What was the average age of puberty 1000 years ago

Children aged 10 and 11 are sexually mature, and neither they nor society are suitably prepared for the implications of that.

This is the message of Professors Mark Hanson and Peter Gluckman, whose review of the evolution of puberty is published online this week in Trends in Endocrinology and Metabolism.

Hanson and Gluckman, who respectively head the Centre for the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) at the University of Southampton, and the Liggins Institute at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, researched the age of puberty stretching back beyond the Stone Age.

They found that Paleolithic girls arrived at menarche - the first occurrence of menstruation - between seven and 13 years. This is a similar age to modern girls, which suggests that this is the evolutionarily determined age of puberty in girls.

'This would have matched the degree of psychosocial maturation necessary to function as an adult in Paleolithic society based on small groups of hunter-gatherers,' they write.

Disease and poor nutrition became more common as humans settled, causing puberty to be delayed. Modern hygiene, nutrition and medicine have allowed the age of menarche to fall to its original range.

However, today there is a mismatch between sexual maturity and psychosocial maturity, with sexual maturity occurring much earlier. This mismatch is a result of society becoming vastly more complex, with psychosocial maturity therefore taking longer to reach.

'For the first time in our 200,000 year history as a species, humans become sexually mature before becoming psychologically equipped to function as adults in society,' explains Professor Hanson.

'All our social systems work on the presumption that the two types of maturity coincide. But this is no longer the case and never will be again because we cannot change biological reality. We have to work out a new set of structures - schooling, for example - to deal with this reality.'

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If you're reading this right now, the odds are high that you got your first period in middle school — the average age of first menstruation today is 12.5. Based on my own anecdotal research, I'd say the odds are also high that if you got your first period at that age, at least one older woman in your life remarked about how "young" you were to be dealing with ye old Crimson Menace. That's because, historically speaking, you probably were.

It happened to me and most of my friends: as we spent 6th grade trying to figure out exactly what these "stick-on wings" were all about, our moms — who all claimed to have gotten their periods around the age of 16 — clucked their tongues about how "young" we were, as if we had gotten our periods at that age on purpose or something. It annoyed me (I didn't want to mess with pantyliners at 11! I just wanted to give my American Girl Dolls bad haircuts!), but it also made me wonder: were they actually right? Had the age at which we get our first period really dropped that sharply?

There's been a lot of discussion recently about how American children (both male and female) are entering puberty at earlier and earlier ages. Early puberty is attributed to everything from better nutrition to poorer nutrition genetics to environmental pollution to indoor lighting. And while I would never say that we can't or shouldn't find this concerning, when you look at some history, the narrative of the steadily declining age of first menstruation isn't entirely accurate. It actually seems that the average age has fluctuated over time.

So at what ages have women typically gotten their first periods throughout history, and why? Let's take a look.

1. The Early Middle Ages (5th Century-12th Century)

Average Age: 14

There's not a ton of historical records about the age of first menstruation before the Middle Ages. In his book, Women's Bodies, Edward Shorter estimates that most ancient Roman women got their periods between the ages of 13 or 14.

Similarly, historians believe that girls in the Middle Age got their first periods around the same age, according to "The Age of Menarche in Medieval Europe," published in the September 1973 issue of Human Biology. Records from the era report girls getting their period at ages as young as 12 and as old as 15, but the article's writers quote research suggesting that 14 remained the average age of first menstruation until the Renaissance.

2. The Renaissance (1300s-1600s)

Average Age: 16

According to Shorter's research, by the 17th century — the end of the Renaissance era — the average age of first period had risen to 16. Shorter attributes this to widespread malnutrition in the era; Renaissance girls who were underfed typically went into a state of delayed puberty. He also notes a class divide among the age of first period, quoting an anonymous Austrian author in 1610 who claimed that, "The peasant girls of this Country in general menstruate much later than the daughters of the townsfolk or the aristocracy...The townsfolk have usually born several children before the peasant girls have yet menstruated."

This meant that early puberty was seen as something of a luxury, since, you know, you needed to have adequate nutrition.

3. The Victorian Era (1800s)

Average Age: 14

The Victorian era — known for its bone-crushing women's clothing and quaintly charming pornography — also represents the beginning of the downward slope in the age of women's first periods, from the high hit in the Renaissance.

The average age of first menstruation among European women in 1860 was 16.6 years old. But according to a publication put out after the 1901 annual meeting of the American Gynecological Society, the average age of first period among Victorian girls had dropped to 14.

If you look at the American Gynecological Society report from the era (and plow through their horribly classist talk about "the girl of the highest refinement and education" and "the American born of laboring classes"), you'll see that again, a difference of about one year is pointed out between when upper class and working class women begin menstruating — 13.5 years of age versus 14.5, respectively — implying that nutrition probably still played a role in who started menstruating when.

4. The 20th Century

Average Age: 12-13

In 1928, Howard Kelly, a gynecology professor at John Hopkins University, claimed that the average age to get your period for American girls was 13.9. Surveys of British teens in the 1950s and '60s found that they typically got their first period around 13.5 years of age. A 2012 New York Times article reported that the average age for women getting their first period in the 1970s was 12.8.

But even with all of our more plausible sounding theories as to why the drop occured — that the rise of indoor lighting impacted women's melatonin production, which in turn impacted how their bodies released reproductive hormones; improved nutrition and hormones in milk and food; exposure to chemicals that interfere with or alter hormone production — no single one can be pointed to as the agreed-upon cause of the drop in age of first menstruation.

