Over the past few years, something like a perfect storm has been brewing over human pair bonding and the profound impacts it has wrought on human social structure. This is a welcome development in a field that has long been dominated by those who wish to root the relatively modern idea of marriage in ancient [...]
Tags:adaptive suite·Ardi·Ardipithecus·Bernard Chapais·bilateral kinship·C. Owen Lovejoy·canine reduction·extended kinship·fictive kinship·Frank Marlowe·group competition·group composition·group size·human origins·Kim Hill·life history·male aggression·male provisioning·marriage·marriage covenants·marriage rituals·pair bond·pair bonding·promiscuity·umbrella hypothesis
When attempting to determine whether something is “natural ” (vis-a-vis yesterday’s post on Catholicism and homosexuality) one good way of investigating the issue is to use the genealogical method. So far as I can tell, there are no hunter-gatherer or pre-Neolithic societies that had taboos against homosexuality. We can therefore trace the history of the [...]
Tags:Assyria·Assyrian Empire·Aztec sacrifice·Babylolian captivity·Catholicism·Christians·demographics·demography·early Christianity·Egyptian captivity·fertility·group size·Hebrews·homosexuality·India's sacred cow·Jewish diaspora·Jews·Judaism·Levant·Lost Tribes of Judah·marriage·Marvin Harris·Mesopotamia·Michael Harner·Mormons·natural law·persecution·pork eating proscription·procreation·prohibition against homosexuality·Ralph Tanner·ritual regulations·same-sex preference·sin of sodomy·slavery·sodomy·taboo·taboos·The Social Ecology of Religion·Vernon Reynolds·warfare
