The most popular question of 2012 on Slate’s “The Explainer” was “Why do rich ladies sunbathe topless?” After that important exercise in investigative journalism was completed, Slate doubled back to answer another high-ranked question that’s a modicum more interesting, although the interested parties could probably just have watched Blue Lagoon for a fun cinematic answer with way more celebrity nudity.
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?
Considering there are still plenty of scarily uninformed kids across America who still think tongue-kissing makes a baby, it’s not a bad question. As early as the Neolithic era, there seems to have been some awareness that fornication was The Babymaker, as indicated by cave drawings of a man and woman embracing and alongside it, a mother, father and child. The anthropologist in the article refers to this inherent natural awareness as humans’ “reproductive consciousness,” citing the observation of animal reproduction as one possible model that our earliest incarnations took note of.