Humboldt instead mentioned in the early 19th century that pre-marriage promiscuity was common amon Basques and that marriages often happened when the girl became pregnant (not necesarily of her primary boyfriend, but hard to know). We know also that deeper in the past (as late as the 16th century) Basques practiced pagan or “witchcraft” ceremonies that were pretty much orgiastic (community sex on friday night under the influence of drugs, possibly stramonium).

So I do suspect that this “polygynic” reproductive bias can be achieved by very different means: either by the typical patriarchal “harem” or by the less obvious women-led selection of prefered fathers in a relatively promiscuous context.

The lowest level of “polygynic” bias was shown, maybe meaningfully, by the only hunter-gatherer sample: the Bushmen (San), who do not appear (AFAIK) to be either polygamous nor particularly promiscuous.

Question: Some modern studies have shown that a lot of children do not have the father their mother claim. of course, in a repressive patriarchal system adultery by married women tends to be less but do researchers take into account that there are a lot of offspring produced ‘on the wrong side of the marital bed’? Is it only institutional polygyny, or married women taking lovers their husband do not knpw about?