For Your Information
The Origins of Marriage
Marriage dates back several thousand years, emerging as a civil arrangement at the same time as the emergence of private property. Far from fulfilling any religious purpose to unite one man and one woman, anthropologists theorize that most primitive marriages were polygamous. Marriages were entered into in order to expand the land or material goods base of a clan, either through the receipt of a dowry or the merger of two clans' assets. Religious guidelines around marriage are not thought to have developed until the practice was several hundred years old, and were first used as a means of preventing different religious groups from losing wealthy followers by restricting them from marrying into other religions.
In Western Europe, it was not until the Middle Ages that marriage in churches began to occur. However, church marriages were not the norm until the 17th century, and then only for the nobility. Marriage was also used as a tool to unite different royal families' bloodlines, creating alliances that were instrumental in enabling the European monarchies to colonize the globe.