Reconstructing the History of Marriage Strategies in Indo-European—Speaking Societies

Monogamy and Polygyny

Datos Bibliográficos

ID6067415
AutoresLaura Fortunato (0000-0001-8546-9497, University College London, autor de correspondencia)
Año2011
Volumen83
Número1
Páginas87-105
Fecha de publicación2011-02-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaHuman Biology (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0018-7143 • E-ISSN: 1534-6617
EditorialHuman Biology (The International Journal of Population Biology and Genetics) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.3378/027.083.0106
PMID21453006
OpenAlexW2008625715
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas15
Referencias citadas72

Explanations for the emergence of monogamous marriage have focused on the cross-cultural distribution of marriage strategies, thus failing to account for their history. In this paper I reconstruct the pattern of change in marriage strategies in the history of societies speaking Indo-European languages, using cross-cultural data in the systematic and explicitly historical framework afforded by the phylogenetic comparative approach. The analysis provides evidence in support of Proto-Indo-European monogamy, and that this pattern may have extended back to Proto-Indo-Hittite. These reconstructions push the origin of monogamous marriage into prehistory, well beyond the earliest instances documented in the historical record; this, in turn, challenges notions that the cross-cultural distribution of monogamous marriage reflects features of social organization typically associated with Eurasian societies, and with "societal complexity" and "modernization" more generally. I discuss implications of these findings in the context of the archaeological and genetic evidence on prehistoric social organization

Ethnology · Genealogy · Geography · Polygyny · Population · Sociology · Anthropology · Demography · Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior · Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies · Gender Studies · History · Marriage and Sexual Relationships