Reasons to Worry from Antiquity

India and China are often talked about in the same breath as a consequence of their massive size, rapidly growing economies, and ancient civilizations. Among the less desirable traits that they share, however, is a massive gender imbalance. Cultural preferences for boys in both countries lead to selective abortions and infanticides that have left both countries with far more men than women: China with 118 males for every 100 females and India with 108.

Massive problems might result. Huge numbers of men in both societies will inevitably go unwed, making them more likely to turn to crime, become substance abusers, or participate in human trafficking. Single men with no prospects for marriage are also prime candidate for extremist groups, which, perhaps not coincidentally, are on the rise in both China and India today.

This problem has been festering for years; what brings it to mind today is a sobering essay by Jonathan Gottschall that was in the Boston Globe this weekend on the Iliad and the Odyssey, of all things.

The constant warfare and tenuous existence of Homer's day might have been a direct consequence of the gender imbalance that evidently characterized Greek society at that time - and are historically trademarks of most other societies with the same affliction.

Anthropologists, historians, and others, it seems, are beginning to recognize that Homer's classics are more informative about Greek society in Homer's day than originally thought. The political organization, agricultural patterns, and general tone and tenor of life captured in the poems jive well with what we know about the time period from other sources.

One of the most prominent features of society, which the authors argue gives them much of their tragic feel, is the relative scarcity of women:

Patterns of violence in Homer are intriguingly consistent with societies on the anthropological record known to have suffered from acute shortages of women. While Homeric men did not take multiple wives, they hoarded and guarded slave women who they treated as their sexual property. These women were mainly captured in raids of neighboring towns, and they appear frequently in Homer. In the poems, Odysseus is mentioned as having 50 slave women, and it is slave women who bear most of King Priam's 62 children. For every slave woman working a rich man's loom and sharing his bed, some less fortunate or formidable man lacks a wife.

The result is a society all but consumed by competition between men for women. The war for Troy, after all, was fought for Helen, and most of the smaller battles along the way were as well.

The whole culture may have been transformed by this scarcity, the author argue:

And understanding Homer's own society gives us a new perspective on the oppressive miasma of fatalism and pessimism that pervades "The Iliad" and, to a lesser but still palpable extent, "The Odyssey." While even the fiercest fighters understand that peace is desirable, they feel doomed to endless conflict. As Odysseus says, "Zeus has given us [the Greeks] the fate of winding down our lives in hateful war, from youth until we perish, each of us." A shortage of women helps to explain more about Homeric society than its relentless violence. It may also shed light on the origins of a tragic and pessimistic worldview, a pantheon of gods deranged by petty vanities, and a people's resignation to the inevitability of "hateful war."

So the Iliad and the Odyssey might not just be clues to the past. The epics might also be a disturbing look at one aspect of Asia's future as well.

(h/t: Arts and Letters Daily)