How did the first people figure out that sex equals ....

how could god give mankind freewill if he didn't give them the basic reasoning skills required to figure out where babies came from

good question. i have wondered often myself, when looking at how totally helpless human infants are, and how much of what they would need to survive is learned not instinctive. i've also pondered the honey bee and come up with equally strange anomalies. honey bees are ......incredible, really



this one is really interesting too!


[edit on 5-5-2009 by undo]

i find it kind of rude that you solicit others views and don't state yours outright. what is it you believe?

we're all learning here (well some of us apparently know it all already or at least think so). i'm learning. i ask questions, cause i want to know how this could be explained with modern science. some answers were pretty good. some were not so good. and some were just straw men.

I think they made the connection themselves.

Giving birth is not just something you will forget about the next day.
An event which such an impact will defenately make you search for an explanation.

You will wonder why and how ?
What makes it less difficult to solve these questions is that the "productionroom" has only one entrance. So if something comes out, it is not unlikely to wonder what went "in"?

I dont think it took them very long to find out.

reply to post by Just-Think


this is the only "non-god" answer that approaches sound logic, from my perspective. the only question is, did we figure it out even with the rather large time lapse and the lack of consistency that's frequently present, such as infertility, too old, too young, time in menstrual cycle, male related issues, other factors like diet, climate and general health. if it was a matter of observation, you'd think they'd argue the particulars since it was likely not regular enough and so far away from any initiating event .......

[edit on 5-5-2009 by undo]

Originally posted by undo
good question. i have wondered often myself, when looking at how totally helpless human infants are, and how much of what they would need to survive is learned not instinctive.

the distinction seems misleading to me, it would seem, to me, that the instinct to learn certain skills is preprogrammed rather than the skills themselves.

even something as fundamental as breathing. the purpose of the respiratory system is to breath, but it needs to learn how to do this in the womb in order to function properly. the instinct is to learn the action rather than to simply carry out the action perfectly.

on a more observable level, a cat seems driven to hunt, the instinct is there, but the skill is learned and the same is true for much of what we call instinct. very little of the knowledge required to survive is pure instinct and in the animals where instinctual knowledge is relied upon, the infant mortality rate is incredibly high.

Originally posted by undowe're all learning here (well some of us apparently know it all already or at least think so). i'm learning. i ask questions, cause i want to know how this could be explained with modern science. some answers were pretty good. some were not so good. and some were just straw men.

that wasn't even approaching a response to what i actually posted. you're just being obnoxious at this stage, it's rude to solicit an answer and suggest somebodies a know it all for giving you their opinion, as requested. the continued lack of your point of view is pretty rude, as is suggesting any answer you were given is a strawman argument without addressing the particular flaws in somebodies logic.

didn't your parents ever teach you basic manners and decorum?

[edit on 5/5/09 by pieman]

well as you can probably tell pieman, if i thought it relevant i would've offered it. but i wanted to know what other people think about it, as i seriously can't figure out how some things happened, even when science attempts to explain it. this thread isn't about what i think, it's about what other people think. if i wanted to discuss what i think in detail, i'd make a thread about what i think. all you can glean from this one is, that i have a position, it's rubbery enough that it could be swayed in a certain direction provided there was enough logic and validity to it, based on my prior and/or current perspective. it also asks the question: have you seen this discussed anywhere before? why are you so gunho about what i believe or don't believe? if you don't like the thread, there's lots of others.

Originally posted by undo
why are you so gunho about what i believe or don't believe? if you don't like the thread, there's lots of others.

i just don't like rudeness. i don't think it should be ignored by anyone. i don't believe it is acceptable behavior. where i encounter it, i try to challenge it.

what your position is, and it's modification throughout the discussion, is important to the thread, we are all here to learn. to take other peoples opinions and not give your opinion is parasitic.

to ask for others knowledge and experience while not offering your own is a one sided affair. this is a discussion board, not an encyclopedia. if you want to know the scientific explanation without having to discuss your own beliefs try google.

reply to post by pieman


i did offer my own belief, just not in the detail you expected apparently. who woulda thought that the simple question of how we knew having sex would create offspring as early as ancient sumer, would be construed as rude and parasitic?

(addendum to my above post: i say ancient sumer since theirs are some of the oldest texts on the planet and the only way to verify what the people knew at the time. )

It should be noted that the time between the 2 events isn't 9 or even 3 months. It is around 14-20 days.
I think menstruation was a pretty big clue to our ancestors as to what was going on.

[edit on 5-5-2009 by debunky]

reply to post by debunky


right but observation would require longer than 14-20 days. telltale signs like morning sickness could be construed as anything, initially, and not everyone suffers with it. it'd be at least 2 months before the woman noted she wasn't menustrating anymore, since not everyone is regular and not everyone keeps track either. so the best we could hope for there, is that when she stopped menustrating she linked it to the pregnancy, but not necessarily to the intercourse. it's one of those things that make ya wish ya had a time machine so you could go back and find out the precise moment when people started to understand the linkage.

