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2018-01-08, 01:44 PM (ISO 8601)
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Synchronizing menstrual cycles with the moon
In an alternate history, menstrual cycles*are synced up with the waxing and waning of the*moon, occurring around every 28 days. diseases are rare and easily curable through the use of magical herbs. Most children born survive to adulthood. Women dying in childbirth is extremely rare. What would be the consequences for women in this setup? Can this serve as a natural form of birth control? Would it lead to overpopulation?
Last edited by Sharad9; 2018-01-08 at 01:49 PM.
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2018-01-09, 02:49 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Synchronizing menstrual cycles with the moon
The title of this thread refers to by far the most minor change to reality.
By nearly eliminating infant and mother mortality along with diseases, there likely will be greater population growth than in the real Middle Ages. This could lead to more war as people fight over farm or grazing land.
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2018-01-09, 07:18 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Synchronizing menstrual cycles with the moon
Another option is people have less children. If most children survive there's less reason to have 8 just to have at least one left who can take care of you when you're old. Having less children running around could then massively impact the economy. People need less food and space to keep their family alive, so either "wages" drop, which in this context would mostly mean lower food prices, or a bigger market for more luxurious items develops.
The impact of matching menstrual cycles to the moon would probably be minor indeed. Women already have a decent idea of where they are in their menstrual cycle, they bleed in their underwear every time it starts anew. That's a thing people tend to notice. Still people get pregnant when they don't want to, and fail to get pregnant when they do want to. One of the reasons for that first one is that sex is, purportedly (sorry, no personal experience with having a menstrual cycle here), plain better around ovulation. Just like how certain animals typically screw each other in screwing season humans also like to mate when they're in heat. Another reason is that menstrual cycles are not clockwork, and neither is the survival time of every single sperm cell. If the setting includes a very strict "humans only ever get pregnant when having sex between exactly 24 hours before and after the exact moment of a full moon (poor werewolves, no human kids for them), they all know this and local observatories pass along the full moon (also known as "fooling moon") times, maybe. If you have the situation as it is now except all women act like they've all been living in the same house for too long, are roughly synced up and thus in some places for a few days per month all men hide in the woods together (at new moon no less, maybe it works better the other way around and the guys get a nice hunters moon every time they need to flee the house), no, I don't think it would have that much impact...The Hindsight Awards, results: See the best movies of 1999!
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2018-01-09, 12:56 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Synchronizing menstrual cycles with the moon
If the culture were to min max child production then maybe something could happen (Min being the effort put in, and max being number of children in society). At that point you could just force every adult woman to have sex with someone at the right point of the cycle. But all this would be is a slightly more efficient breeding program than what sometimes happens in real life. The only reason someone would do this is if they need their society to bounce back after a major disaster, or if they have a regular slave/caste system.
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2018-01-20, 12:13 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Synchronizing menstrual cycles with the moon
I sense much naivete in you young Padawan.
Lady's cycles being tied to the moon would have roughly a 0.00001% impact on population. Why? Because sex feels good. It's why we do it all the time. Sure, couples actively trying, or avoiding, having children would make an effort to screw at the appropriate times, but then you have to factor in real life. Did lovers just reunite after a long absence? Is there alcohol involved in a local festival? Did some rival group raid and rape at the wrong time of the month? And by far the most common, "you are my wife, and I am horny. Get naked!"
Now the lack of infant mortality would have a significant impact, and I don't believe it would work the way others have surmised. Populations would EXPLODE!!! People wouldn't have less children. For examples please see modern Africa and Asia. Why? Because people still screw. The only way to slow down population growth is famine, plague, war, and medical solutions (similar to "the pill.") Your civilization would look like a Mad Max movie in record time.
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2018-01-20, 06:05 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Synchronizing menstrual cycles with the moon
This Asia?
(Admitted, modern day Asia and Africa do have birth control, so it doesn't really invalidate what you were saying, but not the best example maybe.)
(Also, that's a logarithmic scale, so it looks flatter than a linear one would, but it does help visualize trends.)Last edited by Lvl 2 Expert; 2018-01-20 at 06:07 PM.
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2018-01-20, 08:41 PM (ISO 8601)
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2018-01-21, 09:27 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Synchronizing menstrual cycles with the moon
Waxing *and* waning? So, periods every 14 days? IRL, there is no evidence to suggest any causal effect between lunar cycles and menstruation.
