Vinyar..according to anthropologists, marriage has always been part of human culture..and there is some evidence to suggest that the dead end homonids (like neanderthal) had a marriage like arangement as well.

Now, if you accept evolution, then you must accept the fossil record that places the earliest humans at about 2.3 million years ago...That means that marriage has been happening for at least that long...the religious aspect was only placed on it 4,000 years ago at the earliest...

So we have the legal union of man and woman happening for 2.3 million years and religious conotations being placed on it by "SOME" cultures for maybe the past 4,000 years...YET, you say that for the longest time marriage has been religious and recently has become more legal...Vinyar my friend, you have it bass ackwards...For 2.3 million years it has been a legal union, and for maybe 4,000 years some religious conotation has been placed on it by "SOME" cultures...and then you want to quibble over the word.

I am quite sure that the first humans didn't call it marriage..they didn't have the word..but what they engaged in was indeed marriage by any definition that I can find in any number of dictionaries. A rose by any other name.....

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