this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2025
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[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (1 children)

Yes also this diagram:

Gives you a clear sense of how quickly things are turning.

In a geological sense, all of humanity isn't even a heartbeat.

[–] angrystego 3 points 8 hours ago

Yeah, I might not remember it exactly, but I've heard that about 9 out of 10 people of all our history haven't died yet. Which can be neatly misinterpreted as a surprisingly optimistic chance of not dying.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

25 is too old for most mothers the farther back you go.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] Kilamaos 12 points 1 day ago (2 children)

So from your article, it seems to say the opposite

The female average age of conception is 23.2, AND this includes a recent rise, so it would be even lower than that when considering older times

Also, it's unclear if the average also accounts for the fact that there is are significantly more child being given birth to in the very recent past, which would skew the number way up

[–] RedAggroBest 9 points 1 day ago

Every time I see people argue this I always wanna ask, are you considering that people don't stop having kids after 1 or 2? I'd wager that most women had the majority of their kids around that 23ish mark when you include that lady who had 10 kids from 15 to 35

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I don't think 23 is wildly off from 25, and honestly this is just the first one I found that mentions it, I've seen various different sources for different reasons in the past. But the average is based on genetic mutations, and obviously in any given human it's irrelevant how large a generation is as to how much genetic mutation is contributed by the generation. Like even if there are 8 billion people today, that doesn't imply that you somehow got more generic inheritance from your parents than they did from theirs back when there were 6 billion people or whatever. Judging average to be the average per generation (a reasonable inference given the methodology) the last few years won't make much of a difference in a timescale of 250k years

I can't find the article I vaguely remember from a while ago, here's another random one that has mothers in the bronze age ranging from 16-40ish https://www.researchgate.net/publication/314262257_Bronze_Age_Beginnings_The_Conceptualization_of_Motherhood_in_Prehistoric_Europe although you can't really infer much about averages from that.

Anyway yeah there have been periods in time when average age of mothers was younger, but generally if you look back on a long timescale it's been older than people seem to assume. Seems to be quite common to have the notion that women all had children at 16 or whatever back in the day but not much to really bear that out that I can find.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Not even that far back, modern medicine is wonderful

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

Enjoy it while it lasts.

[–] Couldbealeotard 44 points 1 day ago (1 children)

This is framed like 80 generations is a small number, but that's huge. Culture and civilization moves so quickly that even 3 generations ago life is barely recognisable. I can't even imagine what life was like 40 generations ago.

[–] Donkter 33 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Many people don't realize that the amount of change our culture goes through in a lifetime is unfathomable historically. Before the 1800s it took a good decade for news to truly travel around to everyone in a region, and that was considered timely if it happened at all. Farming, hunting, homemaking, war, stayed exactly the same for dozens of years at a time and changes were usually made abruptly due to conflict before stagnating again.

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[–] slazer2au 82 points 1 day ago (3 children)

The lengths Americans will go to in order not to use the metric system is insane.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 day ago

They were discussing converting the AU to 1 'your mom' as a better frame of reference, but France wouldn't sign on

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 day ago (3 children)

I am interested in learning about this metric time.

[–] Dasus 17 points 1 day ago (7 children)

Oh?

"450 mothers ago" is roughly 363,500 megaseconds ago.

To be fair, measuring that in moms seems more intuitive.

[–] needthosepylons 3 points 1 day ago

From your link, I rabbitholed to there and found gold

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[–] thespcicifcocean 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

metric time actually was a thing, and it sucked so nobody used it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It didn't suck exactly, time is just so much more prevalent than other units that switching to a new system was even more contentious. Current time is just as arbitrary (although maximizing for maximum number of prime factors is pretty nice, even if it doesn't mesh nicely with other metric units)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

Metric really missed out by not being dozenal. SMH

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago

The French tried to impose "metric" time way back in the day. Even they learned that was a bad idea and quietly dropped it. The solar system seems to prefer it's base12 time.

I think it maybe helped give rise the the saying: "The French follow no one. And no one follows the French."

