how this microbe influenced human morality. Is the moral idea that promiscuity is bad a vestige of some healthy recommendation to avoid multiple partner to not get or propagate syphilis?
STI's almost certainly played a role in establishing that social strategy, but also I believe that monogamous-ish represents a equilibrium state in terms of social stability.
The reality is that people are biased towards their own biological children (on average), and men would in generally really prefer to raise their own child, rather than someone else's (on average). Raising a child requires an immense amount of resources.
If you presume that men who discover that their partner have slept around, and their child is not theirs, and worse, they've sunk like 3 years of resources in keeping this kid alive, are even just slightly more likely to be liabilities to society, then you could see why such a societal strategy might emerge.
The converse situation (men sleeping around) is somewhat different (though obviously related). The reality is that if you want to retain an approximately balanced gender balance in a population (perhaps because uh... you might need to compete in raiding/warfare), then you -cannot- have even a significant minority of men having exclusive access to more than one female without having significant societal stability issues. Combine this with men like knowing that their child is theirs, quickly settles you into "monogamous-ish".
And it's "ish" because there are always exceptions.
This paternity worry seems to be a leftover of agrarian societies where it is important to ensure inheritance. In tribal societies, as we lived for millenia, it was much less of a worry as raising the kids was a tribal concern.
There is a famous quote from a Montagnais Native American to a Jesuit priest that tries to tell him that he should prevent his wife from having other relationships or he would risk bringing up another mans child: "Thou hast no sense. You french people love only your own children; but we love all the children of our tribe" - https://sexgendersoc.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/4-montagnai...
There is a hum bio lecture on this topic in apes by robert sapolski. Regarding herram vs nonherram ape species and how that has rippled out into many other physical differences between males and females. emergent sexual dimorphism. check it out. its from stanford. on youtube
This all sounds great as a “just so” story but then you have species like Bonobos that are one of humanity’s closest relatives and they are pretty much the opposite of monogamous. So clearly it’s not naturally inevitable that intelligent species with complex social structures end up with monogamy as the norm.
IMO it’s a lot more complex than paternity. Concerns about sexual propriety are actually fairly symmetric and not at all one-sided. Men are also penalized by potential mates if they have a reputation for sleeping around. My hunch is that both sexes invest a lot of whatever resources they have (money, time, effort, etc.) into a relationship and they want that relationship to be stable and long lasting. And sexual propriety is a strong indicator of whether someone will be a stable long term mate.
Monogamy is somewhat recent as a norm in human societies. DNA analysis shows that in ancient times, far more women than men had offspring. Many of the men died young and/or were kept as slaves. This type of society can be stable for a long time — until the slaves revolt.
Prior to the germ theory of disease, that connection was somewhat tenuous. Ancient moral strictures around promiscuity were based more on paternity uncertainty.
icegreentea2|2 years ago
The reality is that people are biased towards their own biological children (on average), and men would in generally really prefer to raise their own child, rather than someone else's (on average). Raising a child requires an immense amount of resources.
If you presume that men who discover that their partner have slept around, and their child is not theirs, and worse, they've sunk like 3 years of resources in keeping this kid alive, are even just slightly more likely to be liabilities to society, then you could see why such a societal strategy might emerge.
The converse situation (men sleeping around) is somewhat different (though obviously related). The reality is that if you want to retain an approximately balanced gender balance in a population (perhaps because uh... you might need to compete in raiding/warfare), then you -cannot- have even a significant minority of men having exclusive access to more than one female without having significant societal stability issues. Combine this with men like knowing that their child is theirs, quickly settles you into "monogamous-ish".
And it's "ish" because there are always exceptions.
jinjin2|2 years ago
There is a famous quote from a Montagnais Native American to a Jesuit priest that tries to tell him that he should prevent his wife from having other relationships or he would risk bringing up another mans child: "Thou hast no sense. You french people love only your own children; but we love all the children of our tribe" - https://sexgendersoc.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/4-montagnai...
wegfawefgawefg|2 years ago
NickM|2 years ago
toasterlovin|2 years ago
nradov|2 years ago
https://psmag.com/environment/17-to-1-reproductive-success
unknown|2 years ago
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nradov|2 years ago
DoesntMatter22|2 years ago
Not to mention that some STDs are antibiotic resistant now.
So imagine life before this. Sleeping around is going to leave you with constant green discharge or worse.
swagempire|2 years ago
napierzaza|2 years ago
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gedy|2 years ago