Technology ended the need for cheating as we know it!
Yes, you read it right. As early human devised tools for hunting and agriculture, they changed their lifestyle from rampant cheating (as we know it now) to monogamous relationships!
Marina Adshade, Professor, Department of Economics at Dalhousie University has some interesting perspectives about the evolution of relationships between men and women over the ages.
About 5 million years ago, human beings did not see any need for a committed relationship. You could argue there was no concept of cheating or cheating was rampant! You will be right whichever way you look at it.
Human beings used sex as a means to ensure their survival. It was sex in exchange for food which was mainly fruits, nuts and insects found in forests.
Essentially, everyone was a sugar daddy (men and women included).
Fast forward to between 1.5 million to 23000 years ago, as the earth slowly warmed up and forests receded, humans were forced to hunt for food and their diet changed to include meat. The change in diet also meant more babies as females started reaching sexual maturity earlier in the lives.
Human discovered that staying together as a man and woman helped in raising more offsprings and also ensure their survivability. But this also did not mean you had a lifelong commitment. These monogamous arrangements typically lasted 3 to 4 years.
Now, it was more of a convenient arrangement till the man or the woman fancied someone else.
Finally, about 4000 years ago, the invention of the plough and the concept of growing food tied people to their land and resulted in the traditional households we see today with shared responsibilities and workloads between men and women.
With agriculture and land ownership, the need for men or women to wander off from their relationships was eliminated! The beginnings of a monogamous relationship were born, thanks to advances in technology.
Technology turned the tables on marriage!
The earliest known evidence for marriage dates back to 4000 years ago in Mesopotamia. Marriage as a formal social contract was used mainly to build alliances and produce legal heirs to property. Strangely, a marriage did not automatically mean a monogamous relationship!
About 3000 years ago, King Soloman is thought to have 700 wives and 300 concubines! Being a King, whatever he did was legal but he will probably be dealing with at least 700 separate legal cases if he was alive in this day and age.
Even during the Roman times (about 2900 years ago) marriage was seen a civil union and did not have a religious meaning. The focus of marriage was on improving one’s social status and wealth. There was no religious diktat that kept people from straying outside marriage.
So what happened to the argument about being tied to the land?
The answer once again points to growing human ambition and technologies (tools) to venture into new lands and territories.
As ships sailed the oceans and large number of men marched to conquer new lands, adultery and having lovers outside the bounds of marriage became an in thing for the rulers and the ruled. That’s why the early Roman empire imposed strict laws against adultery which later lost significance towards the end of the Roman empire as it expanded its geography through conquests.
The technology that allowed massive armies to travel across continents also became an indirect catalyst for cheating!
20th-century technology and how they aid in cheating
Arguably, the last 200 years have seen the most advances in the way people travel and communicate with one another. First came the steam engine and all the inventions of the industrial revolution. Then came a new wave of inventions such as the telephone, passenger air travel, and automobiles. All of these technologies have a role to play in providing opportunities for couples to cheat.
Telephones have always played a role in connecting people as well as committing crimes. Did you know that way back in the early 2000s, The Fujitsu F Series phones were nicknamed the “infidelity phones”? That’s because these phones made it easy to mask calls and messages thanks to an advanced privacy feature built into the phone.
As the world moved from feature phones to smartphones, there are hundreds of privacy apps that help us create private contact lists, hide call logs, photographs, images behind innocuous looking apps that unlock the secret information only if a password is entered!
Air travel, especially work-related trips, provide a ripe opportunity for men and women to carry on with their affairs far away from their unsuspecting spouses! Bogus business trips and extended trips to conveniently slip out of the radar have all been made possible thanks to the advances in the travel industry.
Social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Snap Chat provide convenient platforms for couples to cheat. If you ever thought about your ex you can now find him or her and even say hello! A simple hello and a post comment or like could morph into extended chats and eventually into a full-blown affair!
As you can see, history has a way of repeating itself. Human beings have existed outside the bounds of a monogamous relationship far longer than they have stayed within the confines of a committed relationship. Technology has always played a role in changing the way human beings interact with others in a relationship and so far it has played a key role in keeping our collective pants down!
For in-depth insights on love, relationships, and marriage read the Jodi Logik Blog.
References:
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/14/infidelity_n_5663225.html
http://theweek.com/articles/475141/how-marriage-changed-over-centuries
http://www.thomasumstattd.com/2015/05/history-of-courtship/
https://www.geek.com/geek-pick/japanese-adulterers-use-fujitsu-flip-phones-1535732/
https://www.jodilogik.com/wordpress/index.php/spouse-partner-cheating/
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/02/when-taking-multiple-husbands-makes-sense/272726/