re: #209 CuriousLurker

Well, in that case I guess future history books will describe the rise & fall of our society, where we went wrong, and the newer, better model—whatever that might be—that came along to replace ours. That, or we screw things up so badly that we cease to exist as a viable species

Well, if you want to get down to it, the idea of marriage and monogamy were social constructs created to ensure two interconnected concepts: lineage and inheritance. So long as we’ve maintained the idea of owning and passing down property, possessions, and wealth, there’s been an insistence on insuring that the children inheriting are the offspring of the original owner. Daughters were used basically as bargaining chips, the means for one family to connect itself to another and thus gain some of the other’s pie. It’s only recently in human history that the idea of marrying for love and the disdain of arranged marriages has come into vogue.