Predicting Weather By The Moon - Xavier University Libraries

Weather By The Moon
females, would have had to keep going as long as they could
have while there was light to gather enough food. When
they couldn’t hunter/gather, which would have been 3 days
in the month, what else was there to do? Could this have
been the time reserved for mating? It could follow that
human bodies mighthave developed a lunar-analogue time
clock to control the secretion of chemicals responsible
for the breeding cycle which could have become the menstrual
cycle. Given that the hunter/gatherer period lasted a
million years, there was time for such a biogenetic rhythm
to evolve.
The menstrual cycle is 28-35 days in most of the other
primates as well, especially the Great Apes, the gorillas,
chimpanzees and orangutans. Some, like the New World
and Old World monkeys are still around 30-40 days, but
the Persimians, the more primitive primates, are only once
a year. From a primitive form of primate that hasn’t evolved,
they are more like non-primates.
In the rest of the animal kingdom, seasonal reasons
for ovulation patterns seem more important than Moon
phases. That way young can be born in warmer weather. The
Ungulates; (the giraffes, the elephants and antelopes) are
all seasonal, as are reptiles. Rodents, like rats, rabbits are
flat out all the time. Also, the place humans evolved may
not have been very seasonal, winter and summer in northern
Africa being of no special significance. All of the evidence
collected with non-primates indicates that they breed
at that time because of environmental factors due later;
spring producing fresh growth and available food. It is well
documented that human female flat-mates adjust their men-
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