toxibunny wrote:KlaxonCow wrote:...biologically endorsed natural contraception...
i've had that first thought lately... dismissed it though - people only used to live 'til 30, and lots of babies died, I bet - I'd suggest 'already being pregnant' is your only 'biologically endorsed natural contraception'...
Mythical.
For example, the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramesses died of old age in his late '90s (whether he would have sent a letter to himself, like the Queen does, if he'd reached 100 is not known).
There was a higher mortality rate and a far higher infant mortality rate.
But if you avoided the myriad perils - and that's really what was different in the past: Bad nutrition, shit to non-existent medicine, no concept of hygene to prevent infections, etc. - then, as Ramesses shows, there was nothing preventing you having a life expectancy equal to modern standards.
Human biology and anatomy hasn't changed in the last thousand years or so. It simply isn't long enough for Darwinian biological evolution to have happened in any significant or noticable way. They were Homo Sapiens, as are we.
The difference has been "memetic" evolution. The evolution of thoughts, ideas, sciences, medicine, argicultural methods, education, knowledge of germs and the need for hygene, development of drugs to tackle even very serious illeness, greater literary due to universal education raising the standard of health awareness, abandonment of belief in such things as illness being caused by "evil spirits" (leading to abandonment of "treatment" such as trepanning: Drilling a hole in someone's skull to let out the "evil spirits" inside them. A "treatment" more dangerous than the illness it's supposed to "cure"), etc.
Brain capacity hasn't altered either. The intelligence of Pythagoras, Euclid, Archimedes would slay most modern genius. You can directly read the literary skill of Homer, Ovid, the Bible writers, etc. and see that their literary skills were far from lacking (the difference is that, today - at least in the developed world - literacy is almost 100%, whereas it would have been a rare skill in the past. But as many "greats" show us: If you possessed this skill, there was no lesser capacity in mental ability. Actually, if anything, because literacy was rare, people tended to take it more seriously and be willing to put greater effort into it that past writers generally have a far higher standard in their writing than today. But it works both ways: It's not that we couldn't equal take things more seriously and put more effort into it but our modern lives means that most of us are rushing things out while those of the past wrote "epics" intended to last for all time and wouldn't find anything odd in wasting years perfecting something).
Anyway, the basic point is what Newton said (referenced around the side of a £2 coin):
"If I have seen further than any man, it is because I was Standing on the Shoulders of Giants"
Note, mind you, that even Newton was using a literary device. The term "Giants" that he refers to is actually a Greek concept that, even for them thousands of years ago, they believed that the knowledge they had was created by metaphorical "Giants" (not literal giants but mental giants), who existed thousands of years before even them. Hence the lack of names and to call them "Giants" instead: Even for the Greeks, these people were very far distant "prehistory" and they are likely referring, of course, to the very, very distant people who invented the basics like language itself and argiculture.
As with most statistics, it's all about the interpretation.
The classic example is the idea of "2.4 children" (although, this statistic actually dates from the '70s and is now massively out of date but the phrase itself got popularised to be "shorthand" for "a normal family life" and is now immortalised through that, even though - of course - the statistic of "average number of children in an average family" does constantly change over the decades).
The average family was not literally giving birth to ".4 of a child", of course. It naturally has to be an integer value in actual reality and the figure here is just a mean average.
Note that this did not mean there weren't plenty of couples giving birth to 5, 6, 7 or even 13 children. But just, as you'd expect, that these were the exception rather than the rule.
Similarly, "life expectancy" is also usually compiled as an average. One has to be careful of the interpretation, which, unfortunately, many people I've seen regularly aren't.
In fact, the better way to comprehend what was going on is not to think of "life expectacny" but to think of "mortality rates" instead.
The infant mortality rate in the past was far larger. Also note something unique about this, which does effect the statistics: A child has age zero, not age one when born. Ages are measured in integer values (e.g. you remain age zero until a whole year has passed). With the notable exception of Adrian Mole, it's not common to measure fractions of a year in a person's age.
