Yeah sometimes, other times they lie, emotionally torture, withold food and even physically attack each other. Little surprise since it goes against their biological interest to share a male’s resources with other females and their children. They will be vying against each other for scarce resources. If the male has a preferred favourite then there will be even more conflict within the group. Hell, Mohammed had to use divine sanction to keep his harem under control when he got jiggy with his new jewish wife. I also read somewhere that child mortality rates rise significantly with polygamy.

But doesn’t jealoousy occur in polygamous marriages?

It’s my understanding that wives in a polygamous marriage tend to form a coalition. Polygamy has fewer relationships involved than polyamory, and is more ideally suited to the differing reproductive drives of humans, which is probably why it implodes less often. Actually, such female coalitions remind me of bonobo matriarchy….

As for the England reference. I got that in a Royal University class in the SCA. Perhaps the man teaching the class was using poor sources.

Ah, OK. Given Engels’ citation, it’s perfectly understandable. Do you mean SCA, as in the Society for Creative Anachronism? I was briefly involved with them, but I was terribly disappointed to find that accuracy and scholarship were not their strong suits.

While I admire your scholarship, I am not as careful and thorough in documenting my learning as you are.

Believe me, it’s a learned skill–only after a few years of getting beat up for not remembering where you got it do you start to learn to remember where you heard everything you know. It’s no problem, but I don’t think we can go much farther without a real example, with a name we can all look up and whatnot.

Yeah. With female jealousy, there tends to be fewer deaths.

Jealous men beat the ever-loving shit out of each other.

Jealous women slowly poison you over a period of years, until you’re left at death’s door thinking you’ve simply become chronically ill. Then, once you’ve lost the power of speech or movement, they whisper it in your ear so that in those long, last grueling days before you finally expire, you can know exactly what was done to you and why….

Male jealousy is much different from female jealousy.

Yeah. With female jealousy, there tends to be fewer deaths.

But doesn’t jealoousy occur in polygamous marriages?

It was believed at the time by a number of authorities, including Frazer, that primitive humanity had practiced some form or other of group marriage. McLennan maintained that brothers would hold a wife in common, while Morgan hypothesized that groups of brothers would marry groups of sisters, and that within this group marriage, individuals would have sex with each other indiscriminately. Both Frazer and Morgan hoped that the Australian ethnographers would find evidence of such an organization among the Aborigines.

From “The Anthropologist and the Lady’s Maid.”

See also, “The Savage Mirror,” Giuli’s review of Gustav Jahoda’s Images of Savages.

I do know of a number of Central and South American cultures, but none that practice polyamory. I don’t suppose you know the name of the culture? Your assertion concerning Britain is one I know to be blatantly incorrect, so I’m inclined to not believe you on the second, either, without at least a specific culture to look up.