“Conceptions and Misconceptions § Difficulties in Understanding Sex”, 1996 (; similar):
…For those who like their facts cut-and-dried (‘were the Aborigines ignorant of the connection between sex and reproduction?, answer yes or no’), the outcome of a hundred years of research must seem singularly disappointing…Assuming the anthropological record gives at least a rough idea of the reality, the question is why there should have been so much variability from one place to another, from one person to another, and even from one time to another in the same person. A full answer would be difficult and no doubt tedious. Nevertheless, it seems worth trying to identify some of the main factors.
As numerous commentators have remarked, the empirical difficulties in arriving at the ‘facts of life’ were of no mean order. Only after the invention of the microscope was it possible to confirm that the necessary and sufficient condition for conception was the coalescence of two tiny parcels of genetic material, one produced and located inside a mature female, the other ejaculated into the female by a mature male. It was not, of course, necessary to wait that long in order to infer a relationship between sex and reproduction.
But what sort of relationship? The natural occurrence of infertility in both males and females must have made it obvious that sexual intercourse was not sufficient for conception. Inferring its necessity from gross observation might be simple where female celibacy was practiced (‘females who do not have sexual intercourse do not become pregnant’), but such a state was unknown among Aborigines. The temporal relationship between copulation and pregnancy was haphazard, while the spatial correlation between entry of the penis and exit of the infant, though suggestive, was hardly decisive.
In the absence of compelling evidence, the subject was therefore wide open for conjecture. Although spirit-entry was by far the most popular theory, there were places where it was apparently not taken seriously (viz. in Cape York Peninsula). Sexual intercourse was often thought to facilitate spirit-entry, but credence was also given to the possibility of conception as an autonomous mystical event. Materialist speculations implicating semen and menses gained wide currency (usually in conjunction with animistic assumptions), but in some places they were severely discountenanced by the custodians of sacred lore. In modern times the diffusion of European notions added a new dimension, generating distinctions between the enlightened and the benighted both within tribes and between them.
…Men did not need to understand the role of semen in order to copulate frequently; nor was male sexual jealousy dependent upon a knowledge of fertilization. The attraction of a mystical theory of conception, as compared with materialist conjectures about semen and menses, was its amenability to serve as an ideology ascribing to men reproductive powers in excess of those evident to ordinary observation. Once harnessed to powerful sectional interests within the traditional Aboriginal polity, it either eliminated rival theories or maintained them in a state of subordination where they languished until the arrival of the first anthropologists.