Many women are hot or at least have some attractive features while only few men have a good appearance so we would be extinct by now if it worked this way. At least for selecting men there should be some other criterion.

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bitwize 9 hours ago | parent [-]

For much of human history it has worked this way: the king got many wives, nobles got a few, but most men didn't marry at all. They labored and fought and died without getting to pass on their genes. This is also why men are such status seekers and risk takers: our ancestors had to prove their worth for a chance at getting laid. The risks were great, but the payoff was huge and if you failed, it's not like your genes gained any advantage by playing it safe.

	▲	codedokode 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I doubt it is true, at least in Russian history a typical peasant had a wife and children. Not being married was considered bad and there were arranged marriages. Also poor men probably had a low chance of "getting laid" as girls were interested only in lifetime long relationship. I even tried to verify this by looking through old registries available online (where marriages and births were recorded), some of which are digitized and OCR'd by Yandex, but it seems that they do not have a list of unmarried people. Although the birth records typically mention whether a child is "legally born" (within a marriage) or not.