Reddit reviews The Biblical World: An Illustrated Atlas

My understanding on marriageable age was whenever menarche occurred, which usually had some corresponding marker or coming of age ceremony, but would obviously be different for each girl. So some girls would be marriageable at 12 and others not till 14 or 15.

Your link cites a National Geographic reference called "The Biblical World." I looked it up on Amazon and searched for menarche, menstrual, mensturation, period, and puberty. The only result I found was page 276, which says:

>Girls in first century Palestine, like Mary, were probably betrothed shortly after puberty began, around age ty [sic] or 14. Both parents would negotiate the marriage contract...

It does not make reference to any actual scientific records, and indicates some ambiguity ("probably") as well as noting they were betrothed at 14, not necessarily married at that age (though I have no idea how long the contract negotiations would take, or the average betrothal time.)

>I'm honestly VERY skeptical about the claims of such late average menarche in your source. Age 17 in the early 1800s? And the slope of the line indicates even higher ages earlier. I seriously doubt it. As I said earlier, I think it's very likely we're seeing some type of reporting bias here.

I don't see it as being that crazy. Jane Austen wrote fairly auto-biographically about her times (1700s England), and women were commonly married around 20. Laura Ingalls Wilder, who admittedly fictionalized large parts of her semi-autobiographical books, evinces shock at hearing of a girl who gets married at 13 or 14 (only a year or so older than her at the time, circa late 1870s). Understandably, records are kind of sketchy-- women didn't talk about their periods, certainly not with men, so it's possible, say, the only records we have are of people who sought medical help for girls who didn't start menstruating until late.

>I doubt there has been any serious changes in puberty for thousands of years. You will certainly see fluctuations due to environmental factors and ethnic differences throughout history.

This is probably the biggest factor. There appear to be often enormous differences between ethnic populations, especially based on geographical regions (see the first link, there's a list about halfway down). So it's possible we're both right-- Northern European women just hit puberty a lot later than women in the Middle East.