Alma knew a surprising lot about genes.

Scientists have found that when prairie voles mate it triggers the suppression of some genes and the expression of others that help them bond.

Do men and women have a similar mechanism? We don’t know for sure. What we do know is that copulating releases oxytocin, which affects mood (it makes you more loving), and affects the architecture of the brain (which is constantly being rewired). What we do know is that men and women who have had multiple sexual partners before marriage (even just one) are more likely to get divorced, the more partners, the more likelihood of divorce. What we do know is that having more partners tends to dull sex, especially for women.

So when we find a Meso-American authority back in the BCs recommending against sex outside marriage in the strongest possible terms, we must only suppose that this person had a surprising degree of social science savvy and modern biological scholarship. Shocking as the hypothesis is, there’s no other explanation without coming up with something obviously ridiculous, like an all-pervading invisible superbeing.

But, man, its surprising that these primitive figures knew that the soul changes the body, and the body changes the soul, when they didn’t even have peer review, let alone tenure. It’s a testimony to the triumph of the human spirit.