T. R. Fehrenbach (San Antonio Express-News) has a column (part one of two) on marriage, tied to current events:
Due to an upcoming election, the subject of marriage is much in the news.
No, this ain't about the sanctity of wedlock or a diatribe against abominations. I just feel like discussing heterosexual bondage this Sunday, a practice that goes back beyond history to the seminal cultures of our Western world.
We know that some form of marriage between men and women emerged in human societies long before government or the state evolved. (Of course, once you create the state, it tries to get into every act.) All primitive peoples learned the necessity for exogamous mating — the oldest universal taboo is incest — and about consanguinity and descent.
The Indo-European peoples developed customs of private property, aristocracy and kingship and forms of slavery or serfdom thousands of years before they entered Europe. Stone-age males may have been inspired between the ages of 18 and 24 to impregnate every female in reach (and the female of the species is capable of perpetual heat), but institutions had to develop to trace parentage and heirship. The earliest Greeks placed great emphasis on the legitimacy of offspring, and such attitudes only faded in the last century.