>IMHO, infanticide is relatively common among the Praxians due to the
>harsh living conditions under which they suffer. The sickly and
>deformed children are definitely going to be abandoned, but I think
>that a certain percentage of healthy infants are left to die simply
>because the tribes cannot support more unproductive mouths.
I think you're right on this. There probably is some regular tension within more marginal tribes about which children are deemed strong enough to live and which are left to die. I can imagine a certain degree of social conflict, as the Eiritha priestesses (or whoever) make these sorts of decisions. There's a lot of room for abusing this power.
Another option would be to leave the children at an oasis, to be raised by the locals. And of course, Morokanthi slavers would regularly be looking for foundlings to raise and sell.
>What is not quite so clear to me is how much of a role gender plays
>in deciding who is going to be abandoned. Do the Praxians prefer to
>keep the girls in an attempt to safeguard the fertility of the herds,
>or do they keep the boys in hopes of raising warriors to physically
>protect the herds?
Good question. It probably varies from tribe to tribe, depending on what sort of needs it has. A tribe with a lot of young male warriors probably tend expose the boys, figuring that they have enough men to protect the tribe, while the girls are needed to increase the tribe's population. On the other hand, a tribe with a lot of excess females would tend to expose girls. If Praxian tribes are matrifocally exogamous (the couple joins the wife's tribe), that means that lots of females will bring increased pressure for resources, since the tribe will acquire new men who need feeding. Men, on the other hand, eventually leave their birth tribe, so they are less of a long-term pressure on the tribe's resources.
>On a personal note to Andrew, thanks for the post. just because I
>don't agree with everything you say doesn't mean that I did not find
>much of it to be insightful.
Glad you enjoyed it. Most of it seems like simple common sense to me.
I was doing some more thinking about Praxian marriage patterns, and I realized that I was using the wrong terminology. Polygamy, strictly speaking, is the practice of having multiple spouses of either gender. A man having multiple wives is technically polygyny.
In Praxian society, the whole question of polygamy seems to me fairly complex. Since women own the most valuable property, polyandry would be a strategy of a wealthy woman who wants multiple husbands to protect her herds. Poorer women cannot afford polyandry, because they lack the resources to support many husbands and lack the social stature to monopolize a larger number of the tribe's men. Thus polyandrous women will be those who are wealthier and more politically powerful, and they may be envied by poorer women who resent them for taking up a larger than normal share of the tribe's men (although since men can join a tribe by marriage, according to my reading, this tension can usually be aleviated if the poorer women have enough property to attract a husband). However, polyandry is biologically a wasteful practice, because it involves many men mating with one woman, who can only carried one child at a time (leaving out the rare multiple births). Thus while it is a logical practice from an economic standpoint, it is counterproductive from a reproductive standpoint. Therefore, I suspect that polyandry is relatively rare in smaller tribes, which are going to need to maximize their reproductive rate.
Polygyny, on the other hand, has a totally different dynamic. From the female standpoint, men bring protection rather than property into a marriage. They don't seriously enhance her ability to have children (after the first husband). Thus marriage is attractive to a woman only if she feels that she needs more protection for her property.
From the male standpoint, women bring property into the marriage, as well as the resources to support the man. Thus men seek marriage to acquire property, at the expense of having to work harder to defend it. So polyandry is most likely to be a strategy for young, poor men looking to establish themselves rather than for older, more established men for whom the physical obligations of defending the wives' property may be more trouble than it's worth. Thus polygyny is a strategy of the poor man, while polyandry is a strategy of the wealthy woman. Since young men want women, who are in relatively short supply within the tribe, they are likely to be envious of men with multiple wives. Thus young men probably feel strong temptation to commit adultery with a woman in a polygynous marriage, in the hopes of being able to defeat her husband. Being defeated in an adultery duel suggests that a man is unable to defend his wife's property, which in turn encourages his wives to consider divorcing him in favor of a younger, stronger man. Thus older men will wisely hold back from polygyny out of self-preservation.
If this is all correct, there is a lot of social tension within Praxian tribes, as young men seek to gain wealth (and perhaps a reputation) through adultery, while older men constantly worry about younger men trying to challenge them. Poor women will generally gossip about the wealthy and socially prominent women who have multiple husbands, but this is smoothed over fairly easily, as the poor women can always attract husbands, unless they are so poor as to have no property, in which case they are probably doomed to the life of a servant.
Obviously, none of this takes into account personal issues like love or the pressures and advice provided by parents. But in such an environment, love is probably not an overly respected emotion.
Andrew E. Larsen
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