Quotes extracted from: ‘The Week’ – the best of the US & international media.’ 4/2/2004 [i]The origins of marriage How old is the institution? The best available evidence suggests that [the institution of marriage] is 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 by them, and children. As hunter-gatherers settled down into agrarian civilizations, society had a need for more stable arrangements. 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. 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 …. As the Roman Catholic Church became a powerful institution in Europe, the blessings of a priest became a necessary step for a marriage to be legally recognized. ….. …… Men were taught to show greater respect for their wives, and forbidden from divorcing them. ….. … the idea of romantic love, as a motivating force for marriage, only goes as far back as the Middle Ages. … … the concept of romantic love [gave] women greater leverage in what had been a largely pragmatic transaction. … … Women won the right to vote. When that happened, in 1920, the institution of marriage began a dramatic transformation. Suddenly, each union consisted of two full citizens, … …. “The idea that marriage is a private relationship for the fulfillment of two individuals is really very new,” said historian Stephanie Coontz, author of The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap. “Within the past 40 years, marriage has changed more than in the last 5,000.”[/i] http://www.theweekmagazine.com/briefing.asp?a_id=567

"The secret of success is constancy to purpose" - Benjamin Disraeli.