Evidence from the anthropological record indicates that in most human societies, parents control the mating access to their offspring. Based on these data, a model of sexual selection has been recently proposed, whereby along with female and male choice, parental choice constitutes a significant sexual selection force in our species. This model was found to provide a good account for the mating patterns which are typical of foraging societies. By employing data from the Standard Cross Cultural Sample, the present study aims at examining whether this model can also account for the mating patterns typical of agricultural and pastoral societies. In addition, comparisons between different society types are made and two model-derived hypotheses are tested. First, it is hypothesised that parents have more control over their offspring's mate choices in non-foraging societies. Second, it is hypothesised that male parents exert greater decision making power in agropastoral societies than in hunting and gathering ones. Both hypotheses are supported by the results presented here. The evolutionary implications of these findings are also explored.
In the majority of human societies parents have a substantial role in determining who is going to have mating access to their offspring. As the anthropological record indicates, the offspring are constrained from exercising mate choice freely and the selection of spouses is frequently made by their parents (Apostolou, 2007b, Broude and Green, 1983, Minturn et al., 1969, Stephens, 1963, Westermarck, 1925 and Whyte, 1978). Based on this evidence, Apostolou (2007b) proposed a model whereby, along with female and male choice, parental choice constitutes a significant sexual selection force in our species.
This model was found to be consistent with the patterns of mating typical of modern foraging societies. However, given that most preindustrial societies base their subsistence on agriculture and animal husbandry (Murdock, 1981), understanding the workings of sexual selection today requires that the analysis is not restricted solely to foraging societies. Accordingly, this article aims at identifying the typical patterns of mating in contemporary agricultural and pastoral societies, and examine whether these patterns are consistent with the model of parental choice.
Furthermore, anthropological evidence from contemporary societies provides valuable insights on how sexual selection had been working in ancestral human societies (Ember, 1978 and Lee and DeVore, 1968). As modern agropastoral societies resemble ancestral ones, which appeared 10,000 years ago, the identification of the typical patterns of mating in the former enables us to infer the typical patterns of mating in the latter. And even though 10,000 years is a rather short time period in the evolutionary timescale, this later stage of human evolution is significant because, if certain conditions are met, substantial evolutionary change can take place in only a few generations.
In particular, two conditions can trigger rapid evolutionary change; namely the strength of the selection pressure and the genetic variability available in the population (Fisher, 1958). These conditions were satisfied at the onset of the Holocene and the transition from a social organisation based on hunting and gathering to a social organisation based on agriculture and animal husbandry. First, demographic growth accelerated substantially commencing 10,000 years ago in the Middle East and Asia spreading into Europe and Australasia in the next 6000 years (Price, 2000). Consequently, this population growth provided the necessary genetic variability required for rapid evolution to take place.
Second, the agropastoral revolution had a subsequent dramatic change in the environment of human evolution, as humans started leading a sedentary life instead of a nomadic one and their social environment was no longer a small band of people, but villages and cities of hundreds or thousands. It is no surprise that Hawks, Wang, Cochran, Harpending, and Moyzis (2007) found evidence of rapid acceleration of genetic evolution in our species and attributed this to changes in human cultures and the rapid demographic growth over the last few thousand years (see also Armelagos & Harper, 2005).
Overall, if shifting economic structures caused changes in the patterns of mating, the right circumstances were there for directional selection to take place. Accordingly, this study further aims at examining whether the change in the mode of subsistence had an effect on human mating by comparing the patterns of mating in agropastoral societies with the respective patterns of matting in foraging societies in order to identify recurring differences between the two.
