Tibetan polyandry functioned to check population growth on infertile soil

Evidence

The polyandry of the Tibetan mountains is socially beneficial, as even the missionaries recognize. For, the soil is so infertile that a rapid population increase would result in the direst need; and polyandry is an excellent preventive against this. — Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, 3081

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the reader’s interest in norm-institutions emerging to solve collective-action problems (cf. Milgrom law merchant readings), and connects to kinship-system-functionalist thought. Also DEFINE-adjacent: polyandry as demographic control.
• CANDY: A compact party-conversation fact: Tibetan mountain polyandry was a population brake on marginal soil, accepted even by missionaries.