(Press-News.org) ANN ARBOR, Mich.—Religious practices that strongly control female sexuality are more successful at promoting certainty about paternity, according to a study published in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The study analyzed genetic data on 1,706 father-son pairs in a traditional African population—the Dogon people of Mali, West Africa—in which Islam, two types of Christianity, and an indigenous, monotheistic religion are practiced in the same families and villages.
"We found that the indigenous religion allows males to achieve a significantly lower probability of cuckoldry—1.3 percent versus 2.9 percent," said Beverly Strassmann, lead author of the article and a biological anthropologist at the University of Michigan.
In the traditional religion, menstrual taboos are strictly enforced, with women exiled for five nights to uncomfortable menstrual huts. According to Strassmann, the religion uses the ideology of pollution to ensure that women honestly signal their fertility status to men in their husband's family.
"When a woman resumes going to the menstrual hut following her last birth, the husband's patrilineage is informed of the imminency of conception and cuckoldry risk," Strassmann said. "Precautions include postmenstrual copulation initiated by the husband and enhanced vigilance by his family."
Across all four of the religions practiced by the Dogon people, Strassmann and colleagues detected father-son Y DNA mismatches in only 1.8 percent of father-son pairs, a finding that contradicts the prevailing view that traditional populations have high rates of cuckoldry. A similar rate of cuckoldry has been found in several modern populations, but a key difference is that the Dogon do not use contraception.
The study, which was supported by funding from the National Science Foundation, is part of Strassmann's ongoing, 26-year study of the Dogon people.
"The major world religions sprang from patriarchal societies in which the resources critical to reproduction, whether in the form of land or livestock, were inherited from father to son down the male line," Strassmann and colleagues write. "Consistent with patrilineal inheritance, the sacred texts set forth harsh penalties for adultery and other behaviors that lower the husband's probability of paternity. The scriptures also place greater emphasis on female than on male chastity, including the requirement of modest attire for women and the idealization of virginity for unmarried females."
While previous studies have examined the evolutionary biology of patriarchy through primate antecedents or cultural factors, the current study is the first to investigate whether religions that more strongly regulate female sexuality are more successful at limiting the incidence of cuckoldry.
"Although world religions do not have menstrual huts, they do share many tenets that may foster cuckoldry avoidance," the authors write. "For example, in Judaism, menstrual purity laws increase coital frequency around the time of ovulation. In Islam, paternity confusion is prevented by the Qur'an's rule that, after divorce, a woman must wait for three menstrual periods before remarrying. The Hindu text, 'The Laws of Manu,' admonishes against cuckoldry or 'sowing in another man's field.'
"Strong statements against adultery and extramarital children are found in the Bible and, in Buddhism, adultery is a form of sexual misconduct. In preventing cuckoldry, religions use the dual strategy of social control in the public sphere (attendance at a place of worship or at a menstrual hut) and the fear of divine or supernatural punishment. In the United States, frequent church attendance and belief that the Bible is the word of God were the two most robust predictors of lower rates of self-reported extra-partner copulations."
In short, Strassmann and colleagues maintain that the ideological and tactical similarities between these world religions and the Dogon religion have arisen in response to the same biological pressures. Religious patriarchy is directly analogous to the mate-guarding tactics used by animals to ensure paternity.
INFORMATION:
Strassmann is affiliated with the U-M Institute for Social Research and the U-M Department of Anthropology, part of the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts. Her co-authors are Nikhil Kurapati, Brendan Hugg and Brenda Gillespie, all at U-M; Erin Burke at Yale University; Tatiana Karafet of the Arizona Research Laboratories; and Michael Hammer of the Arizona Research Laboratories and the University of Arizona at Tucson.
Beverly Strassmann: http://rcgd.isr.umich.edu/people/strassmann.html
Editors: Images can be downloaded at https://umich.box.com/s/613695b9af8418319965
END
DALLAS – June 4, 2012 – UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers have taken a major step toward understanding the cellular clock, mapping for the first time the atomic-level architecture of a key component of the timekeeper that governs the body's daily rhythms.
The daily, or circadian, cycles guided by the body's clocks affect our ability to get a good night's sleep, how fast we recover from jet lag, and even the best time to give cancer treatments, said Dr. Joseph Takahashi, senior author of the Science study published online and a pioneer in the study of circadian ...