Originally posted by undo
reply to post by pieman

 

i did offer my own belief, just not in the detail you expected apparently. who woulda thought that the simple question of how we knew having sex would create offspring as early as ancient sumer, would be construed as rude and parasitic?

it's not, by itself. in isolation, it isn't. i feel i asked your view on the subject, reasonable enough, and you refused to furnish any kind of detail. you also didn't bother discussing the views offered, you just choose to ignore a big chunk of them.

look, i'm not trying to upset you here, i'm just replying with the view from my perspective, i have no doubt it is an unintentional behavior, i don't think it's what you mean to be doing, it just comes off that way to me.

maybe you didn't mean to call some of the responders know it all's or tell them they had straw man arguments without giving any detail of who, when and how, maybe you don't mean to be rude or parasitic when you do that, it just felt that way to me, hey, just my interpretation.

[edit on 5/5/09 by pieman]

This thread needs to take a serious conspiratorial right turn if it's to stay on ATS.

thanks....

the following answers are not quite hitting the mark:

1) instinct.

it isn't about whether they knew to have sex, it's about how they figured out sex created offspring.

2) oh you want bible stuff.

ancient texts are the only verifiable means we have to ascertain what the ancient people knew about themselves and their environment. this is not a call for bible answers. it's a call for answers based on the known data and even just your personal opinion on the matter, provided of course, that it attempts to answer the question

3) i don't have to answer the question because you mentioned the word bible or sumerian texts in your posts. so now i'm gonna try to turn the thread into a debate on whether god is real or not or whether sitchin is a crackpot or not, instead of addressing the question in the op.

truly, i'm not getting baited into a religious or sitchin-based argument on this topic. it stands on its own because it is an anthropological topic.

4) of course they knew sex created babies since they had them all the time.

problem is, they didn't have them all the time. some of those "moms" or "would be moms" were children and some were old women. you can be sure some were premenstrual and some were post menstrual. we're not talking modern sensibilities.



[edit on 5-5-2009 by undo]

Originally posted by undo
reply to post by debunky

 

right but observation would require longer than 14-20 days. telltale signs like morning sickness could be construed as anything, initially, and not everyone suffers with it. it'd be at least 2 months before the woman noted she wasn't menustrating anymore, since not everyone is regular and not everyone keeps track either. so the best we could hope for there, is that when she stopped menustrating she linked it to the pregnancy, but not necessarily to the intercourse. it's one of those things that make ya wish ya had a time machine so you could go back and find out the precise moment when people started to understand the linkage.

Ah, but the clue comes on other levels as well! She isn't interested in sex before her first. She doesn't get pregnant anymore after her last (granted, if she lives that long)
I grant you that it is a step between the clues and the conclusion, but it isn't brain surgery (and we figured out that eventually too)

Originally posted by undo
just to clarify for the people who are freaking out over this question... it's a matter of anthropology. i asked the question in hopes of getting an answer and i think a few good ones have been presented between the off color remarks, straw men and generally negative comments. although i have a personal viewpoint that may differ from others, the question still is worth asking and so i did.

I do not believe the Adam and Eve story as being "real" per se. I do not believe in it as a on-the-scene reporter writing the bible just at the moment Adam is brought Eve. These things were written by Moses, and veiled.

But your question seems to imply that women and girls don't understand their periods? I believe women knew what was up, and from a long time ago.

One a girl starts bleeding from her special parts, the ladies figured out what it was, and they knew what comes out of a penis at climax (yeah that would be sperm) and so when sperm goes in BEFORE the blood (the moon figures into this also) then there is no blood and nine months later you get a little human.

Your perspective is from that of a male, who wonders which babies are his. Similarly, men today want to place themselves in orbit around women's wombs. I think it's funny, and stupid.

Women know how to make recipes. Like, add flour and butter here? So yeah, some smart woman figure out, "If sperm goes in a few days before the blood, she makes a baby!" ...Thanks ladies for keeping us all alive since then and letting the men take the credit. We even managed to survive truly idiotically confused men like Napoleon and Nero. We couldn't have done it without the grandmothers.

Anyway, it's like mixing a drink or following a recipe but only the women were wise enough to perceive and understand that ritual of the womb. Women know the value of the girl child (as in Amarna where the princesses themselves became the representatives of Isis and the Egyptian gods).

Anyway, yeah, Eve understood her period, because before God could "curse" her, he had to elevate her. I always got nasty looks when I tried to discuss Eve's period in bible study. But so much emanates from it.

reply to post by pieman


that's cause it's rubbery. i believe we were told in a sense (go forth, multiply and replenish the earth), but i don't know when exactly. i think the accounts in genesis are not detailed enough to verify when the events actually took place in the timeline of human history, so if i were to use it as an anchoring point for what the people knew and didn't know in the ancient past, i would have to consider other data as well. some people believe it's all very straight forward, and that time just starts at that exact moment. i do not. i believe the planet is very very old. i believe there was more than one "Adam" and that at some point, we were told to go forth and multliply, but that doesn't mean necessarily that we weren't multiplying before that. lol

so the question still stands on its own accord.

reply to post by smallpeeps


i'm female. and again, the reason i brought up the adam and eve story was to show that in the ancient texts, they already knew how offspring came about. this is how we verify how far back in our history they already knew. so how far back does it go? well i dunno! that's not the question though. the question is, how'd they know?

?? why is this moved to BTS?

okay, anthropologically, the ancient people knew about sex creating offspring as early as ancient sumer. i know this because it says so in their texts. how else would we know what they thought about the subject? this does not make the topic religious. it's anthropological.


[edit on 5-5-2009 by undo]

well thanks.
ya just killed the thread. remind me not to ask questions.