Ok i always wondered about the concept of marriage.
I found a definition of marriage as- The social institution under which a man and woman establish their decision to live as husband and wife by legal commitments, religious ceremonies, etc, or similar institution involving partners of the same gender: gay marriage.
I just copied and pasted that, but my question is how did marriage come to be?
Did the first humans just look at each otehr and decide to get married? But that would make no sense, as it would had to have existed, unless it came along from only 2 people originally, and some how caught on. And how can a document connect or bond 2 people, that jsut seems strange that a "legal" document can bond 2 people together, i mean, is a document not just a record or a paper?
I am sure that most religious peoples are going to claim it came out of religion, but thats not the answer i want to hear.
It may have evolved over time as part of our social structure/hierarchy - before such things as breeding for life within our species we most likely slugged it out to see who got the female.
Dang.. That is a tough question. I'm sure that someone had a kid and decided that it was the right thing to do to become husband and wife. But I'm sure that's not what they called it back then.
Marriage was traced all the way back to Ancient Egypt. Throughout history, and even today, families arranged marriages for couples. The people involved didn't and don't have much to say about the decision. Most couples didn't marry because they were in love but for economic reasons. With this, we could assume that early marriages that were traditional were in the upper tier and were used to secure a new family to make sure they would be stable in their future.
The engagement ring dates all the way back to the Roman Empire. The circular shape of the ring represents eternity, which gave us the slogan that marriage is meant to last forever. Twelfth century troubadours were the first ones who thought of courtly love in the same way we do now. The whole notion of romance apparently didn't exist until medieval times, and the troubadours. This again shows that marriage back then were used for financial and economic purposes, not for love. I mean, it could have been for love as well, except back then, the young heeded their parents' wishes and had an arranged marriage.
I found a definition of marriage as- The social institution under which a man and woman establish their decision to live as husband and wife by legal commitments, religious ceremonies, etc, or similar institution involving partners of the same gender: gay marriage.
Based on that definition of marriage, the first ceremonies had their origin in religion. However, primitive societies still had de facto marriages on the basis of economic need. Women needed hunter gatherer husbands. Men needed women to look after the home, and neither could do so adequately with more than one partner.
