WORLD SCIENCE
The institution of marriage might not have successfully taken root unless blackmail was common in ancient human societies, a provocative new study claims.
A tradition publicly and proudly displayed in almost every community, marriage is sometimes symbolized by white trappings meant to convey that it is something pure. But it may have largely been kept that way thanks to a dark enforcement mechanism lurking quite out of public view—and to the fear of it, according to the researchers, who developed mathematical formulas and computer simulations in support of their theory.
The study, which attempts to describe marital relationships with mathematics as it might apply to a strategy game, is published in the Nov. 29 online issue of the research journal BMC Evolutionary Biology.
The researchers with the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research in Pune, India and North Dakota State University in Fargo, N.D. said they set out to explore the “conundrum” of why males and females sacrifice their direct self-interest to get involved in marriage.
Both males and females can boost their individual reproductive success through promiscuity. Yet the marriage institution has succeeded in at least limiting unapproved relationships, while confining many of those that remain to the shadows of secrecy.
While faithfully committed marriage is a good strategy for raising children, that doesn’t explain how it has remained stable over time, added the researchers, Milind Watve of the Indian Institute and colleagues. They estimate that monogamous relationships have been a feature of human mating for millions of years. As evidence they point out that human males and females have always been fairly similar in size, a factor associated with lack of promiscuity across many species.
World Science for more