RCG-I Seasonal Salon Spring Equinox 2010

RCGI Home Page

Salon Home Page

Spring Equinox 2010 Salon Home Page

First Blood/Last Blood

Dancing On the Fourth Line

Approaches to the Study of Goddess Myths and Images Part IV

How Walking, Giving Birth, and Befriending Others Made Us Human

Contributors

How Walking, Giving Birth, and Befriending Others Made Us Human

When humans came on the scene, there was no way to predict whether this new type of primate would succeed in the world or not. If you ask paleontologists which factors tipped the balance in our favor, they usually talk about the following:

1. Walking upright on two feet enabled us to cover more territory with less expenditure of energy. It also freed up our “hands” to collect more food, to carry tools around, and to manipulate the environment more to our liking.

2. Our brain size increased dramatically over time. This enabled us to have more cells for responding, thinking, planning, remembering, and developing language.

3. We evolved to give birth to offspring with large brains in not very large skulls; so the fact that human babies have flexible skulls (soft spots) means that they pop out ready to do a whole lot more learning than any other primate.

Recent research fills in this picture with more information, much of which revolves around the body wisdom of the mothers of the human race. Here are some findings discussed in The Invisible Sex, by Adovasio, Soffer, and Page:

“We” as hominids began to walk on two feet on a regular basis between 3 and 3.9 million years ago. When walking upright became our primary mode of travel, we had to develop a better skeleton to go with it. That meant that our legs had to fit closer together than other primates, and we required a narrower pelvis to make the legs move efficiently. For females, this meant that they had a narrower birth canal through which to give birth. The shape of our “new” bones also meant that the baby had to turn in the birth canal during delivery, and emerge with its head facing toward the mother’s back.

This change meant that it was no longer possible for us to give birth like other primates, who had wide pelvic bones and whose babies faced the front. The difference is dramatic:

When a monkey baby or an ape baby begins to emerge, the mother, who will be squatting or on all fours in a tree or somewhere else by herself, can reach backward and guide the baby out, deal with the umbilicus and placenta, and pull the baby toward her breast. But if a human mother were to reach down when her baby’s head emerges and try to gently pull it out, the pressure she would exert, no matter how gentle, would tend to pull against the natural curve of the baby’s spinal cord, risking neurological damage or even death. (Adovasio et al., p. 65)

Simply put, the early hominid mother would have required help in order to give birth successfully. Humans are the only animal for which this is true. If we hadn’t made certain other changes based on body wisdom, our ancestors might well have died out long ago.

Fortunately, hormones and brain chemistry were working to help balance out the greater perils involved in delivery. It has long been recognized that the hormone oxytocin plays a role in the mother’s delivery and bonding with her child. Named after the Greek term for “rapid birth,” oxytocin in the woman’s body stimulates her contractions during labor, the ejection of her milk to feed the newborn, and her overwhelming emotional response to the baby.

These factors alone would make it a great asset for successful childbirth. But there’s more. This wise little hormone also floods the body during stress, leading women to respond differently than the “fight or flight” options that we have all learned about. (Men also have oxytocin release in stress, but for them the testosterone release is more powerful, resulting in the fight or flight response on more occasions.)

Klein and Taylor studied both hormones and women’s behaviors under stress, and discovered that women’s experience was to calm down and reach out. As Adovasio et al. describe their findings:

Before long they had determined that when women face a stressful situation, they are flooded by the same brain chemicals which produce the fight or flight response but also by oxytocin, which buffers the fight or flight response and encourages them to tend children and gather with other women. The researchers found that the more women engage in this “tend and befriend” response, the more oxytocin is released into the bloodstream, leading to even greater calm. (69)

It turns out this “tend and befriend” response to stress was very helpful to those early hominids in delivery. Not only did oxytocin stimulate the mother under stress, it also stimulated other females to come to the mother’s aid. So, even before they had the words to describe them, our most distant ancestors probably had midwives working to help deliver the next generation.

The ability to tend and befriend was, as far as our development is concerned, just as important as fight or flight. It could be as important for a new mother to be able to care for and quiet her offspring as to flee or fight a predator. Befriending not only the baby but also other females meant that there could be strength in numbers, and more help with food gathering and watching offspring. In a real sense, the fact that we succeeded through becoming social creatures rose from this ancestral hormone.

Adovasio et al. conclude that the “tend and befriend” response has its place in successful births even today:

. . . women whose labor and birthing is attended by another woman have far shorter labor, fewer caesarean sections, and even more loving, less listless interactions with their newborns. The presence of a sympathetic woman and the presence of oxytocin seem to be a reinforcing mechanism with a very ancient lineage. (70)

One more wonderful fact about oxytocin—the more someone uses it, the greater the production of the hormone. In real life, that means that the more we tend to others, or befriend them in time of need, the greater is our capacity to do it again. And, because the presence of the hormone stimulates its production in others as well, the person we help has a greater capacity for tending and befriending too.

My mother always used to say, “When you feel bad about yourself, reach out and do something good for someone else. It will make you feel better.” She was right, or course. This is an example of maternal wisdom resonating with body wisdom. In terms of contributions to our species' ability to survive, oxytocin has been, over the long haul, as important as any technology we have ever created.

Birth-Giver of Gönnersdorf (Germany, c. 11,000 BCE) This slate tablet shows two women in profile, a newborn, and two horses. Women were depicted in profile with a few abstract strokes. The same is true for the baby at birth. The color overlay of engraved lines was made by archaeologist Alexander Marshack, who painstakingly researched Ice Age line engravings and geometrics carved on bone and stone. This birth scene is a rare find. Though humankind’s earliest artworks celebrated female figures and engravings, this one stands apart as a literal representation of childbirth. Although it looks as though the baby's cord is attached to the woman in the back, the engraved lines are very faint. I believe the line also connects the baby to the woman in front. because of the long tradition of midwives helping women by supporting them from behind.

Marshack, Alexander. Exploring the Mind of Ice Age Man. National Geographic, Vol. 145, No. 1, 1975, pp. 65-89. Images on p. 84.