G’durnit, that’s the book! I recognize the title. Thanks pravnik. I read the book in the 80’s, and it was possibly years older by then. I wonder if they still hold to this belief.
It may well be that their beliefs about pregnancy were formed before they learned to domesticate animals. Even in contemporary America you can find people with long held relgiious beliefs about the way the world works that are directly contradicted by all evidence.
And, as has been mentioned before, societies can come up with ingenious explainations for things, which in a world without the final authority of the scientific method, are just as believable as anything else. Remember, it wasn’t too long ago that we believed that maggots emerged spontaniously from garbage, based on the clear fact that if you put out a bunch of garbage, eventually maggots will appear. Plenty of evidence to work from, but still the wrong conclusion.
Finally, things that make it a dead giveaway to us arn’t so obvious elsewhere. Familial resemblence isn’t so compelling in a fairly homogenous tribal setting. Timing isn’t such a giveaway when there is extended breastfeeding, malnutrition, and later puberty complicates things.
Apparently they still do, or did fairly recently. Annette Weiner did ethnographic studies of the Trobriands between 1988 and 1993 with a particular focus on women’s role in culture, and she also made note of the belief.
Did your professor state whether the births were 3-4 years apart, or the children were 3-4 years apart? We need to know that because infanticide was standard practice amongst HG groups, and any unwanted children were routinely killed.
Children 3-4 years apart may well be indicative of births 2.5 years apart or even closer.