RECIPROCAL EXOGAMY: THE EVOLUTIONARY PATHWAY FROM PROMISCUITY TO PAIR-BONDED "MARRIAGE" AND THE BIRTH OF HUMAN SOCIETY.
A. THE PROMISCUITY OF CHIMPANZEES. The chimpanzee is our closest primate ancestor. (99% genetic similarity.) They live in multi-male, multi-female groups. The females, even in the wild, will copulate with a large number of adult males at very high frequencies. (Up to 1800 times per conception!) Please note, however, that we now know that there are some males in their group with whom they will not mate. Until very recently, say 1983, most anthropologists were of the view that chimpanzees had, if anything a strong proclivity/inclination to incestuous sexual relations. And of all non-human primates, there is only one, the Gibbon, which is pair-bonded. Is it any wonder then that most scientists believed that human sexual morality had no biologic, evolutionary roots, and that, as Freud believed, human sexual "taboos" were mere cultural "constructs"? In short, a matter for "free will" and discriminating taste. (`Yes, most people choose vanilla; but I prefer rhubarb.') Today, however, most primatologists believe exactly the opposite: that human incest prohibitions evolved directly from "biologically encoded mating regularities" of our primate relatives. Question: Who would the female chimps not have sex with? Answer: the only male chimps whom she had the ability to recognize as her kin: brother(s) with whom she was raised.
B. CLAUDE LEVI-STRAUSS' THEORY THAT THE "DEEP STRUCTURE" THAT RUNS THROUGH ALL HUMAN SOCIETIES IS A RESULT OF"RECIPROCAL EXOGAMY."
Exogamy is the social practice of allowing marriage only outside the social group. It is "outbreeding" and it delivers to those who practice it a clear evolutionary benefit: offspring will be healthier and more likely to survive. Even oak trees have developed a means of practicing exogamy! Reciprocal exogamy is where two separate societies make an exchange of their women, one to the other.
Claude Levi-Strauss is widely considered - along with George Frazer and Franz Boas - as the "father" of modern anthropology. Levi-Strauss believed that to reconstruct the origins of human society, the first step is to "define its deep structure." His theory, in short, highlighted above, is: No reciprocal exogamy, no human society. Very, very basic stuff, like ligaments and muscles and bones in in our bodies! When Levi-Strauss first published this theory in 1949, he opined that humans - because of their "intelligence!" - had discovered reciprocal exogamy on their own; that it (reciprocal exogamy) "marked the transition from nature to culture." The "incest taboo" was created by humans, according to Levi-Strauss, as a negative proscription because, without it, nothing would force men to go outside their insular kinship circle to find women.
C. RECIPROCAL EXOGAMY CREATES THE "BRIDGE" BETWEEN INSULAR, MUTUALLY ANTAGNOSTIC HUMAN GROUPS, A BRIDGE THAT ULTIMATELY CREATES TRIBES, STATES AND NATIONS.
Levi-Strauss' theory is commonly called the "Alliance Theory." By this theory, weddings are not just parties celebrating an emotional bond between 2 people, but are a form of communication between two extended families. Marriage, by this view, creates complex webs of alliance ("affinity" is the technical term) that stretch from the present (brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews), back into the past (mothers, fathers, grandfathers, etc.) and into the future (children, grandchildren, cousins, etc.).
The two elements of Levi-Strauss' theory are perhaps worth elaborating. (1) Of all the commodities that may be exchanged, "women are the most precious possession;" accordingly, the exchange of women is the form of reciprocity whose social consequences are the most profound. (2) Reciprocity and exchange are part of humankind's neurobiological makeup and has "at once social, religious, utilitarian, sentimental, jural and moral" significance. Thus, "Exchange - and consequently the rule of exogamy which expresses it - has in itself a social value; it provides the means of binding men together."
THE "MARRYING-OUT OR BEING KILLED" OUT APHORISM.
Levi-Strauss' theory was not altogether novel. Thus, Edward Tyler wrote in 1889: "When tribes begin to adjoin...and quarrel, then the difference between marrying-in and marrying-out becomes patent. Endogamy is a policy of isolation....Among tribes....there is but one means of keeping up permanent alliance and that means is intermarriage....Again and again in the world's history, savage tribes must have had plainly before their minds the simple practical alternative between marrying-out and being killed-out."
D. THE CONVERGENCE OF LEVI-STRAUSS' ALLIANCE THEORY AND MODERN PRIMATOLOGY.
The primatological research I am about to present is all found in Bernard Chapais' wonderful (but technical) new book, "Primeval Kinship: How Pair-Bonding Gave Birth to Human Society." As noted, Levi-Strauss believed that humans themselves had created reciprocal exogamy as an ad hoc expedient. Late in life, as new primate studies were being published, he grudgingly hinted that his theory was perhaps a "synthetic duplication of mechanisms already in existence." Chapais shows just how prescient he was.
