re: #348 medaura18586

In ancient times, women’s mortality rates were nearly as high as men’s for comparative age groups, at least in Asia Minor and Europe. Most men died violent deaths (war, ethnic cleansing, crime); most women died of childbirth. These are mostly young women, teenagers. Not widows.

It’s not the women that sought to share proportionally scarce men. It was men who sought harems. Think the Ottoman Sultans, the Chinese emperors, kings of Siam, etc. … Think the animal kingdom, gorillas.

Men are always up to something crazy…. Yea, I should have remembered about the child birth mortality rate, true. Any truth to the war theory I put forth? I can’t remember where I heard that one.