I remember reading "The Sexual Life of Savages" by Malinowski, and reading about the earliest pornographic film that has survived, "The Grass Sandwich", currently in one of the American Sex Institutes. I researched human sexuality through the ages a lot and came to the conclusion that women were once much more sexual than they have been in recorded history. I think that human culture was not stressed to survive in their environments before the last ice age, physically or socially. Societies were probably matriarchal then and much more sexual. Remnants of female sexual expression such as the isolated Trobiand Islanders visited by Malinowski in the late 19th century were now quite unique. The Pacific Islanders didn't have a word for work in their language. Malinowski recorded that women have their first pregnancy at about 25 years old even though "their vaginas are filled with men's semen" from a very young age to quote an elder Malinowski talked to. Malinowski couldn't figure out why the young women didn't get pregnant at age 16 like the Europeans.
Hormones are a very highly evolved, and complex system. I took an endocrinology course at university, and science understands very little about what evolutionary role hormones have. It is quite possible that age of reproductive capability would be controlled by the endocrine system as affected by environmental and social stress. It makes sense in evolutionary terms. When environmental stress increases you want a greater rate of reproduction to compensate for inevitable losses. When times are good, and what we would say is idyllic, you want reproduction to replace just the people lost to old age. Our sexuality isn't lost per se, it has been buried, and the troubles that adolescents girls have with self esteem, and eating disorders is probably dependent on how much we suppress and discourage their sexuality.
I was really struck when I became interested in the biology of sexuality that there was virtually no information on the subject in any of the university libraries I searched. There is no history of sexuality, no evolution of sexuality, and virtually no biology of human sexuality in any library in Canada. In fact very little is known about female sexuality. The female orgasm is marked by the contraction of the pubococygeus muscle and I've only felt that contraction during sex once in my life. The G-spot orgasm almost disappeared in the 20th century, probably the vaginal orgasm that Freud was so criticized for in the 1970's. Our ability to enjoy sexual pleasure has been seriously compromised around the world, which makes books like "The Sexual Life of Savages" and temples like those at "Konarak" windows to a world we otherwise couldn't imagine, at least not without public censure. I would guess that the virus upset our evolutionary balance and put pressure on endocrine systems to allow reproductive capability at an earlier age, which caused the population growth, which increased the social pressures and adversely affected the development and experience of sexuality in adolescence.
Chovil suggests that pregnancy is related to stress, and that stressors increase the risk of conception. He suggests that this explains teenaged pregnancy while primitive societies can have teens having sex from 12 and not getting pregnant until 25.
I guess the researcher of those islanders did not see the female village elders hand out the enourmous quantities of wild yams to the young women having sex. It is well known that wild yams contain phyto-estrogens which act as natural contraceptives.
Then he conveniently forgets about the infertile couples who barely conceive unless given hormone treatment, which may be because of estrogen-like substances leaching from plastic, herbicides and the like.
However, Chovil is right about both the biology of sexuality and the history of sexuality being a recent rediscovery. More than likely, prior to the modern era, sexuality was erased from the records by censors since the dawn of history.
One clue to this are the temple prostitutes of the Astarte cult, which may have resulted in the wake of the dominance of nomads on horseback over matriarchal agrarian communes.
Another clue are the idols of fat naked women who are possibly representations of a Neolithic fertility goddess. This woman is similar to the Irish goddess with the vulva on display.
In Japan, the mythological story of how the gods got the sun goddess out of the cave - a solar eclipse story - has one goddess showing her underparts to the other god, causing so much noise that the sun goddess was curious enough to see what was up. Quite possibly the stripper was her brother dressed in drag showing his privates, considering that cross-dressing is acceptable in Asian culture.
Overall though, the increasing stress of the world does not lead to increased pregnancy. Rather, the stressed girls are the one more likely to seek comfort in premarital sex, which results in a higher risk of pregnancy.
Unfortunately, it looks like wild yams are not a popular treat for young girls in developed nations. If they were, then teenaged pregnancy could be cured!
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