BUILDING BLOCKS OF A SPECIES' SOCIAL STRUCTURE.
The essence of Chapais' argument is that the uniqueness of the human system.... is not in inventing something new, but in bringing together existing behavioral regularities of other primate relatives into new combinations. He draws an analogy with comparative anatomists who look, for instance, for the phylogenic roots of the human foot. Detailed similarities between human and nonhuman primates, and their ancient relatives, have consistently been accepted to infer evolutionary connections. And sometimes anatomical connections are hard to see, for instance, between a reptilian jawbone and certain bones near the human ear. But that connection (the "homology") becomes obvious when you examine a series of x-rays showing a primate embryo's jawbone literally "moving into position." But, says Chapais, there is a double standard when it comes to the evolution of behavior; there is intense resistance to using the same techniques to discover the roots of human behavior. (Many of us, perhaps all, don't like to feel our "free will" is circumscribed in any way.)
FITTING THE CHIMPANZEE INTO THE HUMAN BEHAVIORAL PICTURE.
As noted at the start, on first glance, the chimps sexual behavior looks nothing like our own. But let's take a closer look. The chimp female does possess an incest inhibition; it's just that the only male chimps she recognizes as kin are her maternal brothers. Those brothers, because of the "Westermarck effect" (discussed infra) have little sexual interest in their maternal sisters; nor with their mother. In short, "motherhood" in the Chimpanzee world, creates a surprisingly complex kinship system characterized by grooming, tolerance at food sites and aiding in conflicts. This "nepotism" usually results in the transfer of mother's dominance ranking to her offspring. Jane Goodall reports similar bonding between paternal grandmothers and grandchildren. Female chimps "disperse" from their home group at about 11 years, usually while in estrus, and make overtures to males in alien groups which they hope to join. Primatologists believe that incest avoidance provides the best explanation for these "between-group" transfers.
THE WESTERMARCK EFFECT.
In 1891 Edward Westermarck proposed that close intimacy between individuals raised together from childhood bred a "remarkable absence of erotic feelings." The Westermarck effect has been confirmed in innumerable primate studies. Note however that the strength of the effect varies according to amount of time the two sexes live together as juveniles. Also, individual primates often are closely related but unfamiliar with each other, as many paternal kin are, and these most often do not avoid sex, indicating that it is the familiarity, not kinship per se, that accounts for incest avoidance. Cross-fostered macaques were found to display the Westermarck effect, reacting to their foster siblings as though they were kin and avoiding sex. Human studies: One large study of children raised from birth in multi-sex peer groups of 6 to 8 in Israeli found that no marriages were contracted for those so raised though there was no prohibition. In another Israeli study of Kibbutzim, not a single instance of heterosexual activity was reported, either as adolescents or adults, for children raised for many together in the same peer group. Another 2 studies from Taiwan and China, respectively, involved so-called "minor marriages," a practice of a minor girl, often an infant, taken into the groom's family and raised in close intimacy with her future husband. Upon coming of age the couples uniformly showed great reluctance to marry, had 40% fewer offspring and a 300% greater probability of divorce. This researcher's conclusion: "for people who live together and play together before age 10, there is a remarkable absence of erotic feeling." The Westermarck effect is now universally accepted by primatologists and ethnologists. But not by some social anthropologists! They accept the data, but refuse to make the connection! Accusing the primatologists of anthropomorphism, one critic argued: "...incest avoidance (by primates) and incest prohibitions (of humans) may look alike, but they are unconnected, and the latter are not derived from the former." The argument of many anthropologists is captured in this argument of Marshall Sahlins: "...human society overcame or subordinated such primate propensities as selfishness, (and) indiscriminate sexuality....It substituted kinship and co-operation for conflict....in its early days it accomplished the greatest reform in history, the overthrow of human primate nature." So, the subject is today still marked by controversy. Place your bet!
THE POLYGYLNOUS SOCIETY OF GORILLAS.
Gorillas are our third closest living primate relative. They live in polygynous groups of one dominant male and two or more females. The gorilla's is a stable breeding bond exhibiting sexual exclusivity, despite the occasional presence of subordinate males. Some males travel in "bachelor bands" and there is the occasional rogue male. Infanticide by males -but never by the father - accounts for 37% of infant mortality. Which is why females, who are less than half the size of males, form lasting unions with powerful males. Primatologists consider that the gorilla is pair-bonded; it's just that he has multiple pair-bonds! DNA testing of infants (by collecting their scat!) reveals that his "wives" are sexually faithful. Fathers do recognize their offspring, do not practice incest with their daughters and do engage in paternal nepotism: protecting them, showing marked levels of infant tolerance (who in turn are highly attracted to him) and will intervene in the infants' disputes. The gorilla resembles in many respects the ideal human father.... except for his killing of other gorilla infants and his extreme sexual aggression shown to any male who threatens his harem!
