When did humans discover sex leads to pregnancy?'

[Heraclitus]

Why would the try to hide that knowledge ? Or rather, how the heck would it be possible to hide something so obvious ?

To point out a banal practical interest: Girls are less likley to have sex with me and their more regular mates (or the ancient equivalent of husbands the guys that help provide for the kids) are more likley to try and kill me.

A less banal practical interest: I am a shaman who derives respect in the tribe by my abilities to win favour of the spirits. A important task of the spirits is to bless women with offspring. If reproduction is the result of sex my fertility rituals have just lost quite a bit of their potency.



Is it reallly so obvious? If I remember right I heard somewhere that a couple need to activley try to concieve for a year before they are considered to have fertility problems. And many people are infertile, they don't have children even if they have lots of sex! And women may deny having sex with people for various reasons (shame of rape, sex with social outcasts, sex before some kind of ritual such as marriage) and in a society where the link is not established them becoming pregnant would not be suspicius. If you had a debate with a ancient hominid he may well point to sucha girl in his tribe "that got pregnant without ever having sex" (the state of hymen is not an easy indicator for the untrained eye which I am sure you will agree with if you read up a bit on it on wikipedia)


Also young children often don't figure it out (children often mastrubate before they understand what they are doing and before they uderstand the link of sex to pregnancy, I could easily imagine a society where all of sexuality is not tought about in the same way as a young boy mastrubating dosen't think about what he is doing but knows that it feels good).


Also a rethorical question: Don't we humans seem to posses a rather stunning talent to belive what we prefer to believe or what our parents or elders taught us despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary?

[Heraclitus]

It's observable in nature, through animal husbandry and domestication. I would presume that's how people became aware of it and taught their children prior to writing.

Again I'm talking ancient history. Think paleolithic, in fact think pre-Homo Sapiens did Homo Erectus know? Did Homo Habilis?


You've provided a point for animal husbandry but think for a sec how old it is? Also you say that it has been known through recorded history (and while I agree with you on that) I ask when do we have the first explicit proof of this knowlede written down or do we just assume since they can write they have come up with the link?

[Heraclitus]

They probably figured it out pretty quick when they gained the ability to figure it out.

PS Define pretty quick. Also is "the ablity" something discrete?

[Jon Miller]

I think that there are some small communities of primitive cultures who still? don't know how sex works. For example, one thinks that the young boys have to be impregnanted with male seed (anally) and then they will start producing seed themselves which they will be able to impregnant women with in the future.

JM

[MOBIUS]

This thread so needs to be Hardmanned...

[Dinner]

The need to breed must have been encoded in the human psyche even as it evolved from lesser states...

The know-how was there, just the rationalisation was missing...

...

Yep. It was instinctual and inherited from lower hominids who inherited it from its predecessors, etc...

[Heraclitus]

Yep. It was instinctual and inherited from lower hominids who inherited it from its predecessors, etc...

I'm talking about the transition from "instinctual knowledge" to "rational knowledge".

[Heraclitus]

I remember my Latin teacher saying that the ancient Cretans, back when they were a matriarchy, weren't aware yet sex led to pregnancy. So I believe Heraclitus' question is a rather good one.

Wow, that's an interesting bit of information.



Does anyone have a link to an article about this idea?

[Dinner]

This thread so needs to be Hardmanned...

Are you the one who registered HARDMAN over at WPC? I notice that AE has not been put into action yet.

[Ben Kenobi]

Is it reallly so obvious? If I remember right I heard somewhere that a couple need to activley try to concieve for a year before they are considered to have fertility problems.

Modern people are shockingly ignorant about such things that weren't issues for their predecessors.

For example, I could give you lots and lots of information on this very topic which the modern man rejects.

And many people are infertile, they don't have children even if they have lots of sex!

Infertility and barrenness has long been recognised.

And women may deny having sex with people for various reasons (shame of rape, sex with social outcasts, sex before some kind of ritual such as marriage) and in a society where the link is not established them becoming pregnant would not be suspicius.

Paleolithic man could easily observe the workings of animals in nature. Animals can easily tell their own offspring apart from others, so I wouldn't be surprised to see the same with men.

If you had a debate with a ancient hominid he may well point to sucha girl in his tribe "that got pregnant without ever having sex" (the state of hymen is not an easy indicator for the untrained eye which I am sure you will agree with if you read up a bit on it on wikipedia)

And such an observation would by rightly questioned.

Also young children often don't figure it out (children often mastrubate before they understand what they are doing and before they uderstand the link of sex to pregnancy, I could easily imagine a society where all of sexuality is not tought about in the same way as a young boy mastrubating dosen't think about what he is doing but knows that it feels good).

Modern man has few connections with animals. The same is not true for people throughout human history.

Also a rethorical question: Don't we humans seem to posses a rather stunning talent to belive what we prefer to believe or what our parents or elders taught us despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary?

Back then you would tend to the animals, and would eventually learn how to care for them.

You've provided a point for animal husbandry but think for a sec how old it is?

Since the last ice age, at least 10 thousand years ago.

Also you say that it has been known through recorded history (and while I agree with you on that) I ask when do we have the first explicit proof of this knowlede written down or do we just assume since they can write they have come up with the link?

You cannot do animal husbandry without knowledge of reproduction. So it serves as a logical assumption, if you see a society which performs animal husbandry, that they must also understand the link between sex and reproduction.

As for explicit proof, it depends on your standard for historical evidence. I don't know much about the archaeological evidence that exists for this sort of thing, but the earliest manuscript that can be stated for certain is several centuries before Christ. There may be older inscriptions dating to an earlier period.

[Ben Kenobi]

I remember my Latin teacher saying that the ancient Cretans, back when they were a matriarchy, weren't aware yet sex led to pregnancy. So I believe Heraclitus' question is a rather good one.

I think you need to get a refund. Your Latin teacher knows squat all about history.

[Heraclitus]

I think you need to get a refund. Your Latin teacher knows squat all about history.

That is why he isn't a history teacher.


He was probably just stating a hypothesis not presenting it as fact, and I want to know what the teachers source was. He must have been well read to have heard of something like this.

BTW Would it really be so hard to imagine a religion claiming that humans where somehow different from animals with regards to sex and reproduction? And that a fair procentage of the religions followers would belive this?

[Ben Kenobi]

BTW Would it really be so hard to imagine a religion claiming that humans where somehow different from animals with regards to sex and reproduction? And that a fair procentage of the religions followers would belive this?

The Catholic church funded research into reproduction, especially conception, to help establish the modern consensus.

That men have natural and base desires have never been an issue for the church. The question is not, 'do men not have base desires', but simply, "what must be done with them?" If you were to ask this question even 500 years ago, you would have been laughed at, and they would use the exact analogies I would, except probably add some aspersions to your ancestry.

[Heraclitus]

The Catholic church funded research into reproduction, especially conception, to help establish the modern consensus.

That men have natural and base desires have never been an issue for the church. The question is not, 'do men not have base desires', but simply, "what must be done with them?" If you were to ask this question even 500 years ago, you would have been laughed at, and they would use the exact analogies I would, except probably add some aspersions to your ancestry.

I never mentioned the RCC.


The Eucharist seem just like a cracker to the nonbeliver.
So Human mating might seem just like animal mating to the nonbeliver of my hypothetical religion, but to the beliver.... se my point?

[GePap]

While individuals may not be able to figure out the connection between sex and pregnancy all at once, I find it hard to believe that any society able to figure out agriculture would be incapable of figuring out that sex=pregnancy. After all, how different is making the connection between stick seed in ground and wait to get food from stick penis into vagina and wait to get pregnant woman, whcih equal baby?