Let’s imagine, a world where 10 month a year, men and women don’t care about each other. However, twice a year, during 2-3 weeks, non pregnant women produce pheromone that men can’t resist and start calling every boy around to breed with them.
How would this impact the civilisation ?
I know about David Brin’s *glory season * but not sure whether any other writer explored that idea.
Lots more people would have the same birthdays.
I sometimes do the math on people’s birthdays to see what holiday they were conceived around. Lots of early September (Christmas/New Years) and November birthdays (Valentines)
I had the discussion the other day of how civilization would be different if humans followed the ‘have loads of babies at once and see which ones survive’ style of reproduction.
“Oh hi Sarah! How’re the kids?”
“Oh, little Jeremy wasn’t eating as much as the others so I threw him outside onto the road.”
It would be a very large undertaking to describe the changes since hidden breeding cycles are one of the things that separates humans from other apes.
Human women being able to choose when and with whom to mate, secretly, is one of the most significant aspects of what it means to be human.
Humanity is one of the few species whose evolution is primarily driven by sexual selection and not just the “I survived long enough to find a female so I reproduced” strategy we know of as natural selection.
Yeah. Note a very fun answer, but I’d go so far as to say this was critical enough in hominem development that there wouldn’t be human society if humans had a mating season. So many of critical points in human development seem to hinge on very social developments, and this may have played a large role in that.
some would even argue no modified stone tools
It’s like when someone says something like “Oh if men could get pregnant there’d be an abortion clinic on every corner”. Not getting pregnant is the core attribute that makes “men” a concept.
We’re like humanity’s spartans. I literally feel less fear than is rational for my own survival, because it’s optimal for the group that I should be ready to be overwhelmed by rage or whatever and attack the lion and get killed so others can survive.
I spoke with a female marine once — someone who could kill me no problem — and she told me the fear she felt before training was still there. Conversely despite knowing from experience that I am useless in a fight, I feel cocky and self assured. Or, if I stay on top of the cockiness, I simply don’t feel afraid.
I don’t mean it’s not there. I’ve been terrified. But I’ve got a confidence that just slowly steadily increases in the absence of recent evidence, that somehow I’m invincible.
Anyway, I say it’s like spartans because this reminds me of some kind of drug cocktail you could inject into a solider to just make them not give a fuck.
I’m not complaining mind you. I’ve got no problem with having less fear. But mostly because I live in a super safe environment, so it doesn’t hurt me to have less fear.
MTV’s Spring Break would be a lot crazier.
Does it happen en masse or does each woman have their own heat season? Say, does everyone go crazy during the same 2-3 weeks or does it vary per person like it happens with periods?
In the masse heat I think there would be some obvious differences in stuff like festivities and each culture would adapt to these seasons. There would be a need to gather and store resources before the rut, and also to be prepared for the inevitable birthing en masse to come. We would probably have public holidays for the mating seasons and festivities for birthing season. In contemporary times, hospitals would need to do some heavy work planning and preparing maternity ward space to accommodate the seasonal influx. That’s just what pops to mind.
Not too sure about the differences in the second case though. One option is, women would be allowed to retreat from society and become hermits during heat if they want to avoid pregnancy and this would be totally normal. Or, some cultures would lock them to prevent them getting pregnant. Coming to think of it, I think having women randomly in some kind of irresistible heat like this would be very disruptive and impossible to prepare for so I don’t see much happening in the way of gender equality and women’s rights sadly. I’m inclined to think the re would be a lot of gender based extreme segregation.
