Health/ Disease
Age of Menarche in Norway
This graph shows us the average year of menarche, a female's first menstrual cycle (often considered the beginning of puberty), from 1860 to 1980 reported by adult female patients at maternity clinics in Norway.
Linen Towel with Indigo Woven Border
Italian noblewomen presented soft, absorbent, linen towels with indigo woven borders to birthing mothers during the 14th century and later.
Life Histories (Chile) Table
Women all over the world may undergo life-course transitions from daugtherhood to motherhood, a great similarity that shapes their lives due to what is perhaps the biological difference that most distinguishes women from men: their childbearing capacity.
Analyzing Personal Accounts
The modules in Methods present case studies that demonstrate how scholars interpret different kinds of historical evidence in world history.. In the video below, historian Merry Wiesner-Hanks analyzes two personal accounts written by women living in northern Germany in the 17th century.
Excerpt from Memoirs by Catharina Schrader
This is a memoir written by a Protestant midwife, Catharina Schrader, who lived in Germany during the 1600s. It offers an important window into the daily lives and life cycles of non-elite women living in early modern Europe.
Sanitarium Weet-Bix Packet
The only such product endorsed by world famous mountaineer and humanitarian, Sir Edmund Hillary, Sanitarium's sugar-free wholegrain wheat biscuit, Weet-Bix, has long been the country's most preferred breakfast cereal.
Gravestones and Childhood
In 17th-century New England, Puritan beliefs about "infant depravity" (born with "original sin") generated anxieties about "eternal damnation" that shaped methods of childrearing and notions of death. Puritan beliefs can be "read" on the gravestones often made out of dark grey slate.
Neolithic Baby Burial
This infant burial is from Çatalhöyük , a Neolithic settlement in Turkey that was occupied continuously for 2,500 years, between 8000 and 6400 BCE. The infant was between six months and one year old, and the burial demonstrates great care.
Sibling Burial
The two children whose skeletons are shown in this photograph were both under 10 years of age, and were probably buried at the same time. An earlier burial of a baby was found at a slightly lower level in the space between them.
Mummified Inca Child Sacrifices
The top photograph shows the mummified remains of the 15-year-old Inca child, known as the "Llullaillaco Maiden," who was sacrificed with two other children, a boy of seven years old, shown in the photograph below, and a six-year-old girl, whose mummy had been struck by lightning and was charred.