Deaths at birth, therefore, uniquely lower the mean average without contributing anything to it.
This is worth mentioning because it massively skews the "average age".
For example, if we had the following ages: 0, 0, 0, 0, 100. Then the "average age" would be 20. Universally failing to convey the "4 children dying at birth, one old man living until he's 100" facts.
In the majority of the past, there was no appreciably useful medicine.
Therefore, if you got ill with anything potentially life threatening then it would very likely kill you.
You were also more likely to get ill because no-one knew what "germs" were and hygene was an alien concept (the Romans regularly bathed in their bath houses and correctly attributed it "health giving powers" but they totally had no idea what was really going on. To them, it was "the Goddess" who was gifting them good health and they had no idea that it was really just that they were helping to keep germs at bay by washing them off (as well as other factors like taking in minerals and clean spring water through osmosis while they bathed, as water is healthy is more than one way and "cleaning" is just one of the ways bathing in water can help with hygene).
Further, spring water was pretty unique. Remember, this was alll happening before water treatment and sewers (well, the Romans excepted because, in many ways, the Romans had things - central heating, mass-production techniques for pottery, etc. - that were way ahead of their time, compared to everyone else: Another common myth is that history is perfectly linear. Not at all. The "Dark Ages" are so named because when the Romans fucked off out of Britain, it metaphorically plunged everything into "darkness". No records, no technology, no advancements. It took centuries for things to get back to a comparable level again).
The Chinese were smarter (or just luckier, as they likely had no idea of the reasons why it worked, only that it did when they tried it) and they drank tea.
Why was this smarter? Well, they
boiled the water to make tea and boiling water kills the germs and bacteria in it.
While, in Europe, what everyone did instead was drink booze. Shitloads of booze.
Yeah, genuinely. Everyone of all ages drank nothing but booze. Admittedly, it was weak shit because when you're drinking that much, it isn't about getting drunk. But they brewed and drank booze all the time.
Because there are a few other ways to keep germs at bay.
Brewing is one. Alcohol is a poison, of course (being drunk is actually being poisoned but it's a non-fatal poison in low amounts and as one of the side effects of the poisoning is mild euphoria, that's why we all happily go out and pay money to poison ourselves at the weekend. Yes, it does seem really rather bizarre when you look at it that way but, really, that is what's going on in a factual sense).
The other thing is silver. Silver has a property of naturally killing germs (it is mildly toxic. Similar to alcohol. The reason it kills off germs but leaves us alone is, of course, simply a matter of "doses". When you're a tiny bacteria, the smallest amount is drowning in the stuff. When you're a big old human being, it's "parts per million" and has little effect and we have kidneys, a liver, a pancreas and other useful organs that go around "cleaning" things up for us too. Although, of course, these organs do have their limits and that's why being an alcoholic is not the smartest idea for your health, even if we ignore the social destruction aspects).
They would drink booze out of silver tankards, cut up their food with silver implements called knives, forks and spoons (instead of their potentially disease carrying unwashed hands) and the like.
That's why it's your "best silver". Also, though stainless steel is used these days, just because it's cheaper, it's still a metal that looks like silver.
Though, in the past, they wouldn't have actually known why - no knowledge of what germs were - they still naturally "evolved" a scientifically sensible way of doings. This would simply have been observation and "trial and error": The person who always drunk out of a silver cup seemed to never pick up the illnesses everyone else did.
After a while, silver would be noticable as preventing people getting ill and then it would develop a mythical reputation of "ridding evil".
Which, yes, is the reason why silver bullets kill werewolves.
Silver was the metal that "repelled evil spirits", as disease was often explained as a kind of "possession by evil spirits" (the medieval practice of trepanning - drilling a hole in someone's head - was related to this, believing that by making a hole, the "evil spirits" would come out of the hole and then the person would stop being ill).
It's also why silver is ranked one lower than gold (gold, silver and bronze medals at the Olympics, gold and silver wedding anniversaies, etc.) and became a metal of worth.
