How did people work out that sex can = baby???

[TweeBee]

Just pondering this with DH and thought some wise MNers might know.
So presumably in early human history, not everyone who had unprotected sex became pregnant, like now. However the earliest sign of pregnancy is missing a period which would be maybe 2 weeks after sex during a fertile period and how aware were early humans of the regularities of the menstrual cycle? I'm guessing it was perhaps less regular due to variable nutritional intake etc.
And then it's say 8-9 months after sex you may have a baby.
So how did people work out that you can't have a baby without sex but you don't always get a baby from sex?
Does anyone know?

I did read the Time link, but it’s outdated? My link is more recent.

The controlled use of fire was likely an invention of our ancestor Homo erectus during the Early Stone Age (or Lower Paleolithic). The earliest evidence of fire associated with humans comes from Oldowan hominid sites in the Lake Turkana region of Kenya. The site of Koobi Fora contained oxidized patches of earth to a depth of several centimeters, which some scholars interpret as evidence of fire control. The Australopithecine site of Chesowanja in central Kenya (about 1.4 million years old) also contained burned clay clasts in small areas.

The earliest evidence for controlled use of fire outside of Africa is at the Lower Paleolithic site of Gesher Benot Ya'aqov in Israel, where charred wood and seeds were recovered from a site dated 790,000 years old. Other evidence has been found at Zhoukoudian, a Lower Paleolithic site in China, Beeches Pit in the U.K., and Qesem Cave in Israel.

Also the Time link is a bit batshit and probably has a typo as well by saying The third stage, in which humans began to use and control fire on a regular and widespread basis, may have started only 7,000 years ago. As the agricultural revolution was 10,000yrs ago and you need fire to bake bread on a large agricultural scale? The earliest evidence of baking bread dates to 14,000 years ago. If that’s not controlling fire, I don’t know what counts. Also they’ve found tons of hunting campsites world wide where fires were started and a hunt butchered and cooked where it was killed from the last Ice Age so 12,000 to 16,000yrs ago. The ones in N. America even have evidence of smoking tobacco at these sites. So the hunters obviously killed some animals and then immediately started a fire in situ.

I've always wondered about chocolate. I know the Aztecs discovered it and it was originally a drink but who thought they could possibly take a bitter cocoa nib and turn it into something edible, let alone delicious.

The kidney beans thing has played on my mind for decades:

Early person eats kidney beans.
Dies of kidney bean poisoning.
Happens a few times.
Early person's peers decide not to eat kidney beans. Except 1 who decides to boil the pants off them for an hour or two then eat them, and is fine "Guys, it's ok, you just need to cook them for ages first.

Kidney beans will give you stomach ache etc but won't kill you. Cassava on the other hand...

How on earth they persisted with that, I dont get.

It was probably something like the pot with them in got left near/on the fire for ages and people realised that boiling them for longer made them better.

you are all wrong
it was aliens that taught us everything

Kissing!

Who first decided that smashing your lips against someone else’s meant that you were quite fond of them?

Also tea.

”Pick that plant and dry it out a bit. Add some hot water to it. Fuck it, put a bit of cow juice in there too.”

I mean, I’m very pleased they did, but how

Abd then sticking you tongues into that space and rubbing them together

And who had the idea to drink the breast milk of a cow, intended for her calf?

@WhyDoesItAlways Yes, same with coffee beans! I’ve often wondered about those.

Humans have lost the instinct, but all animals have it. No one teaches a duck to keep an egg warm, or dog straight away breastfeeds the pup, it's life. Birds push their babies out the nest how do they know it's the day to make them fly.

When my sheep give birth for the first time, Every year i think “how does she know she needs to clean it”. We are taught life, animals aren’t and this is what makes them more amazing than us.

and the trust that ewe has in me to help her if she needs it. Its bloody amazing

Re humans having lost the instincts etc that animals have, I'm not sure it's that straight forward. I'm the Western world we teach dependency. So when you get pregnant for example, you're taught that you have to have this and that. But there isn't an ethical way to know what would happen to a woman who'd been raised in isolation and who got pregnant, or indeed if one of us got stranded in a cabin alone ay 39 weeks pregnant if we'd manage to cope with the delivery etc. The survival or indigenous tribes with little intervention certainly shows that like apes or elephants the basics are passed on mother to daughter

Look up the Hundred Monkeys theory. ;)

Though I regularly wonder how, with the level of stupidity, self-sabotage and short-sightedness we're currently displaying globally as a species, how the hell we've survived this long...

So, I did read this. Early humans were matriarchal. All possessions and leadership followed the female line and women were co nsidereal powerful. Most gods were female, I mean women magically created life. Something men couldn't do! They didn't have the morals we have now and no dads. The didn't know where babies came from.

Eventually, though, someone figured it out. And early Christian values were formed and these male-led tribes invaded the female societies, conquering them and destroying most remnants of goddesses in favor of their male God(s).

I've often wondered how babies get all the bacteria in their intestines during pregnancy so that they can poo when they're born.

Bacteria are involved in digestion; pooing happens by peristalsis which is an automatic action.

The first stool is the meconium, which contains no bacteria.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meconium

Full marks to whoever discovered that feet were not just for walking, they were for stamping on grapes to make them pissed with vino, then they got horny, then they procreated with pleasure. Hic. All good so far...

I was having this conversation with some just the other day

Who realised that some mushrooms you could eat and others you either die or get hallucinations from. Same with berries, some are really nice and edible ie blackberries but others are deadly