In order to investigate the agricultural reproductive mechanism we should look at people that are (still) living like we used to live in ancient times - as "savages". This is how we lived 99% of the time the human race has been living on earth. This refers to the members of the groups called "hunters-gatherers" that live in different cultural frame than ours which is very ancient. Our savage brothers are roaming the rainforests of South and Central America, in the deserts of Africa and other wilderness. Hunters-gatherers are looking for their food and do not practice agriculture. For them gathering food from nature is an easy and convenient alternative for our agricultural crops.
We shall focus for a moment on the members of one of these groups, which are good indicators for our way of life. Those tribes live in the Kalahari Desert in east Africa and they are called: "The San tribes". The meaning of their name in their complex and unique language is "the real people". According to the last census (1997) there remained about fifty thousand people among the San tribes, and they live as hunters-gatherers. One of the San tribes is the "Kung" tribe with about fifteen thousand male and female members. According to Anthropologists' evaluations, they have been running their lives, with no substantial changes, for more than forty thousand years. 1
Melvin Konner, an Anthropology professor at Howard University, describes one aspect of the Kung motherhood life, a point that is crucial for our subject: "The Kung women carry their babies attached to their bodies during more than 70% of the time, while a western mother carries her baby less than 25% of the time in average. The Kung women breastfeed their children until they reach the age of four years and more. The continuous suckling works for them as a long term contraceptive, preventing pregnancy for about four years." 2
The fertility of the Kung women is relatively low compared to the rest of the women and this difference has biological reasons: in our bodies there are chemical messengers that are constantly active called hormones. One of them was named by researchers "Motherhood hormone"; this is the hormone Prolactin. Prolactin is secreted in the mother's brain as a response to the suckling activity of her baby, and it is responsible for continuous milk production in the mother's breasts.3 Prolactin secretion prevents the development of (a new) heat. The hormone's activity range, as contraceptive in human mothers, is relatively short (in relation to other mammals) and lasts only two hours from the time of its secretion.
The Kung baby suckles his mother's breasts during the whole day, hence causing milk secretion and at the same time preventing any possibility for another pregnancy of his mother. The baby protects itself from the birth of a new competition, and from its personal viewpoint it is quite justified. After all, mother milk is the sole nutrition of the Kung babies in their first two years of life, and they continue to breast feed until they reach the age of four and more.
As opposed to the Kung people, most western mothers use industrial baby formulas and the rest breastfeed their babies every three hours or more. The result: the time gap which is accepted in our society disrupts the activity of Prolactin as a long term contraceptive, and women's fertility is (usually) resumed within a year after childbirth.
Breaking the maternal Prolactin continuity was necessary for the fast reproduction process and enabled us to numerically grow in geometrical progression.
It should be noted that an agricultural method similar to this (based on early weaning) has been in use by us for thousands of years. Farmers breeding sheep and cattle, separate the young offspring from their mothers. This way they get over the natural fertility barrier that depends on Prolactin. Early weaning enables the breeders to increase the number of the domestic animals twice and even three times faster.
In the following chapters we shall discuss the health and cultural aspects derived from the human need to break the Prolactin connection.
2 - The interview with Professor Melvin Konner in the book " Sex and the Brain" written by Diane Desimone; Jo Durden Smith (1983).
3 - It should be noted that the emotional-hormonal relation between the mother and her baby is shared by other hormones as well, one of them, 'Oxytocine" is called "The love hormone" it rewards the mother with feelings of pleasure, caused by treating the baby. Studies show that Prolactin and Oxytocine are responsible for creating the motherly emotions.
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