We're children really taken away at age 7 in ancient times

[LylaLee]

Yes, I know people talk all sorts of bollocks online, but in a thread one poster said, in England, in ancient times, to avoid inbreeding, children would be taken away from their villages at age 7 and taken to another village.

As well as sounding totally made up, it is likely to lead to MORE inbreeding?

Has anyone ever heard of this?

This is what I said in the thread:

>*all children left their tribe at the age of seven to be raised in other tribes, not just in these islands but often on mainland Europe as well.

This sounds so unlikely, plus, it doesn't even make sense.

Yes, it was not unusual in many cultures for a sort of hostage exchange to take place for the children of ruling classes to take place. E.g. Little prince Alric of The Celts and Little Prince Benjamin of Judea are fostered in Rome, and grow up Roman, so that when they are now rulers of the Celts & Judeans, they think twice about waging war on Rome. Agreed.

But what you said: "all children left their tribe at the age of seven to be raised in other tribes, not just in these islands but often on mainland Europe as well."

• that makes no sense.

Village AB: children Ann, Allan - children of the Adams & children Bella, Bob, children of the Binns.

Village XY: children Xander & Xanthe Xins, Yuri and Yana Yip.

At age 7, Ann and Allan go and live with the Xins, Bella and Bob go and live with the Yips in XY village.

And. Yuri and Xanthe live with the Adams, and Xander and Yana live with the Binns in AB village.

So what will end up happening is it is MORE likely you marry your sibling, having been split up from birth. Who is keeping track of siblings from different villages?

Plus if ALL the children are swapped, you are an AB village child, living in XY village with OTHER AB village children.

Plus, mothers DO NOT easily give up their children.

More likely is every few years there were big gatherings, people from different settlements mixed, widened the gene pool that way.

There is some truth in it in the sense noble children were sometimes taken as wards following conquest, but no, there were no wholesale exchanges of children from one village to another to avoid inbreeding.

“Ancient times” is suitably woolly but Skara Brae is prehistoric (and Scottish obvs but lets assume if it happened over England and Europe commonly it’s not a total reach) and they generational family groups. Presumably you didn’t come back at 16 with your new spouse. Also how would there be tribes if they mixed the children in every generation? What would be the unifing factor? They test the DNA of archaeological remains so can trace family’s And at 7 your kids would become useful and not a burden so why would you send them away. And how were we transporting children over uncharted land to another tribes?

Sounds like utter bollocks. But I do like the confidence people on thr internet have in their own bollocks. Yes, I am aware I’ve just done the same thing.

I have heard of teens in noble families in the Middle Ages age 15 being sent to another Noble family to be a page/learn knight skills etc.
In pre Christian societies - spartan, Indian American tribes etc you would be surprised at the brutality meeted out to the weak. Women, pregnant abs post natal children, the elderly. This is one of the reasons Christianity was so welcomed by the tribes. But this isn’t a popular idea currently.
Do you know about the baby feeding factored in Victorian times. That was quite dreadful. Babies sent like luggage to the country side to be fed while their mothers went back to work. Many died.

I’d ref Skara Brae again about treatment of the week. They have congenital blind people living to the same average age as the rest of the population, as well as healed broken bones. Life was hard but not necessarily due to the cruelty of man. Also maybe the indigenous people who had their children taken by Christians weren’t delighted to have the burden removed.

Celtic fosterage was the term quotes by the poster in that thread - a few explanations come up if you Google.

So Ireland then? And totally different. Similar happened in Hawaii before Christianity but more for the stronger bonds of families and to generate suitable matches.

Just saw the bloody title autocorrected 'were'

Yes, but it wouldn't be every child taken, would it?

7 was a traditional age to send boys to Boarding school here a couple of generations ago. My old school used to take Boarders from that age too

I've seen this described in Irish mythology. The hero Cú Chulainn was a product of such an arrangement. He even changed his name. But he was clearly of the warrior class. I doubt a cow farmer (one of the poor bastards suffered the cattle raids) would have done so because his sons would have helped him ont he farm, I would have thought.

Later you had the system of Brehon law in Ireland. From what little I have seen (not much!) of it it seems very complicated and nuanced so again one law wouldn't have been true for every family.

Noble families in medieval times in Britain did it at 7 mainly so their sons could become knights. Page then squire then knight. But again, only a certain class and maybe only one boy in the family. It was expensive. One of the other boys would inherit and another be given to the church to enhance prestige/power for the family in an ideal Norman world.

I know in Medieval times, noble families would foster their children (between ages of 10-15) out to other noble houses to serve as squires and then train to be knights, and then they would be sent back - but parents would normally visit or have them back at home for holidays etc.

I agree, there were many fostering/wards/apprenticeship situations. But that would be exclusively boys.

No definitely not and I don’t think it was ‘taken’ as much as mutually agreed between families. I cannot remember the name of the book but I definitely read it lol. In Hawaii it was used as a way to describe the indigenous people as savages by settlers.

@LylaLee

Sometimes brides were sent to live with their future husbands at a very young age. Especially if they were royalty and marrying someone from a different country. They were expected to live there and learn the country's customs before marriage. Maybe it was the same for people marrying into different villages/celtic tribes etc?

By the tudor times, girls were being fostered.

I don't think it was ever standard practice. But quite young noble children could be sent off to be wards of other noble families. Other families might have sent their young sons to monasteries, or to trades as apprentices. Girls would be sent off as indentured servants to manor houses or castles.

Apprentices and servants could be as young as 7 but 12 or up was more usual.

Wards in noble families could also be young. Queen Mary I was famously sent away at 9 to live in Wales.

Not so. Girls could be sent to large houses / castles as servants, or to convents or nunneries.

You're right.

But the claim that entire villages swapped every 7 year old child is internet bs.

Also servants, apprentices and princesses are well after tribes in Europe.

I always do it in Crusader Kings II.

Lots of posh boys from my generation were taken away from their families at the age of 7.....

Boris was a boarder from the age of 7. Explains a lot.

@eddiemairswife The comedian Marcus Brigstock says that in order to understand the higher echelons of the Tory party you have to realise that they had their hearts broken at the age of 7.

Upper class Ancient Romans and Greeks did this, too. Only boys as far as I know, but it's not a reach to imagine there were parallels for girls (they mostly didn't bother writing about girls!) There's evidence of it in older civilisations as well.

Those same societies practised slavery, so of course there was a constant flow of children becoming properties of a new household, when they would be given the owner's name.

I doubt that a mother's distress at losing a child has ever changed - but in deeply patriarchal societies, they were expected to take it on the chin as part of their duty to the men.