That reminds me of a recent study that determined (for pre-agricultural populations I believe it was) that the median age for parents at the time of any given birth was something like ~22 for women and ~28-30 for men, so while there historically was an age gap it was very close with both parents generally still being in their 20s.
AFAIK that’s similar to what’s known about the medieval period in europe, too, with most marriages happening with both participants around or above 20, and political marriages involving children or young teens very explicitly not involving consummation, cohabitation, or even unsupervised contact until both parties were older teens or in their twenties, with exceptions to that being lurid scandals.
The whole libertarian fantasy of like “strong middle aged alpha male patriarchs” getting their pick of child brides is ahistorical nonsense in most contexts. Like I’m not gonna say that warlords or other elite fancy lads were never able to do heinous things with societal approval or that some cultures in some time periods didn’t have even worse standards than the bloodthirsty savages of medieval europe somehow with ideas like “adulthood starts at menarche” cropping up in some places, just that the whole libertarian idea of the past as like some pulpy sword and sorcery youth-fixated predator playground is complete nonsense.
That reminds me of a recent study that determined (for pre-agricultural populations I believe it was) that the median age for parents at the time of any given birth was something like ~22 for women and ~28-30 for men, so while there historically was an age gap it was very close with both parents generally still being in their 20s.
AFAIK that’s similar to what’s known about the medieval period in europe, too, with most marriages happening with both participants around or above 20, and political marriages involving children or young teens very explicitly not involving consummation, cohabitation, or even unsupervised contact until both parties were older teens or in their twenties, with exceptions to that being lurid scandals.
The whole libertarian fantasy of like “strong middle aged alpha male patriarchs” getting their pick of child brides is ahistorical nonsense in most contexts. Like I’m not gonna say that warlords or other elite fancy lads were never able to do heinous things with societal approval or that some cultures in some time periods didn’t have even worse standards than the bloodthirsty savages of medieval europe somehow with ideas like “adulthood starts at menarche” cropping up in some places, just that the whole libertarian idea of the past as like some pulpy sword and sorcery youth-fixated predator playground is complete nonsense.