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?

I often wonder how women coped with their periods before modern sanitary items.
I didn't buy much paraphernalia for my kids. A cot, baby bath, high chair, car seat, pushchair. These wouldn't be needed if living in a cave. I imagine very high mortality rate and women having babies as soon as they could because life expectancy was low (just googled it - 20-25 years, if they lived beyond first four years). And it was poor hygiene, illness and malnutrition that were the main causes of death, not being killed by animals.

Have you ever seen a cabbage, or a lettuce, or a radish or a turnip growing in the wild? They are all cultivars, domesticated by humans. Same with the vast majority of veg and fruit that we eat.

There are very few vegetables that exist in the wild in what we would consider to be an edible form, and most of those are in the tropics or the new world. Even wild potatoes had to boiled in alkaline clay to render them edible before they were domesticated by the ancient Peruvians.

Veg in Europe during the paleolithic was basically non-existent (with the exception of seaweed).

@Soigneur Honestly I'd just never really thought about it.
As soon as I read your last post the penny dropped, that will be why I've never seen a wild one. I sort of assumed they were naturally growing 'somewhere' even if not native to the UK.

A bit like Cherry blossom grows wonderfully in the UK but isn't naturally found here.

Thanks 😊 I love a MN school day

Well, cherries are naturally found here. But the ornamental cherries are also all cultivars, mostly from Japan.

Yeah that's what I meant the ornamental Japanese cherry blossoms that grow well in the UK.
I'd sort of thought cauliflower etc was like that grew naturally 'somewhere'

@Needanewname42 you can blame the Romans for inventing the cauliflower (and broccoli). We didn't get them until the 17th century. All we had was cabbages and kale before that.

Well back to the topic, cave mums didn't stress over their sweet little cave babies not liking vegetables 🤮
Because no bugger had invented them. 🤣🤣🤣
Maybe I'm a Cave baby at heart!

That's probably a mean life expectancy, as childhood mortality was about 50%. Old age for adults would have been around the 40-45 years range. Women also likely started their periods a lot later than today, late teens rather than pre-teen.

I wouldn't have thought women would have had very many periods during their fertile years - extended and overnight breastfeeding would contribute to delays in periods starting again, with the real possibility of subsequent pregnancies happening before her cycle had the chance to re-establish after the previous pregnancy. This would mean about 3-ish years age gap between siblings, and if a woman didn't start her period until late teens, she may only have a handful of periods before reaching her 40s.

I think I read they chewed the plants and then fed them to baby. I’ll have to see if I can find the source.

The Museum of Menstruation is always worth a visit.
http://www.mum.org/whatwore.htm

It’s hard to know because there are no written records of this time but my understanding is that patriarchy came along with the agricultural revolution. Before that humans were nomadic and had very little in terms of possessions, so nothing to pass down (so no you wouldn’t have been jealous of your neighbour’s sabre toothed tiger rug!). Once farming communities were established it became important for men to know who their offspring were so that they could pass down their private property to the right children, hence the need to control women (and especially our sexuality) and the birth of patriarchy.

Before that, paternity had little importance and men, as the ones who don’t give birth, were much more disposable / mobile, so tribes were likely to be matriarchal with men moving around a lot more (like lions!).

I really recommend Elena Bridgers on Instagram who has lots to say about our evolutionary past and it is all fascinating!

I also really enjoyed reading the chapter on our hunter gatherer ancestors in “the Politics of Breastfeeding”.

A few people have suggested that Cave people would be malnourished, would they really have been?

I'm thinking wild animals only really suffer starvation in the event of a drought or when they are too old and weak to hunt. Would humans not have been a bit the same, survival of the fittest.

I'm going to sound mean saying this but people with things like asthma or diabetes just wouldn't have survived, to reproduce so the population would probably have been stronger.

I’m going to recommend The World Until Yesterday again, by Jared Diamond. He bases his observations on Papua New Guinea tribes, some of whom were uncontacted until the 1930s, and other anthropologists working in South and North America, and Africa.

He talks about starvation being an ever present danger, if a tribe is nomadic with no agriculture or storage. It might only happen every 5 or 10 years but there would be some years where the whole tribe ran the risk of dying. Often they would migrate to where there was more food, or ask other tribes to share their food. Sometimes they ate things they would not normally eat (certain plants and tubers that might not taste good).

He also says some tribes gave daughters in marriage and she left for her husband’s family; other tribes would do it the other way around and men would move families.

He also has an interesting chapter on health. Diabetes didn’t exist in these tribes until they started adopting modern Western lifestyles. Ditto heart disease and most cancers. However they did die of accidents, malnutrition, infection, and communicable diseases where they came into contact with them; and war or feuds.

It’s fascinating and he also acknowledges that you can never truly know what it was like in the past but this is a good stab at it. Sadly he doesn’t cover women’s lives in half as much detail as he should.

Edited to say diabetes didn’t exist.

Didn’t it? I thought it was first recorded in the Ebers Papyrus in around 1550 BC, so assumed it had always been around, but not successfully treated.

How could they have known diabetes didn't exist? Presumably diabetic children would have died quite young?

Having recently read it I’ll try to summarise, and you’re right, I should have said Type 2. I think for Type 1 you’re right, children would not have survived.

For Type 2, he says there is a genetic predisposition but it tends to be activated by Western diets and the ancient records refer to it as a disease of, how do I put it, over eating. That sounds rude but it’s not meant to and it occurred in societies with food surpluses and a richer class. In Hunter gatherer societies it doesn’t occur. He speculates that the gene originally had some evolutionary purpose by making it easier to metabolise glucose and lay down fat stores in times of glut, so that you had a few extra pounds if there was famine, but that gene wouldn’t have evolved to expect constant over supply.

This thread is fascinating.

Ah, I see. That makes sense, was thinking type 1.

@ChaosAndCrumbs yes I should have said that, you are quite right.
It was such an interesting read, and I don’t see the ideas picked up in more mainstream health and wellness streams, I wonder because Diamond is an anthropologist, not a health expert, and I wonder if they get silo’d? Or more cynically we already know most of the things we need to do or not do to avoid lifestyle factors in illnesses and most people are susceptible to the temptations of food etc, so the research effort goes into things like Ozempic instead.

I’m about a third of the way through the book @CurlewKate and it’s fascinating. Without realising at the time I’ve already done a few things differently with my baby. I don’t have much time to read but it’s gripping and I’m powering through. Thank you for the recommendation.

This is an intriguing thread

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriarchy

I looked it up after a discussion at work about the origins.

Also some fascinating bits here - possible strong role for female endurance for persistence hunting and the role of eostrogen in energy efficient female muscles! Hunting and gathering.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_prehistory

Another daft one, did cave people cut / trim their finger and toe nails?

Modern people use stainless steel scissors or clippers what did they use?

I imagine they bit babies nails, safer than trying to use tools, but adults nails?