[ryanackley]

This isn't accurate at all according to the article. In this particular place and time, women outnumbered men. I'm assuming it's because men took on some dangerous role that women didn't (war, hunting, etc.)

“Since I have been preaching…that a man should have only one wife I have not been well received by the women; for, since they are more numerous than the men, if a man can only marry one of them, the others will have to suffer. Therefore this doctrine is not according to their liking.”

[cdirkx]

> assuming it's because men took on some dangerous role that women didn't (war, hunting, etc.)

One possible hypothesis is that polygamy itself is the cause of this: the higher competition for wives drives the men to extremer forms of acquiring status (war, hunting, etc).

[ryanackley]

I'm skeptical, the indigenous chief who is the subject of the article makes it very clear he wished he only had one wife but he can't get rid of the other two. One of the premises of the article is that polygamy was probably not a form of sex slavery but rather a social necessity.

[sersi]

What would be interesting would be to see if this was typical of many societies that practiced polygamy. I could imagine that men taking more dangerous risky occupations and having higher mortality might have been a constant during much of human history.