Without birth control or childhood disease or childbirth mishaps, population birth rates will skyrocket. The limiting factor will become food supply and resources.
Expect famines. Expect farmland to get desertification far earlier than OTL. Expect pasturelands to be overgrazed. And most of all, expect wars to be far more frequent and bloody than in OTL.
Humanity will basically be a plague on the face of the earth.
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2018-02-23, 02:34 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Synchronizing menstrual cycles with the moon
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2018-02-25, 04:42 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Synchronizing menstrual cycles with the moon
In looking over my history books of England during the 14th and 16th centuries, and the U.S.A. during the late 19th and early 20th century, what happens is that people will change when and if they marry and have children.
It's true that those were the times that anonymous new born babies were left in baskets on church steps and in front of the homes of more prosperous neighbors, but that everyone married young and had lots of children is a myth.
The nobility married young (especially girls) but the peasantry did not, they usually waited until their mid 20's (and they had shorter lives, also the practice of using "wet nurses" meant that the nobility had children more often as well as having children earlier too), the only time that marriage and childbirth among teenagers was common was after the depopulation caused by the Black Death.
In the U.S.A. around the turn of the last century births and marriages among the urban poor were much less than among their more prosperous neighbors, and those who lived on farms.
People are not rats, they don't and they didn't just breed wily-nilly, pre-agriculture hunter gatherer humans had lower birthrates than those if intensive cultivators (see PDF of research results here), when there's a perception of a need for more labor (as after a plague, or among intensive agricultural cultivation), then people have more children, but when there's a perception of scarcity, they don't (eventually), the crowded city slums of the 19th century with many children to a room were from many people coming to the city from the countryside (remember this was after the land clearances).
The famines of the 20th century were largely caused by droughts, revolutions, and wars.
It may take a couple of generations for customs to adjust, but in crowded conditions of scarcity people just don't have families that are as big.
Even during the recession of 2009 birth and marriage rates went down.
Besides war, you may expect overpopulation to result in more monks and nuns (with women getting more education, abbesess in the middle ages were often relatively learned), and more 'Shield Maidens" (women warriors) wouldn't suprised me.
As always, romance happens, but "fooling around" without making babies isn't a new innovation (yes "accidents" happen, they did and still do), and the "look to Asia and Africa" idea ignores that those large families happen in a context of a massive amount of labor devoted to cultivation, and societies without pension systems.
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2018-02-25, 01:53 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Synchronizing menstrual cycles with the moon
Last edited by Bohandas; 2018-02-25 at 01:54 PM.
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2018-02-26, 11:35 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Synchronizing menstrual cycles with the moon
Last edited by Lvl 2 Expert; 2018-02-26 at 11:36 AM.
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2018-04-10, 06:28 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Synchronizing menstrual cycles with the moon
As you say, one of the reasons that the rhythm methods fails, both in avoiding and in promoting pregnancies, is that cycles vary. Now, even if they are not as precise as giving an exact 48 hour window of opportunity, they will be significantly more predictable, making the method noticeably more effective, though still far from perfect.
I think you exaggerated the smallness of the effect. (And there really should be a better word for exaggerating smallness. "Inaggerate"? "Deaggerate"? Oh well.) It will be small because 1) the improvement in control will be small to moderate, and 2) some people will use the improved control to have more babies and some fewer. Still, I would guess that it might make a whole percent difference, one way or the other.
Birthrate has dominated this thread so far, but there are other factors. First, the birthrate will fluctuate monthly. Gestation does not always take the same amount of time, so the rate will not fall off to zero in between peaks, but there will be noticeable peaks, birthdays concentrated in one or two weeks of each month. Children born during the "off phase" so to speak, might be considered special blessings, they might be picked on by their peers, or both. It's all completely groundless, but that's never stopped people before.
Insert your preferred sexist wise crack about a whole planet being on the rag at the same time.
But seriously, we know from other threads that women hold the reigns of power in this world, including being all of the mages. If only the same fraction of women suffer PMDD as do in this world, there is a possibility that things could get ugly.
In a more modern setting, with manufactured sanitary supplies on store shelves, the stores would have an inventory control problem, as demand remains at near zero for three weeks and then surges just a quarter of the month. Would any other commodities become less available as shelf space is shifted over?
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