Bubba

Celsus-Having travelled a few places myself I'm just as disgusted as you are.

Chris

Amen-Moses

From a purely biological pov (and assuming that early hominids did not either practice birth control or have taboos against early procreation - which even modern non-human hominids do!) the average generation should be exactly half way between the earliest and latest procreation age, for modern (western) humans this would be half way between 12 and 45 making it about 28 ish. Now given that modern medicine decreases the terminal pregnancies somewhat and that modern early pregnancies survive more I would estimate that the early hominid range was nearer 15-35, giving an average of 25.

Amen-Moses

Valentine Pontifex

Whoops. I was remembering the post as opposed to rereading it. In that case you are probably right, that figure does seem a bit low. But in the context of a rather crude estimates being made by the post, I don't think it makes that much difference to the points the author was trying to make.

cricket

No quarrel with that... the author did the world a favor with his well-written post.

beyelzu

when i was in college, i took an intro to anthropology class, one thing that was covered was that the average age of menarche(or when the menstrual cycle begins) has decreased in the western world do to a large intake of calories and a relative low output of energy. this is why gymnasts often go through menarche later, sometimes as late as 18-20. also throughout history and in hunter gatherer groups today marriage does not happen at 13 the average age is closer to 18-20. in societies that have agriculture however, the average age of menarche decreased and so did the age of marriage.

one other cool thing is that studies of the !kung san have shown that on demand breast feeding makes women less likely to concieve again whcih is why there children are spaced by approx. 5 yrs. they dont have to use birth control. weird huh?