pitchypeechee t1_ishnfkw wrote on October 16, 2022 at 1:36 AM

Reply to comment by Newbielurker in TIL: Sperms were thought to move by wiggling their tails side-to-side, like eels, for 350 years. But research shows that they roll as they move forward like a spinning top. by vect77

Do you mean we as in every single human culture or maybe there are some who figured it out earlier than others?

Newbielurker t1_ishsosh wrote on October 16, 2022 at 2:18 AM

Well we definitely didn’t discover it prior to the spreading of Homo sapiens out of Africa. So that’s still about two thirds of our existence as a species spent as a collective.

The big shift from “our tribes survival” being the focus to “me and our family’s survival” being the focus really came about as farming, and domestication of animals lead to physical investment in possessions that provide long term value - this created a need to find someone to pass onto, and being closer to seeing how animals breed lead to awareness of our own ways of breeding. Some societies made this adjustment later than others, and some have barely made that adjustment at all