A
subtribe of the Guaraní/Cayua. As cited in Konner (in press:p54)[1],
Hill and Hurtado (1996)[2]
observed that
“When a girl has her first menstruation, at an average age of 15.3
years, she experiences an initiation and purification ritual, along with “all
men who have had sex with her. […]Every woman we interviewed who had reached
menarche before contact reported that she had engaged in sexual intercourse
with at least one adult man prior to menarche. […] 85% of the women […] had
also been married before menarche” (pp. 224–225). Still, the teen years are a
time of playfulness, especially for boys: Both boys and girls begin
experimenting with sex around twelve years of age […] in a manner very
similar to that described for the !Kung (Shostak 1981). Boys […] spend most
of their teen years visiting other camps and trying to form friendships and
alliances with their same-sex age mates and older men. It is quite common to
see these boys intimately joking, tickling, and touching each other or the
adult men who have chosen to befriend them. (p. 224) As in many higher
primates, including most human hunter-gatherers, such “play” forms coalitions
vital to survival and reproduction. As for girls, “despite their precocious
sexual activity […] girls are generally reluctant and sexually reserved with
most males most of the time. Indeed the best description of their behavior
would be aggressively flirtatious but sexually coy to the point of causing
frustration.” Boys accuse girls of being “stingy with their genitals,” and “the
major activity of girls at this time is walking around in small groups
laughing and giggling and carrying on in any manner that will attract
attention. They frequently spend much of the day visiting from hearth to
hearth and are fed abundantly wherever they go” (p. 225)”.