PRE -HISTORY

THE FIRST DEPICTIONS OF PERIODS?

We will never know for certain how early humans dealt with their periods.

It was unlikely that people would have what we now call a “regular cycle”. Malnourishment, bodily exhaustion, plus vitamin and mineral deficiency, would mean that many individuals would have had very irregular bleeds, often starting their periods much later than we do now, sometimes even not at all.

Representations of menstruation can be found in prehistoric art around the world, as you can see in the image here.

Archaeologists have compared these images with other rock art from prehistory and believe they depict menstrual blood, due to how blood and people with vulvas have been depicted in the rock art both in Africa and Australia.