When did marriage begin?

While interhuman relationships may go back to the early years of humanity, there is one ritual known the world over that has a much more recent history: marriage. Evidence suggests that marriage as an institution may only be several thousand years old, with the idea of one man and one woman spending their lives together being a relatively new concept.

Today's buzzy experiments with coupling — polyamory, "throuples," "ethical non-monogamy," "sister wife" polygamy — are new variations on old themes. And even countervailing trends to enforce the "sanctity of marriage" and "trad" spousal roles have historical precedence.

How old is marriage as an institution?

The best available evidence suggests that it's about 4,350 years old. For thousands of years before that, most anthropologists believe, families consisted of loosely organized groups of as many as 30 people, with several male leaders, multiple women shared between them, and children. As hunter-gatherers settled down into agrarian civilizations, society had a need for more stable arrangements.

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The first recorded evidence of marriage ceremonies uniting one woman and one man dates from about 2350 B.C., in Mesopotamia. Over the next several hundred years, marriage evolved into a widespread institution embraced by the ancient Hebrews, Greeks and Romans. But back then, marriage had little to do with love or with religion.

What was it about, then?

Marriage's primary purpose was to bind women to men, and thus guarantee that a man's children were truly his biological heirs. Through marriage, a woman became a man's property. In the betrothal ceremony of ancient Greece, a father would hand over his daughter with these words: "I pledge my daughter for the purpose of producing legitimate offspring."

Among the ancient Hebrews, men were free to take several wives; married Greek and Roman men were free to satisfy their sexual urges with concubines, prostitutes and even teenage male lovers, while their wives were required to stay home and tend to the household. If wives failed to produce offspring, their husbands could give them back and marry someone else.

When did religion become involved?

As the Christian church became a powerful institution in Europe, the blessings of a priest became increasingly common. Through the years, "there have been differing views about whether weddings are primarily religious or secular events," said the Christian-based Nelson University. For "much of the early Christian Era, the Church stayed out of weddings and let the state handle the union of man and woman." But by the eighth century, Christian churches started to perform weddings, and the ritual became widely accepted as a sacrament.

Not all religions view marriage the same; for the Jews, while "no wedding ceremony is described in the Torah, the institution of marriage began with Adam and Eve," said ReformJudaism.org, and most Jewish scholars "agree that 'marriages' originally constituted a man's 'reserving' a particular woman or women as his property." In Islam, marriage "is a contract, not a sacrament," said Brandeis University. And "because it is a contract, it conveys legal rights and obligations to each spouse."

When did the state get involved?

The shift from "common law" marriages — where two people (or their families) simply declared they were married — to legal marriage began in the church, with the calling of "banns," or public announcements before the marriage in the 13th century. "By the end of the Middle Ages, written marriage contracts had become a regular part of the marriage process," said Jessica Levey at American Marriage Ministries.

Marriage licenses arrived in the U.S. in the colonial era — Massachusetts started recording marriages at the local level in 1639 and statewide two years later, according to the University of Massachusetts Amherst. At the time, the husband's dominance was officially recognized under a legal doctrine called "coverture," under which the new bride's identity was absorbed into his. Great Britain introduced non-religion civil marriage in the Marriage Act of 1836. By 1929, all U.S. states had laws on marriage licenses. Marriage became a federal issue with the introduction of the married-couple income tax filing in 1913.

When did love enter the picture?

As previously mentioned, marriage was viewed in ancient times simply as a binding contract between a man and woman. But in the 18th century, society "encouraged young people to select their marriage partners based on their romantic attachments," said the National Women's History Museum. This represented a notable change from prior eras, when the "brides' and groom's feelings were not of paramount consideration" when it came to selecting a partner. As parents and guardians took a backseat in attempting to find partners for their children, lovers "needed to find one another and then determine the extent of mutual attraction." This is also when courtships became a significant part of finding a spouse. Since then, romance and attraction have become synonymous with marriage and weddings.

How did this tradition change?

In 1920, American women won the right to vote, transforming marriage into a union of two full citizens, and in the following decade a sexual revolution introduced the idea that marriage should be a vehicle for mutual desire and satisfaction. In the 1960s, "we decided marriage was a right," not a guarded (and segregated) privilege, and "in the 1970s, we began to rearrange marriage laws" accordingly, marriage historian Stephanie Coontz said to Connecticut Public Radio. Between 1974 and 1993, U.S. states finally recognized — and banned — marital rape, an idea inconceivable when the husband "owned" his wife's sexuality.

"Within the past 40 years, marriage has changed more than in the last 5,000," Coontz said. And despite what you may have heard, people "care much more about marriage as a relationship than people did in the past. We're less attached to it as an institution that everybody has to enter, but we actually have higher expectations of marriage as a relationship."