Polygyny without wealth

Abstract

The occurrence of polygynous marriage in hunter–gatherer societies, which do not accumulate wealth, remains largely unexplored since resource availability is dependent on male hunting capacity and limited by the lack of storage. Hunter– gatherer societies offer the greatest insight in to human evolution since they represent the majority of our species’ evolutionary history. In order to elucidate the evolution of hunter–gatherer polygyny, we study marriage patterns of BaYaka Pygmies