How did mankind ever work out 'where babies come from'???

[RememberToPlaywiththeKids]

Seriously - 9 months from sex to bubs - how did anyone ever work out the cause and effect??

Interesting thread, especially the badger cheese and what Mardybra said about Ayla. So true!

I'm giggling quietly to myself at blinder's posts though.Ｉreckon back in the day she was the cavewoman saying, 'NO, you fools! We are currently at the summit of all human knowledge and I can confidently tell you what it is!'

blinder, doesn't it ever strike you that there's absolutely masses we still don't know about our bodies and about pregnancy and childbirth? Even now? So why be patronizing and assume people 'always' knew exactly what you 'know' now. It's like a five-year-old saying 'no, bumhead, I know the man has a wee wee in the lady, it's obvious!'. No exactly wrong, but you and the rest of us ought to know we're still pretty unsure about an awful lot of this stuff.

It's only in the last century we found out how to test for pre-eclampsia, for example, and we still (as far as I know) don't know exactly why some women get it and others don't. It must have been terrifying being pregnant hundreds or thousands of years ago and knowing there was every chance both you and the baby would die.

...and can you imagine being 5-9 months pregnant and not realising that it was a baby inside you.... terrifying!

LittleRedDragon doesn't it ever strike you that only sexually active women have babies? [note: I'm copying your sentence construction there so as not to be patronising !]

Don't you think that that simple fact is observable over thousands of years to family groups? Animals which mate have babies. Animals which don't mate, through youth or social restrictions or other circumstances, don't have babies. It's really not rocket science to any family group if you think about it. Let's say the male of a couple dies. Lo and behold the female stops having babies. In the same family, a teenage girl mates and has a baby. Imagine that happening thousands and thousands of times to groups of people. Don't you think it would eventually become obvious?

That's without the dawning ability to breed livestock!

The fact that our grandmothers were ignorant of the mechanics of sex does not mean that pre-industrial, living-in-nature hunter gatherers were.

How to state those simple ideas without being called patronising? It's not patronising to point out something obvious. But lots of people are taking that personally.

I've been accused of having a bad day, of getting worked up, of trying to 'win' (WTF I think that was another poster who said 'draw'?), of being patronising and rude for saying (gasp) 'Jeez'. I do think there have been a lot of over-sensitive posters on this thread who took exception to my observation that it's a stupid question and are running rings around themselves to prove it isn't (periods are a modern phenomenon roffle!).

And STILL people want to prove me wrong! Fair enough. If this post hasn't helped you understand, I'm not sure what will. Maybe MN can invite an anthropologist for a webchat? Or some of you could look it up.

I could have been lots more patronising than that. Think yourselves lucky.

Nobody is trying to prove you wrong content wise. It is your tone....

e.g. if I may just rewrite your last notette in a more congenial tone, leaving the content untouched....

Sexually active women having babies is observable over thousands of years to family groups. Animals which mate have babies. Animals which don't mate, through youth or social restrictions or other circumstances, don't have babies. It's really not rocket science to any family group if you think about it. Let's say the male of a couple dies. Lo and behold the female stops having babies. In the same family, a teenage girl mates and has a baby. Imagine that happening thousands and thousands of times to groups of people. I think it would eventually become obvious!

That's without the dawning ability to breed livestock!

The fact that our grandmothers were ignorant of the mechanics of sex does not mean that pre-industrial, living-in-nature hunter gatherers were.

I should probably put a at the end of that last sentence just in case someone interprets it as a terrible slight / threat / judgement.

Well, blinder, it doesn't really need to 'strike' me, does it? Being as we live in a society where sexual reproduction is taught in schools.

That's kind of the point.

Yes, we are dead lucky to be in a position where all of this looks very obvious. But that's no reason to get arrogant about it. We're also in a position where all sorts of related things aren't obvious at all - wish we knew why some people can't have babies and others have very ill babies.

It just seems inappropriate to 'climb on the shoulders of giants and sneer', imo.

Not getting involved in this bit.

Ayway here's an interesting article (its a word doc)
anthropology.lbcc.cc.ca.us/handoutsdocs/women.rtf

Theres a little paragraph that caught my eye:

^All things come from the Earth, and all people come from the bodies of women. Earth is always referred to as "Mother." No wonder the world's first depictions of deities are all in the form of females with exaggerated sexuality. These "Venus Figurines" are the only representations of human-like forms for thousands of years over the entire world. They are often referred to as "fertility symbols," but I personally feel they are the first depictions of the "faces of god." Remember that most gatherers and hunters did not comprehend the role males played in human
reproduction. If anything, males were thought to "open the passageway" through which a spirit, usually of a recently deceased ancestor, could enter the woman's body to grow and be born again.^

I was repeating LittleRedDragon's phrasing TO ME!