5. Today

Average Age: 12.5

Which brings us to right here, right now. Today's girl gets her period when she's around 12 and a half — not a far jump from 1970s average of 12.8.

That's not to say that precocious puberty is not a serious medical concern with very real effects on people's physical and mental health. That's also not to say that there are not very real and unfortunate health risks out there for those of us who got our periods early — according to the American Cancer Society, women who start their periods before the age of 12 have a slightly higher risk of breast cancer than their peers who got their periods a bit later. There are also, unfortunately, other risks.

But it is worth remembering that, rather than being on a straight downward slope, the age at which we get our first periods has been all over the place throughout history — so don't feel bad if you were "young" or "old," because really, it's all relative.

Images: Giphy (5)

Over the past 150 years, the age of puberty onset has fallen substantially across many developed countries. Although trends are apparent in both sexes,1 the evidence in females (where biological markers are clearer) suggests that, for instance, in northern Europe the age at menarche (first menstruation) fell during the 1800s, then further reduced by up to 3 years over the last century (fig 1​). Factors contributing to this fall include a combination of public health successes and changes in social structures. Thus, successes such as improved childhood nutrition and health status through reduction in childhood infections have been major factors accelerating the onset of puberty.7

Socially, however, stress is also a puberty accelerator, with familial disruption, including father absenteeism, being one of the most effective stressors, and levels of divorce as well as single‐parent families have rapidly escalated in many countries (eg, England, 2005).8,9 The sum effect of these changes has been relatively recent reductions in the age of puberty onset.7 However, these have not been matched by efforts to socially develop young people at an equally accelerated rate, leaving an increasing gap between physical puberty and social puberty (the age at which people are mentally, educationally and legally equipped to function as adults in modern societies). Here, we propose that this disparity may underpin many of the major public health challenges associated with young people today.

Puberty is a physical preparation for adulthood that, along with bodily changes, promotes interest in sexual activity,10 increases aggression in adolescents,11 encourages curiosity and can escalate risk‐taking behaviours as people compete for social status and attempt to conform to perceived peer norms.12 Increasingly, however, as social puberty lags behind physical puberty, the results can be ill‐informed health‐damaging behaviour. Thus, early sexual activity is associated with unprotected sex and, consequently, sexually transmitted infections and teenage pregnancies.13 Moreover, adolescent stresses resulting from mismatches in physical and social development may also promote substance use (including alcohol, tobacco and drug use) as ways of both self‐medicating and trying to conform to peer pressures. Further, a lack of knowledge of how to adapt to changes in physical, mental and social status may lead to self‐harm, violence and bullying.14 Attributing all recent changes in sexual health, substance use and violence to earlier puberty (on a population basis) is oversimplistic, but disregarding the role of earlier physical maturation in these major health trends is equally inappropriate.

Dissociation of physical and social puberty is also likely to affect certain communities disproportionately (eg, the most deprived). For example, early menarche has been linked with a combination of poor prenatal nutrition and excess nutrition in childhood.7 Although studied mainly in immigrant populations, such combinations are also more likely to occur endemically in deprived areas. Equally, other factors capable of accelerating puberty, such as single‐parent families, are also associated with deprived populations (eg, in the UK).9 Surprisingly, the contribution that such inequalities make to current variations in the onset of puberty, and how they then affect patterns of sexual health, substance use and violence, is largely unstudied.

The continued reduction in the age of onset of puberty should not be treated as a biological anomaly. It is likely that some 20 000 years ago, humans had already evolved to experience menarche at around 12 years and at present many countries are moving back to this position.7,15 However, for young people, although physical development has reverted to this earlier age, understanding their role in society is becoming substantially more complicated. Further, political, educational and even parental attitudes can often ignore earlier puberty, preferring to leave important lessons about sex, risk‐taking and social behaviour until later in life. In the meantime, the earlier physical development of children has not been ignored by commercial sectors. Magazines, television and radio are increasingly using sexual imagery for marketing and storylines aimed at younger people10 while versions of adult make‐up and fashion lines are now specifically developed for the pubescent. Sales of computer games that include fighting and risk‐taking rely on people developing interests in these behaviours early in life. Such marketing is more likely to reinforce the confusion caused by separated physical and social puberty rather than providing the information necessary to deal with it.

In many countries, it is unlikely that population trends capable of affecting puberty have stabilised. Lone parent and divorce rates are still increasing. Further, in developed countries, changes in children's diet mean that their body fat levels (a trigger for puberty) are rapidly increasing and, elsewhere, general improvements in child nutrition and child health are yet to plateau. In all cases, public health measures can affect the age at which children enter physical puberty. Where this considerably precedes social puberty, resultant pressures on children will contribute to public health problems through naive approaches to sex, risk‐taking and aggression. Instead of tackling the consequences of such naive behaviour, a better understanding of puberty at the population level may offer new opportunities to address risk factors. In the long term, public health strategies may attempt to retain the benefits of improved childhood nutrition and reduced infection without necessarily increasing the gap between physical and social puberty. In the short term, however, responding to earlier puberty means moving away from societal attitudes that equate protecting children with regarding them as firmly ensconced in childhood long after their physical journey into adulthood has begun. Such pretence, however well intentioned, simply denies them the vital information they require to complete this transition without damaging their health.

Competing interests: None declared.

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