Polyandry: The Rarest Form of Marriage

March 13, 2007 by
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Fraternal  |  Arranged Marriage  |  Partition  |  Second Marriages  |  Kinship

Polyandry in Tibet

Polyandry is a rare form of marriage where one wife may take two or more husbands. The Tibetan, Toda, Sherpa, and Marquesan are the only four societies worldwide that practice polyandry today. There are two types of polyandrous unions: fraternal and non-fraternal. Fraternal polyandry
 occurs when multiple brothers share a common wife, and non-fraternal polyandry occurs when co-husbands are unrelated to one another. So why did polyandry become the age-old tradition instead of monogamy or polygyny? In order to address this question, we shall turn to the Tibetan case of fraternal polyandry and explore its kinship practices, economic concerns, and presence in serf society.

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TakeawaysDid You Know
  • Polyandry is a rare form of marriage practiced in Tibet
  • This article investigates some reasons behind the rare marriage arrangment
 
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the inuit commonly practised this form of union, the reasons for it are purely adaptive. It was impossible to survive as a family unit with just 1 male and female becuase of the harsh conditions so additional males were brought into the union (usually brothers so that even if the children were not ones own, they would still be related so benificial to ones genes) for hunting and other survival practices. As tibetans traditionally lived in conditions some way compareable to inuit i suspect that this adaptive survival and gene promotion is the sole reason for its beginning.
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