As we all know, China has a rule on the age of marriage: men must not be earlier than 22 years old, and women must not be earlier than 20 years old, and this is a law based on years of research, the main purpose is to protect the safety of young people, so that people can decide on their own marriage matters at a more mature age.
However, in ancient China, there was no such rule, and as a result, many women married before the age of fifteen. What is the concept of fifteen years old, before reaching adulthood, or even in middle school, such a little girl is getting married and taking on the burden of taking care of the family, which is amazing.
When it comes to ancient marriage, I believe many readers will think of "the words of the matchmaker of the parents", and will also think of the self-introduction of many women when facing the proposer: "The little woman is twenty-eight years old...".
It should be pointed out that the term "Nian Fang 28" comes from the Tang Dynasty poet Li Bai's "Jiangxia Xing", which does not refer to the woman to be 28 years old, but to the fact that the woman has reached the age of 16. After the age of 15 and 笄 [jí jī], the girls are officially adults, and they must talk about marriage.
In ancient times, the mainland was actually a "country of early marriage", which was understood according to the standards of male and female adulthood stipulated in the Book of Rites.
According to ancient Chinese etiquette, men are mostly between 16~20 years old, and most of them are 16 years old. Most of the women are between 13~17 years old, and most of them are 14 years old.
In the past, when men and women got married, it was impossible without a matchmaker, even if it was really a private relationship, they had to invite a formal matchmaker to kiss, called "matchmaking".
So, why did women in ancient China get married so early?
01
In order for a person to get married and have children, he must first have the ability to have children. In ancient times, young men and women were required to marry at the above age groups, one is the need for population reproduction, and the other is based on the "Yellow Emperor's Neijing" put forward the theory of "seven women and eight men" menstrual cycles, which believes that women will have fertility when they are about 14 years old and men will be about 16 years old.
The so-called "seven women and eight men" means that women will have obvious physiological changes every 7 years; Men have a major physiological change every 8 years. This point of view was first put forward in the Yellow Emperor's Neijing, Suwen, and Ancient Innocence Treatise when discussing human fertility.
02
In ancient times, the social productivity was relatively low, and the probability of wars was relatively frequent, and at the same time, when encountering a mediocre emperor, it was necessary to accept heavy military service and conscription.
So, how can we ease the burden on the family?
A good idea is to have more males. If you want to achieve the goal of having more children, you need to marry in advance and have multiple wives and concubines. At the same time, if a family gives birth to a daughter, they will marry her as soon as possible in order to reduce the burden on the family.
The ancients attached great importance to the reproduction of offspring, the so-called "unfilial piety has three, no queen is the greatest", so that the ancients married wives too early in order to be able to reproduce as soon as possible, so as to avoid the extinction of heirs due to accidents that may occur in the future.
03
In ancient China, due to the low level of medicine, people's life expectancy was far less than now. In other words, if in modern times, you can live to be in your 80s, then in that social environment, it is very likely that you will live to the age of 50 and be considered to be a high life.
Then, it means that when a person reaches his forties, he is old, so you can know why people get married so early.
04
Government mandated. In the early days of many dynasties, due to the long period of war, the population was greatly reduced and the economy was depressed, at this time, in order to increase the population, the state would take a series of measures to force the people to marry as soon as possible.
As a result, many women enter into unhappy marriages and are ruined for the rest of their lives.
In fact, no matter how old you are to get married, existence is reasonable, and there is a reason for things to happen, and there will be parts of their emphasis, so as to give up something, just like in ancient times, it is a truth to develop and reproduce.