How did cave women look after their babies?

[Lorddenning1]

Ok so I have a 6 week old baby and he has lots of stuff, a crib, Moses basket, cot and a a pod/nest, this is all for sleeping, don't get me started on a pram car seat, feeding stuff...
Back in the caveman times how did the ladies take care of the babies, like in winter how did they keep them warm, how did they keep the babies quiet so they didn't get eaten or killed by other tribes. What about nappies, was colic around then?

I often sit and wonder about these things, also how babies were made, did they just figure it out and then make the connection that everything they had sex, 9 months later a baby would appear,,,

Does anyone else think about these things or do I have cabin fever and need to get out more?

@CurlewKate and @WittyFatball Did you not have Pregnacare or some other multivitamin which contained iron?? I'm envious of you either way! I was really quite anaemic in both my pregnancies 🙁Had Pregnacare and lots of red meat and greens - even venison as read that's the best source of iron. Made sure I was having vitamin C, but not calcium, to improve absorption etc... Still ended up needing additional iron tablets. I guess it's the luck of the draw.

I took folic acid in the 1st trimester. Surely even pregnacare is a new invention though? Our grandmothers wouldn't have been taking in let alone cave women.

Breastfeeding - possibly collective. I saw women in shanty towns in India passing babies between each other when learning to read at a night school. Would this have had an impact on pregnancy rates?

I do wonder if they had colicky babies? Or if people who mentioned west Africa, if it occurs there amongst otherwise contented babies?

When I was little I thought women just got pregnant a) if they just woke up one morning and thought yes, I have decided I will grow a baby or b) you just got to a certain age and it just happened. The goddess figures from pre-history are intriguing as well as ideas like virgin birth (pre-dates Christian thought). Maybe women were seen as those with the (magical) power to increase the tribe?

We will never know but so interesting to contemplate.

Sad to think about those defensive injuries as PP mentioned though we don't know what caused them. Could be men but also could be fending off an animal, or gained when hunting.

Most wild wolves when post mortem'ed are found to have a number of healed broken bones where buffalo etc have kicked at them during hunts.

I watched a series about neandethals a few years ago - seems like homo sapiens did wipe many out carrying things like flu around and spreading it to them.

Yes - hunter gatherer people have more time to 'stand and stare' - docu called ''
Tribe'' commented on this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribe_(British_TV_series)

Here's the link about how strong they think women were. They would think we are puny specimins today if they did time travel forward. A smack on the bum from one of these mothers would have been a powerful deterrent (not justified today, we have evolved but may have meant survival back then).

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/nov/29/prehistoric-womens-arms-stronger-than-those-of-todays-elite-rowers

This was a great book: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/925598

'Married to a Bedouin' She talks about living in caves with babies and toddlers, and about baby/maternal health. She mentions one occasion where a toddler wanders off and falls down a rock face - about 12 foot I think but it was not survivable for a small child : ( There didn't seem to be many sharing that fate, but yes to fire related injuries. Animal are known to seek out medicinal plants, and even apply them to their skin (article last week about an orangutan), so no calpol but did women in the distant past know a trick or two we have lost over time?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/68950974#:~:text=Rakus%20the%20Sumatran%20orangutan%20was,injury%20with%20a%20medicinal%20plant.

You don't need to go as far as India. The Greenham Common Women's peace camp saw many a baby passed round to be fed by other women.

Re iron, I believe iron cooking pots would pass a bit of iron to the food as it cooked.

I'm sure I remember reading about early American settlers curing anaemia by putting iron nails into an apple for a few days then eating the apple - after the nails were out of course!

I think the info about iron was in an old Adelle Davis book. She was very readable on nutrition.

@Alltheyearround that’s the one! Thank you

There is 1.2mg of iron in an egg and women require 14.8mg a day so there is something off in your calculation. An ordinary omnivorous diet easily provides the requisite amount of iron. Paleolithic women would have had an extremely meat and fish heavy diet - in temperate and boreal climates the foraging seasons for fruit, fungi and nuts are short, so for 6 months of the year it would have been pretty much a meat-only diet.

