Ridpath's history of the world; being an account of the ethnic origin, primitive estate, early migrations, social conditions and present promise of the principal families of men .. . SEX AND MARRIAGE. 603 union between the sexes. In the firstplace, there must have been antecedentto the origin of the custom a paucity offemales, either from some perversion ofthe laws of birth, or from the destruc-tion of female infants. If the latter, itmay have occurred either by the will ofthe parents or by natural causes. Suffi-cient data are not accessible to indicatewhich of these circumstances has ledamong
Ridpath's history of the world; being an account of the ethnic origin, primitive estate, early migrations, social conditions and present promise of the principal families of men .. . SEX AND MARRIAGE. 603 union between the sexes. In the firstplace, there must have been antecedentto the origin of the custom a paucity offemales, either from some perversion ofthe laws of birth, or from the destruc-tion of female infants. If the latter, itmay have occurred either by the will ofthe parents or by natural causes. Suffi-cient data are not accessible to indicatewhich of these circumstances has ledamong certain of the primitive tribes tothe excess of males. Such an excessbeing granted, we can conceive that mother. Among Aryan nations, how-ever, the rivalry of brothers is not lessintense, even deadly, than betweenstrangers. But for some reason amongthe polyandrous tribes, the rivalry ofthe males has not taken the samecourse. I erhaps this may be accountedfor on the ground of the smallness ofthe divisions into which the Polynesiansand the American Indian tribes havegenerally been parted. Where a giventotem has embraced but a few wigwams,a few warriors, and still fewer women,. POLYGAMOUS FATHER AND HIS Chah.âDrawn by H. Chapuis, after a photograph by Madame Dieulafoy. several males would compete for thepossession of one woman, and to thisextent the antecedent condition isidentical with that among monogamousbarbarians. But from this point the analogybreaks. For in polyandry, instead ofSmaiiness of the strongest competitor^orsttS taking and keeping thedrous system. prize to the exclusion ofthe rest, the rivals make a league tohave the woman in common. The factsshow that the rivals are in the first placethe brothers born of some common it might have been disadvantageous forthe warriors to go into deadly rivalryover the question of marriage. It mayhave been found among tribes thus weakthat it was advantageous to husband themeager resources of force and tribalvitality
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksub, booksubjectworldhistory
