Did cavewomen, and ancient women in general, have larger or smaller boobs than we currently do?

Who knows, what with all the plastic surgery! You’ll see a pencil thin woman with huge Winnebagos.

I suppose at some point in human evolution, huge oppai became a symbol for fertility, resulting in large breasted females being more likely to reproduce, increasing the trend towards more inflation.

Additionally, fat deposits probably wouldn’t naturally go only to the breasts. I wonder how the size has been needed. Evolution goes that route. I just don’t know how ‘we’ fit in today!!

I think it has a lot to do with our modern diet, I’ve heard of artificial hormones contributing as well, although they aren’t used so much these days.

@noelleptc I agree, I bet if cavewomen wore bras they would look as big as modern day women, weird visual…

Since none of us lived back in the caveman days, how would we know to make a comparison?

Even in the last ten years, average breast size in the US and Britain has increased from 34B to 36C. That probably has a lot to do with increased exposure to estrogen. Aside from hormone replacement therapy, there’s the fact that girls are experiencing puberty much earlier now, leading to more estrogen exposure over their lifetime; and the fact that women tend to have fewer children, which also results in less lifetime exposure to estrogen.

The evolutionary swelling of the human breast must have been driven by sexual selection, as @ragingloli says. But that development likely goes way back, considering that this figurine dates back 32,000 years. Thee cave paintings of Lascaux are only half that old.

@john65pennington well historians definitely know what ancient man looked like so….someone has to know.

@ilana that makes a lot of sense. It probably goes hand in hand with young girls being a lot taller now than ever before, having their periods sooner, yada yada.

@thorninmud totally didn’t think about that statue and things like that. excellent point thank you.

Oops, too late to edit. I meant to say ”...women tend to have fewer children, which also results in more lifetime exposure to estrogen.

I would venture to guess they would be on the smaller size as being hunter gathers the woman worked their asses off just to stay fed and survive. That being said most women today who are fit and trim as in exercise a lot, generally have smaller boobs. I know this ‘cause I looked it up on Wiki as I never stare at women at the gym….just wouldn’t be polite! ;)

@john65pennington You’d be surprised at what they can find out whenever we find remains.

What’s a cave(wo)man?

i just added ‘breasts’ to my topics

I don’t actually know, but will put forth an educated guess based on my understanding of evolution. I’m guessing you’re probably talking about ancient H. sapiens and not other hominids too. Since there is a minimum amount of milk a woman must produce to provide sufficient nutrition to offspring, I would say a woman with a certain minimum breast size would be evolutionarily more fit than a flat-chested woman.

A man would select a mate based on perceived fitness, so breast size would factor into his thinking i.e. all things being relatively equal, the woman with larger breasts may have less difficulty mating.

If one looks at chimpanzees (our closest living relative), one notices the females have breasts, but they don’t look as prominent as on humans. So I would guess that their have been varying breast sizes throughout human history, but they have been gradually selected for larger size over the last 100,000 years.

Just a guess again, I haven’t studied it. Sorry this isn’t a fact-based answer.

@cockswain my thoughts were that….ancient humans moved around a lot…they had to be fit….having huge boobs would get in the way. and fit women tend to have smaller boobs as well….but, at the same time, having babies who depended way more heavily on breast milk (i’m assuming this….but it seems like a safe assumption?) would make you think that bigger breasts would have an advantage in that area. i am TORN man.

Deni, I’m very pleased to discuss boobs with you. I agree that we see very fit women with smaller boobs, but small boobs probably still can produce enough milk for a baby. Tiny boobs may not though, so there is may be some minimum useful size from an evolutionary perspective.

I think large boobs, while getting in the way of maybe running long distances, probably didn’t impede a woman’s ability to survive locally too badly. Particularly if the males were helping more.

@deni mmyes. it wouldn’t be that inconvenient i suppose. you are knowledgeable.