Why did ancient men like to marry thirteen or fourteen-year-old girls? It turns out that there is "cat grease" hidden inside.
After the national survey conducted in 2018, the average life expectancy of our people has reached 77 years, which is very high in the world. However, in ancient times, because there was a big gap between the production level, dietary conditions, medical level and other aspects of modern times, the life expectancy of ancient people was mostly very short. Some historians have done research, even if you do not count the babies who died not long after birth, the average life expectancy of the ancients in our country is only about 40.7 years old, and it will be even lower in the era of war. Therefore, the elderly over 70 years old in ancient China are very rare, which is the origin of the seventy ancient rarity.
In such a big environment, the age of marriage of the ancients in our country will naturally be very early, and even many dynastic emperors will formulate laws to restrict the behavior of late marriage. The laws of the Han Dynasty stipulate that if a woman is over fifteen years old and does not have a husband, her family must pay five times more taxes every year; the Tang Dynasty law stipulates that a man must marry (conclude a marriage contract) before he is fifteen years old and a woman must marry before he is thirteen years old; if he is not married at an age, there will be people from the government to "mess with the Mandarin Duck Spectrum"; the Song Dynasty law stipulates that if a woman over fifteen years old has no marriage partner, her family will be jointly and severally sinned, and the staff will be beaten 15...
Judging from these laws, the emperors of ancient China were indeed very supportive of early marriage, and if they were calculated according to the current legal age of marriage in our country (men over 22 years old and women over 20 years old), they would have received legal punishment in ancient times. In fact, the emperor also had a bit of a compulsive meaning to do so, because in ancient times, the productive forces were underground, so a large number of laborers were needed to engage in field cultivation and construction projects, and a large number of young and middle-aged people were also needed to join the army to defend the country. Early marriage theoretically contributes to population growth, which is why laws are in place to limit late marriage.
In addition, when the tax paying population was calculated in ancient China, the girls who did not marry were not counted in the total population of the whole family, and after marriage, they would start to pay taxes, in order to get more financial income, it was also a good measure for women to marry as soon as possible. Because of the provisions of the law, many girls in ancient China were married very early, for example, Fuyang, the fourth princess of Emperor Wu of Liangwu in the Southern Dynasty during the Southern and Northern Dynasties, married at the age of 11; Wu Zetian entered the palace at the age of 13 to become a talented person; and the age limit for women who chose concubines in the imperial palace during the Ming and Qing dynasties was also limited to about 15 years old.
In ancient times, there were still many families who would set dolls for their children, sometimes at the age of three or four, and sometimes when the children were not born, they had been pointed out by their parents to marry, because the children who had set dolls had already had a marriage contract and would not violate the law. Not only the royal family, but also the families of ordinary people, and there are many examples of neighbors in a village who have betrothed two children from a young age. Therefore, the ancients let 13 or 14-year-old girls marry is not a perverted hobby, but a large part of the reason is forced to helpless, which is the cat behind it.
Such a system will also give birth to a lot of tragedies, the first is that men and women do not have their own ideas for marriage, can only obey the orders of their parents, which will undoubtedly cause many people to live unhappy after marriage, and many ancient love stories began from opposing arranged marriages. Then there is the physical harm of early marriage, 13 and 14 years old, both boys and girls are not fully developed, especially for girls, it is a very dangerous thing to give birth at this time, often prone to maternal and child deaths. Many newborns die because the mother is too fragile.