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If a woman bears many children throughout her life, you can still have a situation where the first pregnancy occurs much earlier than today's average yet the ov
by stargazer-3 4y ago
If a woman bears many children throughout her life, you can still have a situation where the first pregnancy occurs much earlier than today's average yet the overall conception average is roughly same as nowadays.
- b112 4y agoEven 200 years ago, it was common for women to give birth 10 times. I bet 100k years ago, some women were pregnant yearly, from teenage to menopause.
- micromacrofoot 4y agoBreastfeeding works as a natural contraceptive, so I highly doubt it - babies would need to be on solid foods without breastfeeding, and that was much harder in the past then it is now.
- robjan 4y agoOnly for a few months and it's still not 100% effective.
- micromacrofoot 4y agomore like 6 months, and even modern contraceptives are not 100% effective
- saalweachter 4y agoThese numbers also reflect the children that survived. If men were begetting from a young age 100k years ago, and most of their children died until they were older and more experienced, those early children are lost from the DNA record.
- frabcus 4y agoAccording to the book Sapiens it depended on resources, but women often breast fed for 4 or 5 years partly as a way to spread out and reduce number of children. The need for lots of children was a consequence of farming and industrialisation and exponential growth.
- jojobas 4y agoIf you can survive to menopause. The average of 24+ years old appears way too high, as it was common in the old extant cultures to bear from age 14 or even less.
- AdrianB1 4y agoIn the past the age of female fertility was higher than today, mostly due to nutrition. Age of 14 was more of an exception than a rule, it used to be 16 or more. Also even 24 is a right average for 14 and 34, most women even today can have children at 34.
- poulpy123 4y agothat's a good point !