> In the RW menses are effected by the moon.
You could have fooled me. Despite the effects of ten years of drugs
designed to tie my own cycle to 28 days, it remains obstinately at
30-ish. The moon has no effect on it whatsoever.
> A woman on earth doesn't have one period a month she has one every 28
> days (approx.)
Very approx, and the length of the cycle varies with individuals
> We don't know and can never know hether women six thousand years ago
> all had their periods within a week of a full moon.
We don't even care. Modern women, who are biologically near-identical,
have their periods all over the place.
> That would certainly have given them a reason to watch the moon
Only if they had no sensitivity at all to the workings of their own body.
I certainly don't need a moon, calendar, or anything else to tell me when
things are about to happen.
> People used to use a calendar that had 13 months each 28 days long.
> This is a LUNAR month.
Yes. That's because there was this nice visible object in the sky, that
affected lots of relevant things, like tides and the usefulness of herbs.
> Trying to tie Gloranthan female cycles to the RW model is unimaginative
> and sterile.
The RW model is based on human biology. Is having only two arms also
unimaginative and sterile?
> Using the RW model that woman experience fertility once each "cycle"
> (a period of time as yet undetermined on Glorantha) could be used to
> explain the length of a season. Wouldn't that be a neat reas n for the
> length of a season.
It would be interesting to find out what, if anything determines the
magical cycle through the weeks, yes. But I find it very hard to believe
that the menstrual cycle causes it. Is affected by it, to some extent,
yes: I'd wouldn't be surprised at tie-ins with Fertility week and Death
week. But the cause of all those magical fluctuations has got to be more
fundamental than just the reproductive cycle of a minority species
> Complaints about RW females being "perpetually available" ... are
> ridiculous ..Sexual availability has nothing to do with ability to
> conceive.
The anthropology books I've read disagree with you. It's all to do with
evolution. Read the books: if you can't be bothered, here's a vastly
over-simplified version.
If there is no chance of conception, there is, to start with, no reason
for the female to e set up to want sex. Take a look at your average dog
and bitch. No conception: no sex. So the male doesn't get anything from
that particular female. So he has no reason to stay around her, protect
her, etc. Bad news. There are three main solutions to this one:
1) More than one female per protecting male. See most herd animals for
details.
2) No need for male protection: various animals where the mother looks
after the young exclusively, chasing the males off, or the young get no
protection at all. Given the extended helplesness of human infants, and
of human pregnancy, no chance.
3) Female receptive to male advances for the majority of the time. The
appropriate hormones are more likely to be around if she's capable of
conceiving, and it increases his chance of passing on his genes. This is
the human solution.
Now, would someone who's read more of this than I have like to go into more detail?
> as other people have pointed out.
Did they? All the answers to this point I noticed agreed with me.
> RW women can't have more than one child a year regardless of how many
> seasons they have.
But their chance of having that one is increased the more of the time
they spend fertile. I gather there are a considerable number of modern
women who are having problems producing a child for just this reason.
Stories of dashing home from the office to make the most of the fertile
hour...
> I think that the one menses a Gloranthan season works very well!
Since it isn't a major change, it think it might work - sort of. But I
don't see any reason for it.
> I believe that reflecting on how it would effect human behavior and
> society would be a good exercise. I'd be fascinated by what evolv s
> from this theory.
Go ahead, have fun. But for goodness sake do the background reading
first. There's an awful lot of it to cover.
> I doubt it would make human's unrecognizable for player characters.
Depends on the sideeffects. One period per year certainly would.
Jane Williams jane_at_williams.nildram.co.ukhttp://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~janewill/gloranth/index.shtml
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