The RHESSI (Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager) satellite focuses on the highest energy x-rays and gamma-rays produced by the sun, helping to observe solar flares of all shapes and sizes. The satellite is pointed toward the sun, and constantly in rotation, which provides a serendipitous bit of side research: by monitoring the limb of the sun on its four second rotation cycle, RHESSI's Solar Aspect System (SAS) has produced ten years worth of precise measurements of the sun's diameter. This has already provided scientists with one of the most accurate measurements ...
When Venus transits the sun on June 5th and 6th, an armada of spacecraft and ground-based telescopes will be on the lookout for something elusive and, until recently, unexpected: The Arc of Venus.
"I was flabbergasted when I first saw it during the 2004 transit," recalls astronomy professor Jay Pasachoff of Williams College. "A bright, glowing rim appeared around the edge of Venus soon after it began to move into the sun."
For a brief instant, the planet had turned into a "ring of fire."
Researchers now understand what happened. Backlit by the sun, Venus's atmosphere ...
Half of adults over age 65 made at least one emergency department (ED) visit in the last month of life, in a study led by a physician at the San Francisco VA Medical Center (SFVAMC) and UCSF.
Three quarters of ED visits led to hospital admissions, and more than two-thirds of those admitted to the hospital died there.
In contrast, the 10 percent of study subjects who had enrolled in hospice care at least one month before death were much less likely to have made an ED visit or died in the hospital.
"For too many older Americans, the emergency department is a conduit ...
Boulder, Colo., USA – New Lithosphere science posted online 4 June 2012 includes a study of the Valles Marineris fault zone, Mars, and asks why such a trough system occurs there, when such structures on Earth are mainly associated with plate tectonics. Other papers discuss landslides in the Pyrenees; first evidence of a "missing" Cretaceous arc assemblage in the Iraqi segment of the Zagros orogenic belt; and new information on the age of the Okanagan Valley shear zone, Canada.
Abstracts are online at http://lithosphere.gsapubs.org/content/early/recent. Representatives ...
California sports medicine specialist Dr. Ralph Venuto (http://www.drvenuto.com) recently added downloadable forms on his website, helping patients get the resources they need before their first office visit. The Medical History form, Patient Financial Agreement, Notice of Privacy Practices Receipt, and Patient Information Form for the practice are all now available online. Dr. Venuto believes that giving patients access to medical forms online is a step that helps his team become more efficient in patient care.
"Online medical forms have become a norm at the modern ...
COLUMBUS, Ohio - Scientists have designed a screening tool that provides a fast, easy and relatively inexpensive way to predict levels of a specific toxin in lakes that are prone to blue-green algal blooms.
Blue-green algae is not your average pond scum - rather than consisting of plant-like organisms, blue-green algae actually are cyanobacteria, and some species are linked to the production and release of the toxin microcystin into the water. Human exposure to the toxin through drinking or recreational water contact can threaten public health by causing liver damage, ...
OAK BROOK, Ill. – Researchers studying stroke patients have found a strong association between impairments in a network of the brain involved in emotional regulation and the severity of post-stroke depression. Results of the study are published online in the journal Radiology.
"A third of patients surviving a stroke experience post-stroke depression (PSD)," said lead researcher Igor Sibon, M.D., Ph.D., professor of neurology at the University of Bordeaux in Bordeaux, France. "However, studies have failed to identify a link between lesions in the brain caused by ischemia ...
For attorneys, social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter and blogs are the new word-of-mouth advertising of the 21st century -- a powerful way for law firms to stand out online and engage with clients and prospects in a direct, immediate, and meaningful way.
A free one-hour webcast upcoming on Wednesday, June 13th, is designed for attorneys who want to learn more about social media, its relevance to attorneys, and why social media is the future of online client development for law firms.
Social Media: Fish Where the Fish Are, a FindLaw event co-hosted by Ohio ...
San Diego, CA, June 5, 2012 – It's estimated that almost 23% of women enter pregnancy as smokers and more than half continue to smoke during pregnancy, leading to excess healthcare costs at delivery and beyond. In one of the first studies to assess smoking bans and taxes on cigarettes, along with the level of tobacco control spending, researchers have found that state tobacco control policies can be effective in curbing smoking during pregnancy, and in preventing a return to smoking within four months on average, after delivery. The results were published online today ...
