Evolution of Monogamy in Humans
It is important to have a clear understanding of the nomenclature of monogamy because scientists use the term monogamy for different male-female relationships. Biologists, biological anthropologists, and behavioral ecologists often use the term monogamy in the sense of sexual, if not genetic, monogamy as defined above in Notion and aspects of monogamy. To clarify the difference, sexual monogamy simply means an individual has only one mating partner throughout their lifetime while genetic monogamy is only used to describe sexually monogamous relationships with genetic evidence of paternity. Since maternity is always certain, genetic evidence is unnecessary. When cultural or social anthropologists and other social scientists use the term monogamy, the meaning is social monogamy, as defined above. In human societies, social monogamy is often defined as monogamous marriage.
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