How did cave women deal with periods?

[howmanyleftfeet]

How did our ancient ancestor women deal with periods before we wore clothes?

Periods must have been terribly inconvenient then - did they have periods the same as us?

Do the kind of apes we're close relatives of, have periods like us? Do other animals? Do they really just walk around bleeding?

I can't help wondering if maybe they didn't have periods as heavy / as long as ours. Am I right in thinking, sportswomen who are super fit often don't have regular periods? Presumably cave women would have been super fit and on the move a lot. (Or they wouldn't have survived). Did they perhaps menstruate less often?

Could it be that women didn't ovulate / menstruate except in quieter seasons when not on the move?

Not all period huts are comfortable, nor are women fed, or treated kindly in them.

www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/feb/06/young-woman-dies-fourth-period-hut-tragedy-this-year-nepal

'Young woman dies in fourth ‘period hut’ tragedy this year in Nepal'

Women just can't win, can we?

The association of menstruation with contamination and corruption continued well into the 20th century even in Europe, with old wives tales of milk going off, not washing hair during a period, etc.

Wasn’t not washing during a period more to do with bath water being shared?

I’ve often wondered about this and what they thought was happening.

Hi Kindred Spirit - from The Wise Wound by Penelope Shuttle and Peter Redgrave - fascinating book about periods - there’s a strong suggestion in this book that menstrual blood was used to fertilise the land in some early agricultural societies so it’s not a complete stretch to see that period blood might have been valued in some way in hunter gatherer societies.

Most were dead by late teens / early twenties

Really? Seems unlikely that most would be dead by late teens/early twenties, that would be one or two births? What would have killed them?

Childbirth became much more dangerous in settled communities, especially after doctor-assisted births became common (but before germ theory was widely understood)

I seem to remember from my long ago Anthropology studies that the age of menarche in Victorian England was around 16. However, the diet of city dwellers in particular was far from ideal. Skeletal evidence and extrapolations from 18th-19th ethnographies of hunter-gatherers would suggest that 1) people experienced frequent periods of malnourishment 2) women rarely gave birth to more than 4 children 3) life expectancy was short. Presumably then, women menstruated infrequently with prolonged breastfeeding, conserving iron reserves. BTW, I too studied Malinowski's Trobriand Island accounts; recently, however, it has been questioned that they had no understanding of the link between sex and babies. Polygamy was all about men having access to women at all times-if one wife was pregnant/bfing, then there was always another to fall back on, so to speak. :) Oh, and of course, soaking up the spare women, whose first husbands may have died in battle and so on.

I visited India a few months ago. Saw many bleeding monkeys in the street. I suppose they just bled!

I’m not calling women monkeys just the same level of give-a-fuck-adness

Maybe they just didn't have very heavy periods? Could this be a more recent thing?

Female dogs bleed when in season, I wonder how they manage.......🤔

There used to be a channel 4 TV program where a British woman went off to spend several weeks in a tribe around the world. There was always period talk, I remember one Scottish woman crying as she was told to sit in a chair that a woman had just free bled onto and she was horrified, it was just so normal to them though.

Some speculative thoughts...

• I used to cycle 20 miles a day so in no way a super athlete but I noticed my periods were lighter and less painful during this time
• vague memories from studying psychology recall womens menstrual cycles impacted by weather, daylight and cold as well as other stuff eg meat intake, hormones in mass produced food and milk, etc
• most mammals don't menstruate monthly - more like annually if they're not pregnant (and a lot are pregnant for over 12 months) so difficult to compare
• menstruation gives off hormones which indicate to nearby males you're fertile and therefore ripe for a sh*g which I imagine would up your pregnancy chances!

A cursory Internet search told me that women just bled into their clothes til 19th century and that ancient Egyptians used tampons. Both ideas sorta scare me! A good historical blog I found is www.knixteen.com/blogs/the-rag/the-history-of-periods

Lastly, gosh it's shocking how little we all know about how our own bodies work isn't it?! And how little research is done on it, even now!

Fascinating thread, but would just like to point out that I fully breastfed each child for a year, yet had my first period back within two months after each birth. It's not a given that BF means no period, as some people are indicating earlier in the thread.

I think people realise that bf doesnt always mean no period, but also that most people arent carrying their baby, co sleeping, and doing extended bf on a seasonal dependant amount of nourishment while both parties being naked.

I think tons of people bf exclusively, co sleep and carry their babies. Not if you live in suburban UK but in other parts of the world...still bleed regularly and reproduce.

Extended breastfeeding kept the frequency of menstruation low, and pregnancy on the recommencement of menstruation is the main cause. Low protein intake suppresses levels of certain hormones that may keep periods at bay, and when they did happen they would have simply practised freebleeding as did most animals until we evolved enough to come up with ideas like moss or grasses or soft leathers as absorbent materials.

Overall an early modern human like us would experience a fraction of the periods we do.

They certainly could have decent life expectancies, the average life span is skewed by massive levels of infant mortality and death by accident or infection, but there would have been a core of the population who managed to escape the worst and would have lived into their 50's and 60's, and indeed it was the 'Grandmother Effect' that helped humans thrive by having older females around to support mothers and care for infants. This grandmother effect meant the population had more opportunity to expand and that childrens life expectancy gradually increased with the presence of extra carers unencumbered by pregnancy, childbirth, or expectation to provide.

Humans and whales are the only mammals to experience menopause (I think, elephants may also so I might stand corrected), and the genesis of the biology is very similar.

So, bloody legs or mossy drawers, or freebleeding or babies on the booby in in the belly was the order of the day.

not washing hair during a period, etc.

I'd forgotten that!

My mother would never let me wash my hair when I was "unwell".

I'm 65, started my periods aged 11, so we're looking at 50 years ago (not that long . . . )

there are plenty of women who don’t have any change to their periods because of bf. It’s quite common amongst south asian women for example for periods to start within 30 days of lochia despite breasfeeding. Regular periods from 30 days of childbirth is also common amongst women who have naturally high prolactin levels before childbirth (ie those who possibly can bf for longer).

Humans and whales are the only mammals to experience menopause (I think, elephants may also so I might stand corrected)

That's interesting *Jezebel8.

I thought we were the only species that outlived our fertility, IYSWIM.

I'll have to look into that. I wonder how they know that whales go through a menopause?

Fascinating thread, but would just like to point out that I fully breastfed each child for a year, yet had my first period back within two months after each birth. It's not a given that BF means no period, as some people are indicating earlier in the thread.

You're presumably eating a modern diet. Low levels of protein and certain minerals and vitamins in combination with breastfeeding made the picture very different for early humans so the two situations aren't particularly comparable.

A million small factors of diet, lifestyle and environment has changed since then, even if our basic biology is the same.

Not cavewomen, but some may be interested in this piece on menstrual practices in early modern England

Some fascinating links on this thread - thank you to everyone who has posted.

Good thread OP.

Think life expectancy was 30 or 40 perhaps x would have thought there would be some type of clothing for warmth though x

Well they probably sat on the period stone didn't they?

Suzanne Sadedin on Quora has best article about just this. Well worth reading.