Its regional representation still extends far beyond the Biblical realm of Judah, through India to China and Japan. It is the tradition of the virgin bride and the double standard of inequality between the sexes. One may conjecture that this tradition was historically related in origin to the development of urbanization. Urbanization itself was related to the institution of hierarchical power and wealth. Historically, the first cities may possibly have evolved as hypertrophied villages, that is as an egalitarian collection of huts, all uniform in design, and each one constructed by its own occupants.
Elitism requires that the poor or enslaved labor for the wealthy and powerful.
From occupational enslavement, it is an easy step to sexual enslavement. In a patriarchal tradition, sexual enslavement means that men own women by paying a bride price to the woman's parents, irrespective of her own consent. The greater the wealth and power, the greater the number of polygamous wives or of concubines in the harem. According to the binary logic of sex, the greater the proportion of sequestered women in a society, the greater the proportion of unpaired males for whom the society must provide an alternative - wars and feuds in which they die, enforced celibacy, homosexual pairing, or shared pairing with harlots. The whorehouse, the public harem, is the counterpart of the seraglio, the private harem.