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I trust his judgment of the time and places he studies. It's also easy to trust, since it's more or less what I believed already. However, I'm wary about the g
by vintermann 1y ago
I trust his judgment of the time and places he studies. It's also easy to trust, since it's more or less what I believed already.
However, I'm wary about the generalization to pre-modern societies in general. Not just because of the countless counterexamples of anthropology to everything you can think of in human affairs, but also because when I started digging into the church books for my own genealogy, I found far more even-aged or women-older marriages than I'd expected. Maybe not a majority, sure, and maybe not on average (and also, we're way out of both the time and the geography Bret studies). The past is never quite as I imagined.
- namenotrequired 1y agoI agree with you, but a few slight caveats to your point that I think are worth noting. > Not just because of the countless counterexamples of anthropology to everything you can think of in human affairs A lot of anthropological research is done on non-agrarian societies. The author limited himself to peasants here, so that limits some (far from all) of the variation. > I found far more even-aged or women-older marriages than I'd expected The author also limits himself to age at _first_ marriage; I’d expect a lot more variation in age at remarriage. And even if divorce was rare compared to today, death of a spouse was much more common. So you’d expect to see quite some remarriages in the family tree
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]