If we wish for proof that the primitive attitude toward women was essentially that which we have outlined, we have only to glance at the typical taboos concerning woman found among ancient peoples and among savage races of our own day.  Nothing could be more indicative of the belief that the power to bring forth children was a manifestation of the possession of mana than the common avoidance of the pregnant woman.  Her mystic power is well illustrated by such beliefs as those described by the traveller Im Thurn, who says that the Indians of Guiana believe that if a pregnant woman eat of game caught by hounds, they will never be able to hunt again.  Similarly, Alfred Russell Wallace wrote of the aborigines of the Amazon:  “They believe that if a woman during her pregnancy eats of any meat, any other animal partaking of it will suffer; if a domestic animal or tame bird, it will die; if a dog, it will be for the future incapable of hunting; and even a man will be unable to shoot that particular kind of game for the future."[8] In Fiji a pregnant wife may not wait upon her husband.[9] In the Caroline Islands men may not eat with their wives when pregnant, but small boys are allowed to do so.[10]

The avoidance of the menstruous woman is an even more widespread custom than the shunning of pregnancy, probably because this function was interpreted as a symptom of demonic possession.  Primitive man had no reason to know that the phenomenon of menstruation was in any way connected with reproduction.  The typical explanation was probably very much like that of the Zoroastrians, who believed that the menses were caused by the evil god Ahriman.  A woman during the period was unclean and possessed by that demon.  She must be kept confined and apart from the faithful, whom her touch would defile, and from the fire, which her very look would injure.  To this day there is in the house of the Parsee a room for the monthly seclusion of the women, bare of all comforts, and from it neither sun, moon, stars, fire, water, nor any human being can be seen.[11]

All the ancient civilizations had such taboos upon the menstruous woman.  According to Pliny, the Romans held that nothing had such marvellous efficacy as, or more deadly qualities than, the menstrual flow.  The Arabs thought that a great variety of natural powers attached themselves to a woman during the menstrual period.[12, p.448] Rabbinic laws demand that “a woman during all the days of her separation shall be as if under a ban.”  The epithet Niddah, applied to a woman at that time, means “to lay under a ban.”  The reconstruction of the ancient Assyrian texts shows that the law of the unclean taboo on the woman in her courses holds for them.  Up to the present time the Semitic woman is carefully segregated from the rest of the tribe, often for a long time, and becomes taboo again on each successive occasion.[13] Peoples in the eastern Mediterranean region will not permit a woman in her courses to salt or pickle; whatever she might prepare would not keep.  This belief survives among the folk to-day in America, and was evidently brought early in the history of the country, for it is common among pioneer stock.