I QUOTE

'blinder, doesn't it ever strike you that there's absolutely masses we still don't know about our bodies and about pregnancy and childbirth'

And I am getting criticised for copying that post immediately prior to mine.

Jesus fucking Christ.

I was just bringing your first sentence in to context so it made sense without the added 'tone'.

Blinder, I don't think it's that one post that looks patronizing in a sea of sweet reasonableness!

I said on the first page that it was a bit rude of you to call someone stupid for asking a question. It really is.

Nice extract Melty. I'm sorry my total frustration immediately followed it.

I am so over the baying mob that is Mumsnet. Life is too fucking short.

I didn't call anyone stupid. If you read this thread you will see that ALL the name-calling has been directed at me.

Can we talk about badger cheese again?

melty, are you an anthropologist? Can you explain how they know what people thought in pre-history? It sounds fascinating and I guess men 'opening a passage' would make sense - you have sex; thereafter babies can get out.

she will just reply saying she wasn't calling me stupid, just my question.

she should never be a teacher, she'd find it too frustrating and wouldn't be able to help herself!

My tone is more defensive than patronising. I have web asked to explain myself repeatedly and have done so, then been criticised for the explanation. Although I was posting mostly in fun at the start of the thread I quickly found that I was on the receiving end of a lot of twisting my words. The more I explain, the more I am accused of various things.

If you look at ANY of my other posts you'll find that I'm generally here to support and encourage. This thread has shown me very clearly how a group of women can lynch in the safety of numbers.

Maybe it was rude to call the question stupid. But I haven't deserved the group attack that this thread has become.

Are you a teacher remember? Reading this thread made me feel so much for my old biology teacher - she didn't do a bad job, thinking back!

You've got to wonder how many people still think 'surely my body is strange and it's not meant to do this!' during labour.

Is this about me?

'she should never be a teacher, she'd find it too frustrating and wouldn't be able to help herself!'

Teaching is a fucking doddle compared to this.

"o, do you think that possibly some "infertile" couples from years ago just hadn't worked out what they were supposed to do?"

or maybe - just like infertile couples today they were, ermm, interfile? Or suffered miscarriages,

Yes, probably Baroque.

infertile

Given some of the earliest statues seem to be of pregnant women and men with big penises, I'm guessing it was figured out really early that penis+woman is a prerequisite for a baby, given that children who haven't had sex weren't having babies, but given the time delay I bet all sorts of myths grew up about what else might be needed or how the baby grew.

Would it occur to women that they were pregnant for the first 4 months or so before kicking started? I wonder if more shagging occurred in cold winters leading to lots of births in late summer (the NHS still has a birth spike in September, apparently!) and that clued them in? It's a more complex question than it seems. I think the idea that the woman had to contribute an egg rather than being an incubator was surprisingly late, possibly even Victorian.

Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel is a great read about early societies and what they cared about - apparently nomadic societies spaced children out roughly 4-yearly (and still do), by prolonged breastfeeding and abstinence from sex and if necessary exposure, simply because only one baby can be easily carried so the next youngest has to be able to walk fast enough. Once societies settled in one spot births became closer together (then you get into populations being limited by what the land can support).
Really fascinating read. Anyone know any other good ones on early societies?

No, I'm not an anthropologist, just interested.

And someone mentioned earlier that the comment I made about how people worked out where the penis was a stupid question as it was all instinct.

I'm trying not to take it personally. I have read lots about people doing daft things relating to sex, so maybe not a stupid question.

Anyway, I find this whole thread very interesting.
I like to ponder stuff...

I find it really interesting too. It reminds me a bit of the way people used to say buggery was 'unnatural' and you have to think, well, but the hetero sex is pretty similar really!

I was wondering about the statues - I've seen some (Venus of Willendorf?) that appear to be just very fat women - they don't look like pregnant women I've seen. And being fat has often been seen as a rather good thing - maybe people thought pregnant women and fat women were just rather attractive images to make statues out of?

I love to sit and think about all this sort of stuff. I was only thinking yesterday how people worked out how to make stuff like bread and cake and cheese. I had not thought about the making of babies tho. I wonder what it was like when the first human females were in labour. How did it all go? Were they all ok? Did they have any idea what was happening to them?