Growing Scarcity.
There is a biological equilibrium between male and female births. Consequently, every male should have a very good chance of obtaining a wife. In such circumstances, is it possible to speak of women as a scarce commodity requiring collective intervention for its distribution? Monogamy is not a positive institution nor a general rule, but merely incorporates the limit of polygamy in societies where, economic and sexual competition reaches an acute form. The Nambikwara, semi-nomads of western Brazil, who live by collecting and gathering, sanction polygamy for their headmen. The securing of two, three or four wives by one or two important persons in a band of less than twenty people compels their companions to be celibate. This privilege by itself is sufficient to upset the natural equilibrium of the sexes. In primitive societies, marriage is of an entirely different importance, not erotic, but economic. My experience in the field in a Brazilian native village, a young man crouching in the corner of a hut, ill-cared thin for, in complete state of dejection. I observed him for several days. He rarely went out, except to go hunting. When the family meals began, he would go hungry unless a female relative set a little food at his side. The reason for this treatment was ‘He is a bachelor.’ Denied food after bad hunting or fishing expeditions when the fruits of the women's collecting and gathering provide the only meal there is, the wretched bachelor.
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