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?

Agricultural societies are very different to hunter gatherer societies. I imagine it was very hard to keep twins alive given how hard it was to even keep a single baby alive past infancy.

Excellent thread.

It’s reminded me of a question I’ve often wondered and this seems like a thread where someone might now the answer.

Why are we not able to “hold in” our menstrual blood like we can with pee and poo? I’m guessing humans never had that ability (so not a case of having it and losing it) as dogs don’t have it either.

@JasperSIn - my periods stop if I go under 9stone. I'm really short, so not like this is underweight for my height. So depends on the woman

ILove - you don't have a sphincter (muscle you can squeeze) on your womb like you do on your anus and urethra.

Women couldn't carry a baby and a toddler at the same time while also finding food. I’ve seen people do this as a child in Africa, and Asia. In Africa the older child was on the back and the younger in front but they used a long piece of material, in Asia the binding was woven plant (straw coloured) and basket like but soft.

I think western women are quite conditioned to thinking baby=helpless/can’t. Yes you have to be stronger and get more tired but it’s a myth that you can only feed one child at a time.

Some people, and by people I mean men, think that you can hold on to your flow like urine.

The OP is about what we would do before cloth though. You couldn't use a sling if you didn't have the materials. I imagine the children were walking long distances from an early age though.

Did they not have skins?

I think Ilove is asking why we haven't developed the ability as it would be bloody useful.

Did we use skins for much pre clothes? Maybe water carriers? A baby carrier would have been awkward to make as if you couldn't sew it would have to be long enough to tie.

Itwould, your experiences of seeing modern women in Europe, Asia or Africa carrying or breastfeeding two small children at the same time does not mean that it was a good survival strategy for stone age hunter gatherers.

14 or 15 may have been on the high side for a first pregnancy in stone age society. Menarche seems to be settled at an average of around 14 yrs 2 months in our time, but that is no reason to suppose it could not have been earlier when lower life expectancy required early breeding to maintain numbers.

Settled agircultural society led to specialisation which required apprenticeship which meant later marriage, etc.

Itwould - the other thing is that constantly breastfeeding and carrying an infant suppresses ovulation, so stone age hunter gatherers would physically not have been able to get pregnant again while caring for an infant.

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

How does any animal know how to reproduce? We know from watching others and have urges that essentially enable us to figure it out.

I think there are a lot of assumptions here that our ancestors were a bit stupid. I’m sure when we essentially stopped being animals and started clothing ourselves and communicating we probably had figured out some rudimentary pad.

you don't have a sphincter (muscle you can squeeze) on your womb like you do on your anus and urethra.

Oh yes, I understand that, I meant rather, why haven’t we got a sphincter muscle on our uterus? In terms of survival I imagine we would have been much safer from predators if we weren’t leaving a trail of blood behind. It seems odd that nature left us vulnerable in that way.

There are documented societies (in 20th century) where babies are viewed as gifts from the gods & sex is just fun. No link understood between babies & sex. Will try to find a link...

They surely knew where babies came from. They were skilled anatomists from cutting up animals and would have encountered foetuses in their prey.

Very interesting thread!

Agriculture was not an unmixed blessing for humanity, from the little I've read on this subject. Hunter gatherers eat a very varied diet, whereas farming communities often end up eating a very restricted diet, heavy on carbs. Wheat and similar fill people up but don't provide the micronutrients that the hunter gatherers got from all their berries, seeds, nuts, roots, leaves etc etc. IIRC the gathered foods were the mainstay. The hunted foods were (a) less exciting than we often assume - so not mammoth steaks, more likely to be eggs taken from a nest, or ants, or perhaps a tiny rodent; and (b) not eaten as much as the gathered stuff because they were harder to get hold of.

Also, once humans were living in very close contact with domesticated animals, we started picking up infections from them which had a bad effect on our health. That just got worse when we started living in relatively densely populated settlements where infections could spread quickly.

The average height of humans living in early agricultural communities is less than it was in hunter gatherer societies. That's a sign that the lifestyle and diet wasn't as healthy, although it was probably more secure, and I expect it became easier to have specialists like potters, smiths and so on once it was easier to store food over the winter or to see the community through a drought. The specialists could trade their skills for food, to everybody's benefit.

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

Well, I think women would have had their periods in their late teens due to their lighter frames. The very early age of puberty is due to good nutrition and (maybe) environmental pollution

Trobiand Islanders. This is the easiest read summary I've found.
Semen might coagulate menstrual blood which helps secure a pregnancy. Otherwise, sex does not make babies.
As reported in 1929.
Same for other animals. They don't reproduce sexually, either.
Lots of talk about children age 6+ being sexual in that account, btw. Gonna freak you guys out.

no reason to suppose it could not have been earlier

The general trend is that menarche is getting earlier and earlier, it used to be late teens a few centuries ago. So that seems unlikely

Smoggle no of course it doesn’t but having actually seen a family walking in the jungle 40 years ago who were very obviously not “modern” in the way you describe it’s probably possible. I remember reading somewhere that bushmen had a rule that you could only have as many non walking children as a couple could run with, so two toddlers (under 6s?).

Itwould - seeing a family walking in a jungle does not make them hunter gatherers!