Trobriand Islands husband social child care pregnancy belief

A society can treat someone as a father without believing he caused the pregnancy

In classic accounts of the Trobriand Islanders, people did not believe intercourse created pregnancy or that a father had a physical connection to the child. Yet the mother's husband still had an essential role in caring for and raising the child.

The library-burning story appeared centuries late

Accounts blaming Arab conquerors for burning Alexandria’s Great Library first appeared roughly five centuries after the 642 conquest. By then, the library and its research center, the Mouseion, had probably already disappeared. Historians doubt the story partly because the accounts came so late.

A lunar crater can be colder than Pluto

26 K (−247 °C)

A spacecraft measured 26 K (−247 °C) near the winter solstice in Hermite, a permanently shadowed crater near the Moon’s north pole. It was the lowest temperature the spacecraft had measured anywhere in the Solar System.

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Trobriand Islands husband social child care pregnancy belief

A society can treat someone as a father without believing he caused the pregnancy

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