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Eugine_Nier comments on Open Thread, May 5 - 11, 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion
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I'm not convinced that's true. I believe something resembling condoms, made of cotton or animal intestine, goes as far back as ancient Egypt.
Avicenna's medical encyclopedia (available in Europe starting in the High Middle Ages) lists dozens of birth control methods, many of which probably even "worked".
And chemical methods via plants going even further back, by analogy to modern and recent hunter gatherers.
Evolutionary speaking, pharaonic Egypt is recent.
If birth control had been as widespread as it is among present-day non-religious WEIRD people, the time since ancient Egypt to today would have been more than enough.
Yes, it's also interesting to look at the reasons why it wasn't widespread for much of the time in question.
My guess is that memetic evolution suppresses birth control faster than genetic evolution can adept to it. Periodically we get outbreaks, like present-day non-religious WEIRD culture, where the suppressing memes collapse due to events in the larger memetic ecosystem.