This is not how most women on earth nurse. A prime example emerged a few years ago in a study of hunter-gatherer Bushmen in the Kalahari Desert of southern Africa (the folks depicted in the movie The Gods Must Be Crazy) Bushman males and females have plenty of intercourse, and no one uses contraceptives, but the women have a child only about every four years. Initially, this seemed easy to explain. Western scientists looked at this pattern and said, “They’re hunter-gatherers: life for them must be short, nasty, and brutish; they must all be starving.” Malnutrition induces cessation of
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