Even if you were incredibly rich, it was never "best gold" (unless it was solely for display purposes and never intended to be used, which was quite common for very decorative pieces), it was always "best silver". Because it was about its "magical properties" (or "magical" in their eyes) of keeping disease at bay, not it's actually worth.
But, yeah, the whole of Europe was basically constantly drunk (though, only mildly so - the beer was weak - because you wouldn't want it to get too much in the way of daily tasks).
The Chinese remained sober and drank tea. Boiling the water took care of the germs instead. Also, boiling rice did much the same thing. Washing was more a part of the culture. But, even then, they still developed the idea of using implements to manipulate food to keep grubby potentially germ-carrying hands out of food too (though they didn't make the silver connection as with Europe).
The underlying point, basically, is that all this stuff is so natural and ingrained with us today that people often don't appreciate that these things needed to be discovered and invented. What a luxury clean tap water really is. That, without these things, avoiding disease is actually a constant difficult struggle and a very serious issue.
But it was not anything to do with supposed "evolution" (at least, only "memetic" evolution, not any biological evolution). It is all to do with nutrition, availability of food, hygene, washing, boiling, brewing, using silver cooking implements, etc.
Ramesses was a great Ancient Egyptian Pharaoh. A living God, in the eyes of his people.
Even if Egypt was starving, the Pharoah would never have had a single nutrition problem. Though medicine wasn't advanced, what did exist at the time was guaranteed to him. The life of the God King would have slaves testing the food and the finest of everything, no doing any work.
In other words, though pure luck is also involved as it always is, Ramesses lived a life where these problems were easily avoided (unlike the rest of his subjects).
And, as I'm pointing out, when you did not get killed off by the various hazards that created such a high mortality rate, Ramesses actually lived to nearly 100 years of age. Even today, making it to 100 is impressive and he very nearly did it way back in Biblical times.
Though you have a degree of a point in "already being pregnant" as a form of contraception, you are only pregnant for 9 months.
Don't forget that any "legal age of consent" did not exist and what we'd easily think of as "child brides" were common, which is another factor to consider: As certain Dutch paedophiles want to restore, biological "coming of age" was the measure, not any legal precedent.
Further, don't be too pulled into the Abrahamic and Victorian angle: People were not puritannical nor consider sex at all "bad" nor walked around as virgins. These ideas came later and the Victorians also are known to have manipulated historical accounts to fit their own "no sex please" puritannism, which isn't historically accurate (even though it's a version of events that many still believe accurate today. Knights were mercenary killers. The idea of "chivalry" is totally bollocks. Medieval noble women are known to have read pornographic books that would make Mills and Boon blush because one or two such books have been found. The "lock and key" chastity belt is wholly mythical: The real thing was an ordinary belt and its purpose similar to a wedding ring, as merely a "symbol" of commitment. In fact, it's existence is significant - and suggests the complete opposite - for the very fact that you actually had to "promise" not to sleep around. It actually wasn't "automatic". In that regard, it's possible they were even more "free love" than modern standards, if there was a need to actually make a symbolic gesture to promise not to jump into bed with anyone and everyone, the second your "brave knight" got a call to go to war.
Marriage itself, by the way, always was a state and legal, not church or religious, invention. The Church took it on board and made it "religious" to suit their purposes later. Originally, you were married simply because both of you said you were. No more than that. It was for legal reasons that the idea of "formalising" it - to deal with divorce and adultery and such - later came into being.
The Celts had a cool system of different "levels" of marriage. In fact, it was so very different to the modern "binary" idea of marriage that translating it as "being married" is tricky (e.g. there was one "level" where same sex bestfriends could "marry" because it was about commitment to each other and not automatically about making children. Again, the idea of marriage as a "baby making institution" is more modern than many people realise it is).
Attitudes to sex in different times and cultures could shock many people, even if of a "modern liberal" bent.
Because the point is that we
know that there were forms of "natural contraception". A rather radical one - even to the modern liberal - was the one that the Ancient Greeks practiced.
