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"Outcompeted" overstates atelier's hypothesis a bit. Monogamous societies might be better specifically at "projecting military force against the other tribe in the next valley", while being worse at everything else (including "generating happy men and women").
Indeed, it's easy to see how that exact situation might come about: a tribe full of angry, depressed married men who are henpecked by their nagging monogamous wives so much that dicing with death seems like a prospect of sweet release, would indeed seem like they'd be well placed psychologically to mount a "kill the men and kidnap the women" fratricidal attack on a neighbouring tribe. Conversely, a tribe of men and women living in a successful hippie-free-love non-monogamous sexual utopia have better things to do than scheme to kill everyone in the next valley.
Not usually the way polygamy works, that's a man with more than one wife and very strict rules about what the women can and can't do, whereas the man can marry up to the limit of whatever is socially acceptable or how many he can support, plus can visit courtesans, dancers, etc.
Where polygyny is practiced, it's generally "woman marries brothers". There's few to no "free love non-monogamous sexual utopia" where both men and women sleep around with whomever they like and there's no drama.
Take the avatars of Vishnu, Ram and Krishna. Ram is the man of one wife, which is unusual and is all part of his character as the man of ultimate virtues who does not breach social limits. Krishna has eight main wives and 16,100 ceremonial wives, whom he marries after rescuing them from captivity by a demon in order to safeguard their dignity, since living with another man (even if that was not voluntarily) means they are now unmarriageable and would be shunned by their families and society.
Sita, the wife of Rama, is another example of the double standard, if you will. While the kings may have multiple wives, if they so choose, after she is kidnapped by a demon and rescued by Rama, she has to undergo a trial by fire to prove her chastity, and even after returning to their kingdom, social disapproval lingers:
Some versions of the story have Sita appealing to Earth to open up and take her away because despite all that has gone before and her second exile, Rama still asks her to undergo yet another public test of her chastity in order to satisfy the people once and for all.
This is noncentral to my argument. The precise internal dynamics of the non-monogamous society(s) are irrelevant; the hypothesis calls only for them to have (a) better mean happiness than Monogamy Land, and (b) worse ability to commit ethnocide than Monogamy Land.
Yeah, but if your premise on "why did monogamy survive and indeed become dominant?" is to be examined, then we have to look at real world polygamous societies, not fantasy versions. I don't believe in the Golden Age Peaceful Matriarchal And Mother Goddess Society crap, as to how patriarchy became dominant, so I don't accept that as a starting point when examining the question. if the matriarchy was so ideal, why did the patriarchy get to replace it? Same with "we all started off with everyone fucking everyone else and nobody made a big deal out of it" for "then the wicked awful monogamists ruined it for everyone". If we look around, we see there isn't "everyone fucking everyone else, nobody cares" but that "men get to fuck who they want, people do care if women fuck without consequences". That seems more likely to segue into monogamy than "no shame, no guilt, polyamorous fucking for all" society.
If we start off with "there is free love equal rights men and women both are able to sleep around nobody cares society" versus "monogamous relationship society", we have to check that against "and does this hold up in the real world?", else we might as well put it down to "aliens made them do it".
In fact, we've now got "free love equal rights men and women both are able to sleep around nobody cares society", do we have better mean happiness than Monogamy Land? The complaints aired on here backed up with "surveys say", would seem to indicate "no".
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