You Will Be Shocked To Know How Humans Figured Out That Sex Makes Babies

People have been curious to know how humans first learnt the process of how babies are born. There has been detailed research and studies for the same, so continue reading to have your questions answered.

In This Article

The Question

In 2012, there was a vote asking people to pick their “favourite unanswered question of 2012.” Funnily enough, majority of the people who voted picked this unusual and amusing question: “why rich ladies sunbathe topless?”

However, in our opinion, the runner up question was far more interesting and insightful, so the Explainer who felt the same way, answered this question: “When and how did humankind figure out that sex is what causes babies? It’s not exactly the most obvious correlation: Sex doesn’t always lead to babies, and there’s a long lead-time between the act and the consequences—weeks before there are even symptoms, usually. So roughly where do we think we were as a species when it clicked?”

The Answers

Evolutionary biologists and anthropologists have done years and years of intensive research in order to explain the above phenomena/question, however, their conclusions may not be precise. That being said, the evidence they have collected suggests that us humans, since the beginning of time, have always had an understanding albeit to some extent, of the relationship between childbirth and copulation.

According to research, Homosapiens initially showed a prominent cognitive development that dates back all the way to the inception of the human species 200,000 years back! This was also seen during the development of human civilization that dates back to an approximate of 50,000 years. However, concrete evidence of the above claims is not completely accurate. That being said a particular piece of evidence seems to support those claims: a stone tablet from the Çatalhöyük (a Neolithic proto-city settlement in southern Anatolia, the Asian part of Turkey, which existed from approximately 7500 BC to 5700 BC. It’s the largest and best-preserved Neolithic site to date) archaeological site seems to suggest an understanding from the Neolithic age (prehistoric Europe). The plaque has two figures that are embracing each other on one end, whereas on the other end there seems to be a mother and her child. Research has concluded that even though there are different explanations and beliefs for conception from all over the world and cultural groups, everybody seems to acknowledge somewhat of a connection between sex and having a baby.

A researcher, Holly Dunsworth came up with the term “reproductive consciousness” which essentially means what the name suggests. She claims that humans understood reproduction by looking closely at “animal reproduction cycles” and noticing how women who don’t have physical intimacy with men don’t get pregnant. It’s only in the recent years that the process of getting pregnant is possible without any physical contact with a man. This brings us to different findings.

At around the beginning of the twentieth century, with the addition of modern thinking and modern practices, anthropologists who are working in locations such as New Guinea and Australia came up with interesting results and conclusions. Their research stated that the anthropologists’ samples did not remember or acknowledge a link between sex and babies. But then again, subsequent research states that the reports are biased, which means they are only partly true. This goes back to the claim that the evidence isn’t concrete. For example, in 1927, a researcher Bronislaw Malinowski said that amongst Trobriand Islanders (a part of the nation of Papua New Guinea), the father had no role when it came to producing a baby. However, anthropologists who studied the same circle of people in later years discovered that “semen was believed to be necessary for the ‘coagulation’ of menstrual blood, the stoppage of which was thought to eventually form the fetus.”

The answers may not be in black and white, but we do know that there has always been some sort of an understanding of the connection between physical intimacy and babies.

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