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Hmmm... the fertility cult of Fauna in Rome held its rite at the beginning of December; it involved the female celebrants working themselves into a sexual frenzy and then (apparently) fucking anyone they could find... it says here that when all else failed they would have sexual congress with donkeys, tho to me that sounds apocryphal (women are often accused of bestial leanings by men - I first noticed this in the sex museum in Amsterdam).
Aaanyway, the point being, that this would mean that the throng of children conceived during the rite would have been born at the beginning of August, so that most of their early months would have been winter ones, which doesn't strike me as particularly good planning. I think that fertility rites are more often associated with agriculture than procreation (though they are of course connected).
It might be worth noting that periods are far more regular now, for most women, than they were in the past - this is thought to be because of dietary improvements. Medication also contributes to regularising the cycle (and does destroy synchronisation), while fixing it to the lunar 28-day month, unless you fiddle with the Pill. So presumably some of the biology of synchronisation would also have contributed to increasing the general fertility of a population. |
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