I 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

I 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