From ‘The Origin of Our Species’ by Chris Stringer

“From the evidence of burials and symbolic objects, rituals and religious beliefs probably go back more than 100,000 years, but could they actually have been central to the origins of modern humans? A British anthropologist, Chris Knight, certainly thinks so, and in a wide-ranging synthesis of data from present-day anthropology, primatology and sociobiology,

together with archaeology, he and his collaborators have argued that women collectively produced a social revolution in Africa over 100,000 years ago. The symbolic use of red ochre began as part of a female response to accumulating social and reproductive stresses caused by the increasing demands of pregnancy, infant and child care, and the need for male provisioning. The blood-red pigment was deployed by menstruating and non-menstruating women, smeared on their bodies to spread the taboo of menstruation across alliances of female kin. This instituted a 'sex-strike', which could only be broken when the men returned from collaborative hunts with food to share. Female rituals evolved around the sex-strike, male rituals around the hunt (begun under a dark moon, returning at full moon, thus linking menstrual and lunar cycles and the blood of women and of animals), and tribal rituals of celebration and feasting would follow the return of the successful hunters.”

Chris Stringer, London Natural History Museum