Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2015 November 29

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November 29

Correlation between sex and and childbirth

Are there any known cultures that haven't discovered the correlation between sex and childbirth? — Preceding unsigned comment added by The dancing werewolf (talk • contribs)

There are certainly cultures that don't have the indigenous knowledge of the specific nature of spermatazoa and eggs. The usual idea is that the man's seed gives form to the woman's blood. One cannot prove a negative, but I have never come acrost an example of total ignorance of the necessity of the male's role, and the relationship in some form of menstruation with the alternative of pregnancy. I do remember being told that the story of the Virgin Birth was an obvious forgery by some rather insistent anti-Christians, because the Jews at the time of Christ did not understand conception. That claim's just risible historical ignorance. μηδείς (talk) 05:41, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

It's a very interesting topic in anthropology - interesting in the sense that, like cannibalism, we're very keen on finding people who do it/believe it. Bronisław Malinowski, one of the key figures in early 'professional' anthropology spent a great deal of time on the Trobriand Islands and ended up writing three books about it, including the charmingly titled The Sexual Life of Savages in North-Western Melanesia where he described the Melanesians' belief that males are not involved in the creation of children, who are instead created by/filled with baloma. Did they really believe that? Malinowski was obviously convinced and opined that it was due to the open sexuality the islanders practiced (they supposedly started having sex as young children and were pretty free and easy about the topic). They still claim that they do but it is not all evident that they're ignorant of basic biology.

When talking about "savages", it's sometimes easy to fall back on the trope that they're all simple, ignorant, people. Malinowski did. Yet it's fairly clear that their actual belief in baloma is a lot like a Catholic's in transubstantiation: a dogma you have to espouse belief in, but are not at all interested in examining critically because you know it's just a dogma. In the 70s and 80s, a lot of the early anthropology field work began to be examined more critically, particularly with the novel view that the people being studied were not all simpletons - and a lot of the early work was found to be tall tales, credulous belief in the truth of whatever you were told, and similar. Malinowski's discussions of Melanesian sex fell into those categories. 99.235.223.170 (talk) 14:36, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Do me a Faber

According to Armin Faber, he was repatriated in 1944 due to (faked) epilepsy or "ill health". I find that rather hard to believe. Two questions: (1) Can anybody confirm or debunk this? (2) Were not-obviously disabled POWs repatriated during the war? Clarityfiend (talk) 05:47, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Some good detail about this kind of escape is in The Colditz Myth: British and Commonwealth Prisoners of War in Nazi Germany by S. P. MacKenzie (pp. 340-342). Annoyingly, page 341 is missing from the Google Books preview, but it does highlight the cases of Richard Pape who was repatriated after faking acute nephritis and Paddy Byrne, along with several others that he instructed, who were sent home from Colditz by pretending to be mentally ill. Alansplodge (talk) 10:59, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

No confirmation as such, but The Focke-Wulf 190: a famous German fighter by Heinz J. Nowarra (1965) has "(...) as a prisoner of war he successfully deceived the British authorities into believing that he was an epileptic. He was repatriated, as a result, in 1944, and flew again in action as a fighter-pilot until the end of the war, and was still alive in 1965". ---Sluzzelin talk 11:06, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Hmmm... this detailed article, Unintentional Gift (reproduced from the June 1986 edition of FlyPast with kind permission from the publishers), says; "Faber was shipped off to Canada and after two escape attempts he was repatriated just before the end of the war due to ill health." Alansplodge (talk) 11:38, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Okay, possibly he was repatriated per The Focke-Wulf 190, but Unintentional Gift sounds wildly implausible. Why would the Allies have bothered when the end of the war was in sight (and for mere ill health), and why would the Germans have gone to the trouble of taking him back when they had more pressing concerns and not much of an air force left? Anyway, thanks all. Clarityfiend (talk) 10:37, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

Perhaps the motivation was that the Allies wanted their sick prisoners-of-war back and didn't want the Germans to claim that it was a one-way street. Repatriations were facilitated by the Red Cross if I recall correctly, so there may not have been an option to decline a repatriation without defying the ICRC. Alansplodge (talk) 11:32, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

Also, don't underestimate actual compassion. Even in the middle of a war, with the most real of realpolitik, officials don't become completely heartless (look at Al-Megrahi – the Scottish Government released him even though they knew it would be a propaganda coup for Gaddafi and cause a diplomatic crisis with the US, because the guy had advanced prostate and bone cancer, and only had a few months left to live). Smurrayinchester 13:53, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

Although whether sending a sick person into the wreckage of Germany is actually compassionate could be open to debate. Alansplodge (talk) 18:14, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

Picture of David Jewett Waller, Sr.

The picture of David Jewett Waller, Sr., allegedly from the early 1830s

The picture at right, of David Jewett Waller, has been bugging me for a while. In the book where I found it, it's captioned "David J. Waller, age 18". Now, given that Waller was born in 1815, this would put the date of the photo at 1833 (or possibly 1834). But that would be a full six years before the first photograph of a person was taken! Can anyone help me pin down the actual date this was taken? Or is this by some mistake a photo of his son (in which case it would date to about 1864)? Or is this just a really accurate drawing that I'm idiotically mistaking for a photograph? --Jakob (talk) aka Jakec 17:29, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

It looks like an 1860s-era photo (not a drawing) and an age of 48 would be a lot more likely than 18. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:49, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

I agree, the style of dress is more in line with the 1860s than than the 1830s. I suspect that the age stated in the source is a typo. That said... while we can call the accuracy of the source into question, we should not (ourselves) take a guess as to his actual age in the photo. Blueboar (talk) 22:25, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Contacting the book's author would be worth a try. Either he made an error himself, or the source of the picture contains the error. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:55, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

Does the book include a credit for the photo? If it's not on the same page, there might be a list of photo credits at the front or back of the book. --70.49.170.168 (talk) 09:43, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

• To me he looks well under 40. —Tamfang (talk) 05:39, 4 December 2015 (UTC)