[–] Bearlydave 7 points 1 day ago

What is the conversion from imperial mother to metric mother? About 1:1.26?

[–] Zhanzhuang 6 points 1 day ago

Some of my ancestors came to the United States on the Mayflower and that was only like 8 or 9 mothers ago.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 day ago

Do we have a community for genealogy?

[–] [email protected] 94 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yeah only 2 generations ago, LGBT people were considered mentally ill. 4 generations ago women were considered unfit to vote. 8 generations ago about half the US though it was OK to own slaves. It takes a while for ideas to die out. That's why US elections turn out the way they do.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Two steps forward. One step back

[–] thespcicifcocean 6 points 1 day ago

two steps forward, random.randint(1,4) steps back.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (4 children)

Wonder how long it'll take before we get to step forward again. As far as I'm seeing, we're in for a long ride back. Not just for 4 years.

[–] VoterFrog 12 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (6 children)

The American people are pretty fickle. It won't take long for them to become unhappy with the Republican party. Of course once that happens and you and I are celebrating "Yay! We got rid of the fascists!" they'll be going "Hmm... These other guys are pretty uninspiring. Maybe we should try fascism again."

* There's a big asterisk here that this is all predicted on elections continuing unabated. Which is not a given.

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[–] chonglibloodsport 69 points 2 days ago (7 children)

That’s not a well-founded assumption. The average age of first birth was only 21 as recently as 1970. Go back a few hundred years and it’s way younger than that. Many women throughout history became mothers as soon as they were able (right after the onset of puberty). Many cultures had rites of passage into adulthood for boys and girls of that age. There was no such thing as adolescence.

[–] Acamon 31 points 1 day ago (1 children)

As the other commentator says, medieval Europe was mostly early twenties. Studies of stone age remains suggest a first birth age average of 19.5 and contemporary hunter gather societies have a comparable average. Sexual activity generally begins earlier, during adolescence, but the most "reproductively successful" age for beginning childbearing has been shown to be around 18-19. Also, this age at first birth isnt "Average age of a child's mother" as many women would have multiple kids over their life, so the average sibling would have a much older mother at birth than the firstborn.

Its important to remember that puberty has shifted massively since industrialisation, "menarche age has receded from 16.5 years in 1880 to the current 12.5 years in western societies". So the post-puberty fecundity peak, that use to happen 17-19, when women are fully grown enough to minimise birth complications, now happens at a disressingly young 13-15. Not only is this a big social yuck for most western societies, but it's reproductively unideal, because of the complications linked to childbirth at that age.

[–] Fritee 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Huh, that’s interesting. Do we know why the menarche age has receded?

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[–] [email protected] 50 points 2 days ago (17 children)

In Western Europe at least back to the early medieval period it was common for anyone who wasn’t nobility to have their first child around 22. The younger you are the more likely you’re going to have serious (fatal, back then) complications. It was the nobility that was marrying off barely pubescent kids.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 2 days ago

It was the nobility that was marrying off barely pubescent kids.

Same as it ever was.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago

When numbers divide

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Depending on the religion, yes. Otherwise it‘s 12 years per mother, 14 if you’re late.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 day ago

That's also assuming you're the first born of the first born of the first born, and so on. And the further back you go, the more individual kids the average mother is likely to have. After all, you had to have like 12 kids just so 3 of them would make it past 9.

So your greatx12 grandmother might've started having kids at 15, but she still might not have had your ancestor till years later.

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[–] SkunkWorkz 12 points 1 day ago (3 children)

And if everyone of your ancestors was unique (so no inbreeding) 80 mothers ago there would had to be 2^80^ = more than 1.2 septillion people on the planet

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

And if your grandmother had wheels she would be a bicycle.

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[–] shalafi 21 points 2 days ago (3 children)

I knew my great-grandmother, few people do. My great-great-grandmother is an ancient picture on the wall of my dead grandmother's house, from a time when photography was new, a scant few years past daguerreotypes.

4 mothers back is all I can summon, only remember 3.

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