HUMANS AND PRIMATES: THE ONLY DIFFERENCE IS THE COMBINATION OF BUILDING BLOCKS.
Humans and primates have very nearly the same DNA. One primate, the Gibbon, has a truly monogamous pair-bonded mating pattern. Most of the other primates are polygynous, meaning they have a stable "breeding bond" which is sexually exclusive. Even in primates like the chimpanzee, with multi-male, multi-female bands, kinship bonds are recognized and strong, even though limited to the maternal side. When individual primates have the ability to recognize kin, they always exhibit incest avoidance. The Westermarck effect is just as powerful and just as prevalent in primates as with humans. A major difference between primate and humans is that primates exhibit no intraspecific variation in their mating patterns: all Chimpanzees are promiscuous, all gorillas polygynous, etc. Humans, on the other hand, exhibit all of these mating patterns, although, fair to say, most are pair-bonded. Even so, as I've stated in an earlier essay, the human gene pool still contains that unique marker of a "tournament" species, "implanted" genes. Thus, we are said to be "tragically conflicted" with some tendency to gorilla-like traits. Why did one primate "choose" one mating pattern and not another? That's peculiar to the history of each primate, but the simple answer is ....natural selection through some unique evolutionary process. How did humans evolve to the pair-bond? Same answer: evolutionary pressures "shaped" our character.
THE SHAPING OF HUMANS: PAIR-BOND MATING BECAME "MARRIAGE."
Modern man (Homo sapiens) first began as a "hunter-gatherer" with a monogamous pair-bonded mating system. This system is further characterized by sexual specialization in food gathering. We know this because all present day hunter-gatherers display this pattern. Chimpanzees also display this food-gathering specialization, although meat (usually other monkeys) constitutes for them a much smaller part of their diet. We know from examination of early hominid's teeth, that there was a transition to a meat rich diet and this was caused by the expansion of his brain. (Which upped caloric needs 30%+) Maybe because of a trade-off (bigger brain, less musculature) males became smaller and sexual dimorphism was reduced. Evidence? Australopithecines' sexual dimorphism was much greater than ours; Homo erectus, who lived as recently as 300,000 years ago, displayed about the same mild physical differences between the sexes as we do. Also, when Homo sapiens males took up group hunting, because of the communication and social coordination required in that activity, they necessarily took on a far more egalitarian attitude, one to another. Maybe also a more lithe body type.
Why did early Homo sapiens transition from a polygynous breeding pattern to monogamous pair-bonding? First, reduced sexual dimorphism is always associated with reduced male-male competition which itself tends towards a Gibbons style pattern.
But Chapais has another intriguing theory. When the competitive abilities of males are well differentiated, as it is in a clear dominance hierarchy, rank by itself settles most conflicts. Aggression/violence occurs only between a higher ranked male and the next ranked male who is attempting a coup. Chapais speculates: What if all males had approximately the same strength and fighting ability? In this situation, conflicts would be extremely costly and indecisive. Males would be better off finding another form of competition. He gives the example of the Barbary macaques. Males have some exceptionally dangerous weapons (teeth and claws). Primatologists, have observed male Macaques seemingly going out of their way to avoid fights over females in estrus, and have speculated that it is because of a kind of "stalemate."
Now consider hominid males in a hunting group (band of brothers)... and their shiny new weapons (axes, knives, spears, etc.). In this situation, it might be extremely costly for a single male to try to monopolize several females, when a good hunting buddy in the cave next door, has none. According to this reasoning, says Chapais, generalized polygyny was bound to give way eventually to generalized monogamy. It was not pair-bonding per se that caused monogamy; it was other elements such as the rise of technology that together over evolutionary time brought it about. Conclusion: the male drive for polygyny was "checked not eliminated;" it could reemerge whenever a male became able to attract females based on attributes other than physical prowess. (Think Wilt Chamberlain or JFK)
CONCLUSION
1. We individuals have a powerful urge to belong....to anything outside ourselves - be it race, religion, ideology, anything with "cultural" content - that enables you or me to distinguish ourselves from "others," and give us a sense of identity.
2. This "urge to belong" exerts a powerful centripetal force pulling us inwards, tending to make insular and xenophobic those cultural "vehicles" we belong to.
3. "Marry-out or be killed-out" - that is our choice.
4. "Marriage" - as it developed out of the "deep structure of our evolutionary past - is anything but a simple "cultural construct". Because it is rooted in our biology, it exerts an unconscious centrifugal influence, pushing us out so that we may make contact with those "others."
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- A. VolkReviewed in Canada on November 24, 2010
Highly logical, thoughtful review of human kinship
