Tea at Trianon: How Monogamy Took Hold

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, August 12, 2022

How Monogamy Took Hold

From Ancient Origins:

Human, socially imposed monogamy, as Agencia SINC explains, is something of an evolutionary puzzle, for the efforts and sacrifices required by those who accept it. Scientists had always believed that the much-debated idea of monogamy was established after the advent of agriculture and the creation of more modern human societies. However, a new study suggests that sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), also known as Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs), had an important role in the establishment of monogamy as a common model for human coexistence.

According to a study recently published in the journal Nature, the appearance of multiple STDs, along with the birth of agriculture, forced prehistoric men and women to develop partnerships formed by larger groups. This new way of life, with its internal pressures due to contact with the same population, led to the establishment of the first social standards, causing a change from polygamy to monogamy. (Read more.)