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Updated: June 11, 2025
Apart from this the biological masculine traditions point to polygyny much more than the feminine traditions point to polyandry.
Azara, on the proportion of men and women among the Guaranys; on Palamedea cornuta; on the beards of the Guaranys; on strife for women among the Guanas; on infanticide; on the eradication of the eyebrows and eyelashes by the Indians of Paraguay; on polyandry among the Guanas; celibacy unknown among the savages of South America; on the freedom of divorce among the Charruas.
To take one instance, which bears a good deal on modern questions, we find in the works of this great traveller the gradual and progressive steps in the development of the family life clearly manifested in the mere gregarious herding together of the Agathyrsi, their primitive kinsmanship through women in common, and the rise of a feeling of paternity from a state of polyandry.
It is favored by the circumstance that, contrary to what usually obtains in old countries, the males in this region considerably outnumber the females; yet, while that disproportion exists throughout the provinces, polyandry is confined to the Tibetans.
M'Lennan rather than of Sir Henry Maine. The point to which all the testimony adduced converges, the explanation which most readily solves all the difficulties, is the explanation of Mr. M'Lennan. The Aryan races have very generally passed through the stage of scarcity of women, polyandry, absence of recognised male kinship, and recognition of kinship through women.
I have visited the tribe of Subanos, in the west and north of the island of Mindanao in the Philippine archipelago, where the rich men are polygamists, and the poor still submit to polyandry.
Polyandry, polygamy, and monogamy, have been general among some animals while among others only one form of mating has been the rule. Strange to say, sex promiscuity is not at all general among the animals, though polygamy is common. The adoption of polygamy is obviously due to one of two things, or possibly, to be more specific, to both.
Polyandry in the joint family group was not due to a licentious view of marriage; far otherwise, it was an expression of the communism which is characteristic of this organisation. This fact has been forgotten by many writers, who have regarded this form of the sexual relationships as a very primitive development, connected with group-marriage and promiscuous ownership of women.
If we compare it with the more usual form of patriarchal polyandry we see at once the influence of maternal descent. Here, the woman makes a free choice of her husbands; in no sense is she their property. It is common for them to work for her, one husband taking on himself to furnish her with clothes, another to give her rice and food, and so on.
The Marquesan woman, however, often denies her husband the freedom she herself openly enjoys. This custom persists as a striking survival of polyandry, in which fidelity under pain of dismissal from the roof-tree was imposed by the wife on all who shared her affections. This was exactly the status of a household not far from my cabin.
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