What does female sexuality tell us about evolution and pre-historic sex?

[Ava5]

The fact that it's so complex and responsive to patient, fear-free stimulation and so easily hurt by the wrong kind of handling? Women's bodies can be played like violins by a skilled partner: we have clits, we're sexual from head to toe if properly caressed and there're the multiple orgasms. All this seems like a total evolutionary waste if Homo Sapiens have always primarily engaged in the rapey patriarchal model of sex.

Is it all just a carry-over from our bonobo DNA? Is it supposed to facilitate pair bonding (maybe the 2nd trimester horniness is part of this)? It also all seems really excessive if it was all just intended for making babies. Just musing here.

'Wouldn't they have been pregnant most of the time?'

Not if they breastfed for several years with each baby.

No, but someone upthread said they thought there would be a wet nurse situation going on?

And would that not still preclude them from being far from their children?

I haven't read anything on this in a few years, but last time I did, average birth spacing for hunter gatherers is four years. It is much shorter in agricultural communities.

Datun, doesn't this depend on what they're defending themselves from?

What would be attacking them, where and why?

We know a lot about history because it is written down

By men, though, through their filter and prejudices.

Everything I have read about pre-farming societies suggests that they were far more egalitarian than later cultures, and I would guess that there was far less distinction between the sexes. Everybody needed to pull their weight to survive

I would like to think that, and I have certainly read such things (not as much as "everything"), but as I said above, in the modern day remote tribes, the work is very gendered. Yes everyone does pull their weight, but to very gender assigned roles.
I'm not sure our ancestors would have been very different, although I hope they were.

Datun, I doubt they would have been continually pregnant. While hunter/gatherers tended to eat better than there agrarian descendants, it would have been a lifestyle that was very much dependent on weather systems, animal migratory patterns and careful husbandry of food crops. (And yes, there is evidence that hunter/gatherers, while they didn't sow and reap, did carefully husband the foods they were reliant upon, which ensured that there would be those foods available in later years)

While there was less likelihood of the kinds of feast/famine cycles that agrarian societies suffered, animals and plants do have their own cycles. So, along with the breastfeeding for long periods, there may have been cycles where having babies would have been more dangerous than others.

Shared breastfeeding isn't necessarily a wet nursing situation, it might simply mean that any lactating female who was about fed the child who was hungry which might have meant that women weren't fertile for longer periods of time. In the H/G societies I've had contact with, there are really strict taboos around when to have sex and babies and a good knowledge of abortifacient plants, and this might be why?

Of course again, this is all with the caveat that we really don't know and probably never will.

'and a good knowledge of abortifacient plants'

That's very interesting Xenophile. Do you have any idea how effective they are?

Today 15:12 SylviaPoe

Datun, doesn't this depend on what they're defending themselves from?

What would be attacking them, where and why?

Well quite. I think most people have a mental picture of wild animals attacking groups of people. And marauding raiders rocking up.

I've no idea whether that is plausible, or unlikely. But previous posters were suggesting a protection issue?

Xenophile

I suppose I'm thinking of it from a modern point of view? In terms of sex. And men being on it the whole time.

So, are you saying that because it would've been detrimental to the group as a whole for the women to be forever pregnant, they abstained? I'm not doubting it. It's just hard to see that through a modern filter.

Datun... Hmmm, I can't really answer that except through the lens of the couple of H/G societies I know where the taboos in place are so strong, it would be unthinkable. However, I agree, the idea of it is difficult to take on through a modern filter. I don't doubt, for example, that rape was just as prevalent then as now. So, as I said, it's all conjecture anyway.

CountessOfF... I'm aware that there are abortifacient plants mentioned in herbals from this country, some of which are effective and others less so, some are so effective that they would also kill the mother if the dosage wasn't correct. I'm also aware of plants that were used by at least one tribe in Northern Australia to bring on abortion. I'm not sure how effective they were compared to modern treatments, and I wonder how many miscarriages that happened would have happened anyway.

I found an extract with commentary from "Nisa" about infanticide among the !Kung people. In one sense it's really heartbreaking, mothers deciding coolly after giving birth to a baby that they need to kill it immediately. But then there's a grimly practical reason for it. And what happened with Nisa's mother might have been a bluff, to make Nisa accept that with a baby sibling around, she wouldn't be getting much more milk, and maybe Nisa never questioned it, even as an adult.
applebutterdreams.wordpress.com/2012/06/13/nisa-infanticide-in-the-kung-hunter-gatherers-of-southern-africa/

That article is incredible, really amazing. It rang true to me that "post birth abortion" would be like abortion is to most of us. Not desirable, not done lightly, will be as the result of a cock up with pregnancy timings. But sometimes necessary.

In terms of what was attacking them maybe we're talking about three things...

Animal attack - probably rare and could defend themselves?
Warfare/raids- no evidence before 10,000 years ago, and very few examples even then before agriculture.
Violence from other people (men!) within the group - I don't know.

That article is odd though, because except for Nisa's mother no one else seems to think killing the baby is a good idea. It could just as easily be some form of post natal depression or a ploy to make Nisa accept her brother...

I am very interested in sociology and archeology. But I am at best an autodidact. So if please let me know if I am getting in the way with my crap.

But, wasn't child birth the best thing that could happen to a clan pre history? We see so many fertility items and totems and things.

In terms of women protecting themselves. Wouldn't they have been pregnant most of the time?

They wouldn't have had to protect themselves in the way we know now. They would have had to protect themselves in the case of say miscarriage, disease, attacks by infestation. I don't think for one moment they felt any fear from men. I truly believe that.

Childhood diseases are now largely eradicated because of immunisation. But it's unknown if these diseases existed pre history.