We are looking at two different things here. My argument of Polygamy being what we evolved from goes way beyond our current civilization. Your argument seems to be still based on our "civilization" where historical records have been kept. I'm talking about how we evolved as a species, your talking about how we evolved as a society. The reason I brought up that article was to provide certain scientific facts about male/female anatomy and genetic heritage that most people don't think about. Since I am unsure you have read much of the article considering what you said above, I will point out some of the studies regarding male/female mating behaviours.
1: Anthropological studies of prehistoric cultures:
Nearly 1,000 of the 1,154 past or present human societies ever studied โ and these include most of the world's "hunter-gatherer" societies, have permitted a man to have more than one wife. These are the closest examples of the actual "ancestral environment". In the social context of human evolution, these are the settings for which the mind was designed. The presumption is that people reared in such societies โ the Kung San of Southern Africa, the Ache of Paraguay the l9th century Eskimo โ behave fairly "naturally." More so, at least, than people reared amid influences that weren't part of the ancestral environment: TVโs, cars, colleges, jail time for bigamy.
There are vanishingly few anthropological examples of systematic female polygamy, or polyandry - women monopolizing sexual access to more than one man at once. So, while both sexes are prone under the right circumstances to infidelity, men seem much more deeply inclined to actually acquire a second or third mate โ to keep a harem as it were.
2: Male and female's different reproductive strategies
Scientific studies confirm the more discriminating nature of women. In one study men and women were asked about the minimal level of intelligence they would accept in a person they were "dating." The average response for both male and female was as one might expect "average intelligence". Asked how smart a potential date have to be before they would consent to sex, women said markedly above average. The men said: Oh, well then below average would be fine.
There is no dispute among evolutionary psychologists over the basic source of this male broad-mindedness. A woman โ regardless of how many sex partners she has, can generally have just one offspring per year. For a man, each new mate offers an excellent opportunity to place genes into the future. According to the Guinness Book of Records, the most prolific human parent in world history was Moulay ("The Bloodthirsty") Ismail, the last Sharifian Emperor of Morocco, who died in 1727. He fathered more than 1,000 children.
The logic behind undiscerning male lust seems obvious now, but it wasn't always. Darwin had noted that in species after species the female is "less eager than the male," but he never figured out why. Only in the late 1960s and early 1970s did biologist George Williams and Robert Trivers attribute the raging libido of males to their nearly infinite potential rate of reproduction.
3: The evolution of love for reproductive success
Genes don't talk, but they affect behavior by creating feelings, emotions, desires and thoughts - by building and maintaining the brain and altering the ****ral spinal fluid (the chemical soup) with which it functions. Whenever evolutionary psychologists talk about some evolved behavioral tendency: for example a polygamous or monogamous inclination, or male parental investment - they are also talking about an underlying mental infrastructure.
The development of male parental investment, for example, required the construction of a compelling emotion: paternal love.
At some point the behaviour of love for offspring began to flourish at the expense of genes that promoted remoteness. The reason, presumably, is that changes in circumstance โ an upsurge in predators, say made it more likely that the offspring of undevoted, unprotective fathers would simply perish.
Crossing this threshold meant love not only for the child; the first step toward becoming devoted parents consists of the man and woman developing a mutual attraction. The genetic payoff of having two parents committed to a child's welfare seems to be the central reason men and women can fall into swoons over one another.
Until recently, this claim was heresy. "Romantic love" was thought to be a relatively recent and unnatural invention of western culture. The Mangaians of Polynesia, for instance, were said to be "puzzled" by references to marital affection. But lately anthropologists have taken a second look at purportedly loveless cultures, including the Mangaians, and have discovered what non-anthropologists already knew: love between man and woman is a human universal.
In this sense the pair-bonding label is apt. Still, that term โ and for that matter the term 'marriage' โ convey a sense of permanence and symmetry that is wildly misleading. Evolution not only forced the creation of romantic love but from its beginning corrupted it. The corruption lies in conflicts of interest inherent in male parental investment. It is the goal of maximizing male investment, remember, that sometimes leads a woman to infidelity. Yet it is the preciousness of this investment that makes her infidelity lethal to her mate's interests. Not long for this world are the genes of a man who showers time and energy on children who are not his.
Meanwhile, male parental investment also makes the man's naturally polygynous bent inimical to his wife's reproductive interests. His quest for a new wife could lead him to withdraw, or at least dilute, investment in his first wife's children. This reallocation of resources may on balance help his genes โ but certainly not hers.
The living legacy of these long-running genetic conflicts is human jealousy โ or, rather, human jealousies.
In theory, there should be two very distinct kinds of jealousy โ one male and one female. Statistics do seem to support this (I'm not going to bother importing the chart onto this post.)
A man's jealousy should focus on sexual infidelity, since cuckoldry is the greatest genetic threat he faces. A woman, though she'll hardly applaud a partner's strictly sexual infidelity (it does consume time and potentially may divert resources), should be more concerned with emotional infidelity โ that sort of "magnetic" commitment to another woman, that could lead to a much larger shift in resources.
David Buss, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Michigan, has confirmed this prediction vividly. He placed electrodes on men and on women and had them envision their mates doing various disturbing things. When men imagined sexual infidelity, their heart rates took leaps of a magnitude typically induced by three cups of coffee. They sweated. Their brows wrinkled. When they imagined a budding emotional attachment, they calmed down, though not quite to their normal level. For women, things were exactly reversed: envisioning emotional infidelity โ redirected love, not supplementary sex - brought the deeper distress.
That jealousy is so finely tuned to these forms of treachery is yet more evidence that they have a long evolutionary history. Still, the modern environment has carried them to new heights, making marriage dicier than ever. Men and women have always, in a sense, been designed to make each other miserable, but these days they are especially good at it.