"Doing it Greek style" is slang for anal intercourse because, yeah, they entirely did regularly practice "anal love". Usually with young boys.
The old man having himself a young boy on which to exercise his urges was common, standard and culturally acceptable. Wife or no wife. It wasn't considered "gay" in that sense and meant nothing about sexuality.
The Romans - before Christianising and taking the more familiar Abrahamic attitudes to sex - saw no problem in either master or mistress fucking their slaves. It wasn't seen as "adultery" (not that this mattered prior to Christianisation, as the Abrahamic prohibition on adultery wasn't there. Only the practical aspects of betrayal and emotion - finding out your missus is up the duff with some other geezer's baby - lead to any negative feeling on the issue. Legally and religiously, there was bugger all problem of any kind). Nor was homosexuality any problem. In fact, gifting someone a "sex slave" was a friendly gesture. Voyeurism wasn't an issue either and your slaves would happily stand around watching while you were at it, just in case you got thirsty or decided, perhaps, to invite a few more into fray.
In modern times, there's a thing to convince ourselves that we're more liberal in our attitudes but that's hardly the reality. Abrahamic religiions make some requirements on sexual behaviour but, absent that, most attitudes were about as "anything goes" as you can imagine.
Heck, Venus the Goodess of Love would be overjoyed with an orgy, the little slut as she was. What better way to praise her and her gifts of love and sex than bending the missus over and giving her a good seeing to? She was the Goddess of women and beauty, love and sex, after all. It was her will, her wish, her invention and pleasuring the women she ruled over - that she was herself - that you could see it as being a metaphorical pleasuring of Venus to bang your missus with regularity Who knows? With such existential weight on your love making abilities, the women of that period must well have been getting it damn good. How would they interpret an orgasm anyway? As a "gift" - a "reward" - from Venus herself?
In looking at the past, there's a natural tendency to do so through the lens of modern interpretations and atttitudes.
Even for the lady who would not likely make it passed 30, 9 months of pregnancy - when she very likely started much younger, to the point of being liekly highly distastefully young to modern eyes - was not the greatest form of contraception.
Heck, faking "having a headache" is about as effective.
Anyway, it also must be remembered that getting pregnant was actually a good thing. Families were gigantic with many, many children by modern standards.
They had to be.
With such a high mortality rate - very harsh "natural selection" - then, you know, you popped out 12 children because half of them would die off before getting a chance to continue the family line.
You have to consider the idea of "contraception" itself. Developed nations - where mortality rate isn't a problem - very naturally and instinctually drops in the number of children they have. The "baby boom" was actually a kind of late reaction to changing circumstances.
The worry of "overpopulation" has actually diminished because, as things get better, populations naturally have less children and it automatically stables. Where it was worrying that the population might become too large to support, it's actually turned around since the "baby boom" and moving towards stabilise (but, by its nature, this has a "lag" associated with it).
There would not be such a concern for contraception because people were actually wanting large families and numerous children.
But then again, there would be natural contraception because the urge strikes more often than would be feasible. Ancient Egyptian Kings had "lesser brides" as well as their actual wife and one particularly prolific Pharaoh is attributed to having over 100 children in total (though only those of the true wife would be considered to have genuine royal status).
The Ancient Greeks certainly used anal intercourse as contraception. There practice of not being particularly concern whether it was male or female and having relationships with young boys, is of course what leads to anal sex as being "Greek style" and the jokes about the Greeks being the inventors of "man love". The homosexual version is made more of a fuss of because of its contraversy in Abrahamic terms but, well, even with the slang "Greek style" used today, it applies regardless of the gender one is inserting one's manhood into. Which is likely the actual liberal attitude that they took at the time.
It's interesting, though, how even those who don't subscribe to an Abrahamic faith are still drawn into the conservative values of it because it has become part of Western culture.
Remember: "Everything you know is wrong".
"Words ought to be a little wild - for they are assaults of thought on the unthinking."
- John Maynard Keynes
Wwwaaaaaahhhhhhhh !
