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?

This is so interesting.
I thought they would have started having babies earlier? 14/15? I’d imagine as soon as their periods start?
Repeated pregnancy/BF until dying in childbirth makes total sense to me!

I often wonder if they knew how babies were made? We get tought, sex ed etc, but who taught them?

I think people were able to notice the connection between puberty, sex and pregnancy.

In almost 4 years I’ll have had one actual period and 2 MCs (one a chemical that I would have thought just a period) and since I’m over 8 months period I don’t expect to have another one for anywhere up to 2 years. This is just from being pregnant and breastfeeding.
As I understand it, due to pregnancy and natural lengths of breastfeeding as well as worse nutrition periods would not have been a monthly occurrence for most women. Since getting pregnant the first time I can well believe it.

I dont think they would have had loads of children as the rapid multiplication of the human population has been quite recent hasnt it?

The Mold Cape (British Museum, another of Neil McGregor's 100 Objects) suggests there was a cult of youth, with leadership in the hands of teenagers.

That's terrifying!

Surviving children that should say (in response to Smoggle )

Lets say a stone age woman has her first baby in her late teens. It dies aged 3, and she has another baby when she's 21, and a third baby when she's 25. She then dies of old age at 27. Her breastfed 2 year old can't survive without a mother and also dies. Maybe her 6 year old will survive. Is 1 surviving baby per woman enough to sustain a population

Most old style (ie no contraception plenty if sex) catholic families were 6 to 9 children even a few generations ago. Given a higher infant mortality that would still have left 3 or 4 children per female.

Large families would have had a baby every other year. Stone age hunter gatherers would have had a baby every 3/4/5 years as each baby would need to be breastfed and carried for an extended period - a mother could not have nourished and carried two infants simultaneously.

Each women would have needed to be having babies over a 20 year period to end up with 3 or 4 surviving to adulthood. Not possible if no one lived past 30.

Women's life expectancies probably dipped as humans became agricultural and women had more frequent risky pregnancies and births. Having 6 or 9 children close together is not good for your body.

Certainly women around 10,000 years ago were extremely physically fit by modern standards (www.google.com/amp/s/relay.nationalgeographic.com/proxy/distribution/public/amp/2017/11/prehistoric-women-manual-labor-stronger-athletes-science), although not necessarily enough to suppress menstruation.

Anatomically modern humans have been around for at least 100,000 years and wouldn't have been any hairier than a modern tribal woman!

Women's life expectancies probably dipped as humans became agricultural and women had more frequent risky pregnancies and births

That’s how I heard it too. Imagine that a hunter-gatherer and a settled villager have very different sets of risks.

They were probably pregnant for much of the time and breastfeeding for the rest.

It's not a guess that older people held value to human society, it's based on the evidence of our menopause. Why have this mechanism, keeping non breeders alive and using resources, when we could just breed til we die like other animals?

Humans rely on knowledge. We take a long tine to mature and need knowledgeable elders to tell us how to do stuff.

a mother could not have nourished and carried two infants simultaneously. of course you can feed and carry two under twos simultaneously. Lots of people tandem feed.

I think early (as in early teen) pg would be more of an issue as birthdamage would have made periods small fry in the face of double incontinence.

Sort of relevant, I posted this in feminism. It is a fascinating but also upsetting read about how women in the Nazi concentration camps coped with periods.

www.historytoday.com/archive/feature/menstruation-and-holocaust

Having 6 or 9 children close together is not good for your body.
In what way? It’s hard really to gauge the impact it would have had. Would bones have had time to lose enough calcium to impact? Assuming little birth damage (given you were dead if infected and probably would have become infected if there was much damage) surely as a prize breeder you would have been cared for and have had offspring to care for you. Presumably you wouldn’t have got pregnant or carried the baby if starving so those producing multiple children were well nourished.

Would they not just put leaves up? I think historically people would be a lot less squeamish--- life was so much harder they would regularly be injured/bleed/be in pain.... it would be a totally different mindset to what we have now

When my mother stayed in Kenya in a village for 7 weeks she said they didn't have sanitary products and the young girls would stay out of school for upto a week just to sit on the ground all day, every day until their periods were over.

Itwould - you realise we're talking about hunter gatherers? Not women living in a suburban semi with Ocado deliveries tandem feeding
Raising a baby at a time of 50% infant mortality was a huge physical undertaking. A mother would carry and nurse a child almost constantly day and night for the first three years, so wouldn't be able to have another baby during that time.

^Lots of people tandem feed.
I think early (as in early teen) pg would be more of an issue as birthdamage would have made periods small fry in the face of double incontinence.^

Lots of people tandem feed whilst having access to adequate nutrition, obscenely expensive slings, lovely warm homes. I think it would be a bit of a struggle to carry and feed properly two babies as a hunter gatherer. Im sure the oldest would be off being useful far earlier than ours do but still a tribe full of babies would struggle to remain safe.

Cross post with smoggle

Yes I understand what is being discussed. @Smoggle I’ve travelled fairly widely and breastfed my fifth child when my first was 6. Ocado did not feature, though obviously I am not a hunter gatherer. (Or anything like!) Did no twins survive? Have you never seen a mother feed a newborn and a toddler, sometimes while working a field? Perhaps it’s you who needs to look beyond the suburban semi

Hunter gatherers also physically carry their infants - they don't have double buggies. Women couldn't carry a baby and a toddler at the same time while also finding food.

The idea that 18 months or 2 years is a normal gap between babies is quite a new one. No great apes have such small gaps, and neither do modern hunter gatherer societies - it's all 4+ years between births. To give each baby the best chance of survival humans, chimps, gorillas etc put all their efforts into raising that baby for a few years before the next is born.

Nixee2231 that's so sad. And not thousands of years ago. I know similar happens right now. Just so pointlessly damaging for those girls.