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Why some societies favor monogamy over other norms is a matter of continued debate among scholars of cultural evolution. A recent working group at SFI explored the cultural processes that give rise to social monogamy and examined a number of different explanations for its persistence in many human societies.

SFI Cowan Professor Rob Boyd, an anthropologist at UCLA, believes monogamy helps keep the peace. According to a recent paper he co-authored, the emergence of complex agriculture led to wealth inequality, multiple wives for men who could afford it, and a faction of unmarried men, which, Boyd suggests, may have led to more murder, robbery, and assault. 

This scenario was among those considered at the February meeting, which Boyd organized.

“Today, the wealth inequality is bigger than it has ever been, yet our moral systems prescribe monogamy,” he says. “Evidence suggests monogamy benefits complex societies, but what’s the process to get there?”

Participants in the February meeting included historians, economists and other experts. SFI Omidyar Fellow Laura Fortunato, whose research investigates how kinship and marriage affect social organization, and SFI Professor Sam Bowles, an expert on the economics of property inheritance, participated.

By gathering people such diverse knowledge and approaches, Boyd hopes to determine how to address the gaps in the historical record sufficiently to posit a rigorous argument for the mechanisms of monogamy’s spread.

Read the paper in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B (March 5, 2012)

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