From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@www.aeiveos.com)
Date: Fri Sep 24 1999 - 02:01:09 MDT
On Thu, 23 Sep 1999, Bryan Moss wrote:
> Michael S. Lorrey wrote:
>
> > > Just as promiscious sex was (no doubt) increased by the introduction of
> > > contraceptives.
> >
> > Actually, IMHO, people got laid a lot more and talked about it less back
> > then than now. The whole myth of 'saving' one's self for marriage was
> > only expected of daughters of aristocratic families, most other people
> > got married with one already in the oven.
>
> I thought saving yourself was just good Christian values, that's what the
> born-again-ers seem to think. I'm not sure about people being more
> promiscuous then (pre-contraception) than now since I have no evidence
> either way but I very much doubt it.
>
I would strongly urge both of you to review some of the literature
on the probable sociology of ancient tribes/societies. Anything
involving "saving" one's self, Christian values, etc. is an "add-on"
to underlying genetic/cultural operating principles.
My education (studies of aging/longevity, etc.) says that women in
an "evolutionary" context were generally in "reproductive" mode.
Once they became fertile, the generally became pregnant and
remained in the mode of pregnancy/birth/nursing for their
entire lives. The reason we have an "epidemic" of breast
cancer in our society is because women's bodies were not
designed to undergo the relatively large number of reproductive
cycles that they now subject themselves to (unless they remain
on the pill [falsely pregnant] for much of their lives).
Almost anything that society has done as an "add-on" in the
last 3000+ years is pretty irrelevant compared with our
historical evolutionary gene-set or situations with
huge demographic effects --
(a) the black plague;
(b) the migration of the "risk-takers" to the new world;
(c) the forced selection of Africans into slavery;
(d) the genocide commited by Europeans on native Americans
due to the diseases they carried.
It may be worth noting that women during most of the
pregnancy/nursing cycle may be relatively promiscuous
with little concern as to whether that would lead to
offspring. There may be selective advantages to acting
in this way if one can derive benefits from such behaviors.
Whether or not folk-knowledge (or genetic knowledge) is/was
sufficient to allow this, I suspect remains an open question.
Robert
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