this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2025
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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day 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 1 day 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.

[–] slazer2au 81 points 2 days ago (3 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 days ago (3 children)

I am interested in learning about this metric time.

[–] Dasus 18 points 2 days ago (7 children)

Oh?

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

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

[–] needthosepylons 4 points 2 days ago

From your link, I rabbitholed to there and found gold

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[–] thespcicifcocean 9 points 2 days ago (2 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 days 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."

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 days ago

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

[–] Bearlydave 7 points 2 days ago

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

[–] Couldbealeotard 45 points 2 days 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 34 points 2 days 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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[–] [email protected] 31 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

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

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

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Not even that far back, modern medicine is wonderful

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[–] [email protected] 95 points 3 days 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 3 days ago (2 children)

Two steps forward. One step back

[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days 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 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days 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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[–] thespcicifcocean 7 points 2 days ago

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

[–] chonglibloodsport 69 points 3 days ago (4 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.

[–] [email protected] 51 points 3 days ago (18 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 3 days ago

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

Same as it ever was.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 days ago

Could we say (for no other reason than I'm stoned and it sounds good) the rough average mother-age is 18-ish? Then there would be roughly ~110 mothers since Jesus cheated and respawned for our sins.

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[–] Acamon 32 points 3 days 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 2 days ago (1 children)

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

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[–] HonoraryMancunian 9 points 3 days ago (3 children)

First births yes, but what about average age? Our ancestors may have been second born, third born, eighth born etc

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 days ago

Do we have a community for genealogy?

[–] Zhanzhuang 6 points 2 days 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] 23 points 3 days ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 days 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.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 days ago

You would have a lot more death during pregnancy / childbirth though.

[–] SkunkWorkz 13 points 2 days 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] 10 points 2 days ago (1 children)

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

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[–] shalafi 21 points 3 days ago (2 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.

[–] TheBat 13 points 3 days ago (1 children)

4 mothers back is all I can summon,

What's the spell?

[–] _stranger_ 15 points 3 days ago

"I'm feeling hungry and mildly pregnant"

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago

When numbers divide

[–] dariusj18 21 points 3 days ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 days ago

I was thinking that it's now 81 mothers ago, but then I got distracted by the fact that there was no year 0AD and now I'm thinking that roughly 80 is good enough.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 days ago

Let's push it one step further and frame history since agriculture, 9500 years ago, against the upper limit of a human lifetime now, about 100 years. This would mean recorded times started only less than 100 human lifespans ago. Bleh

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