The Red Queen_ Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature - Matt Ridley [96]
With the invention of agriculture, the opportunity for some males to be polygamous arrived with a vengeance. Farming opened the way for one man to grow much more powerful than his peers by accumulating a surplus of food, whether grain or domestic animals, with which to buy the labour of other men. The labour of other men allowed him to increase his surplus still further. For the first time, having wealth was the best way to get wealth. Luck does not determine why one farmer reaps more than his neighbour to the same degree that it determines a hunter’s success. Agriculture suddenly allowed the best farmer in the band to have not only the largest hoard of food, but the most reliable supply. He had no need to share it freely, for he needed no favour in return. Among the //Gana San people of Namibia, who have given up their !Kung San neighbours’ hunting life for farming, there is less food sharing and more political dominance within each band. Now, by owning the best or biggest fields, or by working harder, or by having an extra ox, or by being a craftsman with a rare skill, a man could grow ten times as rich as his neighbour. Accordingly, he could acquire more wives. Simple agricultural societies often see harems of up to a hundred women per top man.31
Pastoral societies are, almost without exception, traditionally polygamous. It is not hard to see why. A herd of cattle or sheep is almost as easy to tend if it contains fifty animals as twenty-five. Such economies of scale allow a man to accumulate wealth at an ever-increasing rate. Positive feedback leads to inequalities of wealth, which leads to inequalities of sexual opportunity. The reason some Mukogodo men, in Kenya, have higher reproductive success than others is that they are richer; being richer enables them to marry early and marry often.32
By the time ‘civilization’ had arrived, in six different parts of the globe independently (from Babylon in 1700 BC to the Incas in AD 1500) emperors had thousands of women in their harems. If hunting and warrior skills had before earned a man an extra wife or two, then wealth had earned him ten or more. But wealth had another advantage, too. Not only could it buy wives directly, it could also buy ‘power’. It is noteworthy that the distinction between wealth and power is hard to make before the Renaissance: until then there was no such thing as an economic sector independent of the power structure. A man’s livelihood and his allegiance were owed to the same social superior.33 Power is, roughly speaking, the ability to call upon allies to do your bidding and that depended strictly upon wealth (with a little help from violence).
Power-seeking is characteristic of all social mammals. Cape buffalo rise within the hierarchy of the herd to positions of dominance that bring sexual rewards. Chimpanzees, too, strive to become ‘alpha male’ in the troop and in so doing increase the number of matings they perform. But chimpanzees, like men, do not rise entirely on brute strength. They use cunning, and above all they form alliances. The tribal warfare between groups of chimpanzees is both a cause and consequence of the male tendency to build alliances. In Jane Goodall’s studies, the males of one chimpanzee group were well aware when they were outnumbered by the males of another group, and deliberately sought opportunities to single out individual males from the enemy. The bigger and more cohesive the male alliance, the more effective it was.34
Coalitions of males are found in a number of species. In turkeys, brotherhoods of males display competitively on a lek. If they win, the females will mate with the