‘Time, Too, Grows on the Moon’: Some Evidence for Knight’s Theory of a Human Universal 1

Our species evolved in Africa between 150 to 200 thousand years ago, dispersing across the world within the last 100 thousand years. There is growing archaeological evidence that by the time this dispersal began, the essential elements of symbolic culture were already established. Menstruation would have been uniquely salient to males as a reliable indicator of imminent fertility. By painting up in shared blood, or using blood-coloured substitutes such as red ochre, coalitions of nursing, pregnant and cycling females could ‘scramble’ the relevant information, preventing ‘philanderer’ males from discriminating between them. Synchronized female ‘sex strike’ presupposes an appropriate external clock. With late Middle Pleistocene technology, hunting expeditions would often require overnight travel, presupposing nocturnal light.