Wine, Woman and Song
Feb. 3rd, 2011 12:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tartysuzThis is one of the best science stories I've read in the mainstream media -- and it's by a wine columnist!
Why wine drinking and monogamy go together
Instead of playing on the possibility of a causal relationship between wine drinking and cultures that sanction monogamous marriage (as opposed to cultures that sanction polygamous marriages), the columnist actually quoted the scientists explaining the "spurious correlation" demonstrated by the data.
The conclusion is that the economic conditions that lead to monogamy are the same ones that make a wine industry and a wine culture possible.
Why wine drinking and monogamy go together
Instead of playing on the possibility of a causal relationship between wine drinking and cultures that sanction monogamous marriage (as opposed to cultures that sanction polygamous marriages), the columnist actually quoted the scientists explaining the "spurious correlation" demonstrated by the data.
The conclusion is that the economic conditions that lead to monogamy are the same ones that make a wine industry and a wine culture possible.
"Since females are better off by sharing the resources of a rich male rather than singularly enjoying the limited resources of a poor male," the authors write, "there is a positive correlation between polygyny and male inequality."