Hmmmm, Google is saying 0.6mg in one, large, 50g egg. You need around 30mg iron per day in pregnancy, as your requirements go up. 30 ÷ 0.6 is 60mg? Or am I missing something obvious?!

Sorry, 50 eggs, all with 0.6mg iron = 30mg iron. The correct amount in pregnancy.

50 x 0.6mg = 30mg.

Previous post a bit "morning maths"!

I loved this book!
It makes you realise that a lot of modern parenting is counter intuitive and very much driven by the individual culture you live in.

I think liver is really good for iron deficiency. I ate it throughout my pregnancy and always had very good iron levels.

Yes, I can imagine. It was just the first time I had ever witnessed shared breast feeding. I was about 20 and the thought had not even crossed my mind until then. When I saw it, something clicked and I thought how sensible and useful it was to do it that way, when you're in a group of women spending a lot of time together.

The babies were quite happy and just went with it.

I wonder if there is increased protection - they must absorb a lot of different antibodies from the different mothers within the group.

I did once try it with my sister in law but the babies didn't go for it (we weren't often together) and I felt a bit jealous watching someone else try to feed my baby. Feeding your child is very intimate. I think if you had grown up with it though, possibly you would not feel as possessive.

Would cave women. actually eat eggs? I thought their diet would be more meat and veg

I think, being omnivores, they would likely have eaten whatever was around in their environment. Taking advantage of nature's larder. Like tribal peoples nowadays raiding for wild honey combs.

Lots of evidence for eating of seafood like mussels, or seasonal foods like hazel nuts. Not sure if they would be cooking Eggs Benedict - maybe just raw. Bot who knows? So many interesting gaps in pre-history.

I wonder what tribes in the modern era do with eggs? Not sure I could down a few raw eggs for breakfast but I've obviously grown up eating them boiled/fried etc so that's what I prefer.

Just seen an article talking about how early humans appear to have been eating the eggs of a mega fauna flightless bird in Australia. Eggs the size of cantaloupe melons! May have helped wipe them out.

Burnt egg shells from around camp fires. Were they cooking/roasting these giant eggs? A few of those would make a really BIG omelette.

More 'food for thought' (sorry).

@Needanewname42 Or the equivalent. For example 1000g of venison!

2.9mg of iron in 100g of venison.

X 10

29mg of iron (correct in pregnancy) in 1000g!

There is an excellent series by Ray Mears who focus on wild food and what our ancestors may have eaten and how they processed it. They spend a fair amount of time with Aboriginals in Australia but also look closer to home and try out some recipes. Its a fantastic series and very engaging. Its called Wild food and its available on Youtube

Absolutely they would eat eggs. And they wouldn’t eat veg as we are talking tens of thousands of years before agriculture. So they would have been limited to what fruit they could gather in summer, nuts, seeds and mushrooms in autumn and maybe some edible roots. And seaweed if they were coastal. European Palaeolithic people would have had very limited options on the veg front, especially during the last ice age. The vast bulk of their calorific intake would have been meat and fish.

When I said veg I meant wild growing plants and stuff, things like cauliflower and cabbage must have been around even if they weren't growing in neat rows in fields

Wild brassicas are plants like garlic mustard. You can use it as a pot herb (like you can with nettles or cleavers or wild garlic), but it's not much like cauliflower!

I think there’s about 15mg in 100g of venison liver and they’d be using the majority of the animals parts to eat. I find it fascinating to think about! Think the poster upthread who said about liver was spot on, though of course these days we are told to eat it in moderation for various reasons. However, I also think I remember reading that there were consistently lots of plants in their diet including starchy plants, like specific types of tubers.

Cabbage and cauliflower (and brocolli, sprouts etc) are cultivated - they don't occur naturally.

WHAT ? 🤯
You've just blown my brains 🧠 Humans actually made cauliflower (it's disgusting anyway🤢) but seriously???