I can’t remember where I heard this argument, in a documentary or in a book, but it seems extremely plausible.
The idea of monogamy came along when humans didn’t need to be nomadic anymore, and when the concept of domestication of animals and plants, farming/agriculture, and so on became the prime source of survival.
Before agriculture, people would sleep with whoever, within their own “packs” and with other members of other “packs” when they crossed paths. But when people started to settle down on land, the concept of “property” began to apply to the opposite sex as well as the land. Men would treat their females as “property” because they feed them and shelter them on their own now, they aren’t openly a part of a group anymore, so to speak. Essentially, the giant groups of nomads just got smaller and smaller, until they were down into “families”
… and THEN when groups of “families” became towns, people came up with the concept of religion.
There is actually DNA research on some gorillas that indicates high paternal certainty for the silverback. In “Dispersed Male Networks in Western Gorillas”, (from Current Biology, Bradley and others, 2004) the authors state “Thus, although not all assignments were conclusive, the paternity results are consistent with the resident silverback siring all group offspring”. Even given some amount of screwing around, relatively high paternal certainty seems to characterize the gorilla population under study. That would imply less sperm competition, subject to the reliability of this data.
And this just isn’t true.
Orangutan females are promiscuous. While they often do form consortships that last anywhere from days to months, the consortships can be broken up by a more dominant male entering the area, who can then take over mating duties. There are the younger males without the fully formed man-signals, and also the old “flanged” guys. Both types are sexually mature. The young pups have a harder time convincing the females into their version of dating, but failing that, they can still manage forced copulation. After intercourse, the female can escape one and then potentially encounter another. Plus, some young pups do manage to successfully gain a consort, to go steady for a while, but even then, that’s not likely to last if a mature male arrives. So there’s another case of multiple partners. And on top of that, there’s still the presence of female choice. The mature males don’t tolerate each other, but the old guys have been known sometimes to show a bit more tolerance of the young pups in their space, which gives the females even more options. Females who currently have a mature consort have been observed to engage in extra-consort copulation with a nearby young pup (this observation seems to have been relatively recently). Orang females are very much promiscuous, which makes male fertility and sperm competition very much an issue.
This correlation holds up to a higher degree than you claim.
However, at your suggestion I’ve looked through old threads and followed the arguments there, as well as newer arguments against this idea from other sources. I still find it interesting, but I have to admit myself that you’re right that the evidence is insufficient. I was wrong to be swayed by a limited amount of info.
This can easily be disproved, because every recorded hunter-gatherer society practiced marriage.
And if we’re only talking about monogamy, hundreds of agricultural societies allowed polygamous marriage. Go back to Genesis, where Jacob marries both Rachel and Leah.
It is a complete myth that hunter gatherer societies practice or practiced free love. This myth was invented by horny sailors and anthropologists and missionaries. They were projecting their own repressed sexual desires onto other people.