ll 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 th