Monday, January 3, 2011

We Find That Religious Folks Are Kooky

Via the reliably dense John J. Miller at The Corner we find a delightful bit of makework from people with too much time on their hands (PDF):
In this paper, we investigate whether alcohol consumption and polygynous/monogamous arrangements are correlated, both over time and across cultures, and why.

First, we do find a historical correlation between a global shift from polygyny to monogamy and the growth of alcohol consumption. Second, looking at the various societies nowadays, we find that part of the Muslims and the Mormon Fundamentalists are the only two groups (together with some African tribes) that are still practicing polygyny and, interestingly, they also forbid alcohol consumption. Third, using historical data on pre-industrial societies – among which there are a substantial number of cases of polygyny – we find a cross-cultural correlation: monogamous societies drink more alcohol than polygynous societies.
Also in some cultures a certain big thick book is favoured over other big thick books.

An entertaining set of tables at the end of the work:

6 comments:

mikey said...

I KNEW it!

Didn't I warn you what would happen when we reached peak pirate??

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

So beer goggles lead to marriage, and therefore more drinking?

I'm not reading the link, it's more fun to leap to conclusions.
~

Big Bad Bald Bastard said...

monogamous societies drink more alcohol than polygynous societies

Out of necessity!

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

I think I just used the data in that table to prove A=/=A.

Also, it provides the basis for scientific principles that power this machine, which moves. Perpetually.

Smut Clyde said...

It is indeed a strange coincidence that monogamy spread across the world at the same time and in the same pattern as alcohol consumption.

M. Bouffant said...

Agriculture (for beer) causes bourgeois respectability, which leads directly to BOOZE!!