Sexual Intercourse in Pre-literate societies

Abstract

Pre-literate societies include pre-colonial and sub-Saharan Africa, the Americas, the Pacific and Australia. We have the most detailed knowledge of sub-Saharan Africa, especially as many of its characteristics have survived to the present day. In terms of sexually there was a broad similarity between these societies. In most of Eurasia there has been over the last five millenia an association between the use of the plough on good soils, a concern for the identity of descendants, the control of premarital and extramarital sexuality, and the identification of female sexual virtue as being at the heart of mortality. The paper describes the situation in sub-Saharan Africa, especially West Africa, where the complex of shifting cultivation with hoe tillage, communal land and lack of family land inheritance has meant that female virtue is associated with high fertility rather than the restriction of sexuality to marriage. Traditional society was characterized by the punishment of infertile women, considerable se...