On monogamy and polygamy

An article in The Straits Times published in the Review section on 18 Mar 10, titled "Blame the woman, spare the man" (read it here is you are not a subscriber of The Straits Times), caught my attention and set me thinking about societies that advocate monogamy and those that allowed polygamy.

We are humans, all the same species, yet why did we develop differently?

My own pet theory on this. Not backed up by research since I am not any authority on this and not getting any degrees out of it.

Maybe it is because of food? No one will deny that in general, men are stronger than women, and that men have generally been the ones who bring home the food. The amount of food than a man can produce thus determines the size of the family that he can feed.

In an agricultural society, the supply of food is steady (you reap what you sow) and thus a man is able to properly feed a certain family size based on the amount of food that he can produce. This steady supply of food means that he is able to maintain a sizeable family. He can thus feed more wives and more children.

In a hunter/gatherer society, the supply of food is not constant. A man may not be able to gather enough to feed a sizeable family, and thus it is best to keep the family size small and manageable. He keeps to one wife and has less children so that they don't starve.

In societies living under harsh conditions, men die off easily as they go about their business of getting food. It thus makes sense for a woman to have multiple sources of food, so that she maintains a supply of food to feed her children. We thus see the reverse in which a woman has many husbands.

Just my own thought on this, actual research may yield totally different conclusions.