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?

Absolutely, a lot of assumptions seem to be made on next to no evidence. Even assumptions about childbirth being incredibly risky, yes some people died, just as they did or disease, accidents and other causes, it was probably common enough for you to know of someone who had died of one of these causes, a bit like cancer today but most women did survive childbirth. I work in maternity care and actually very few healthy young women who have their first babies before the age of 22-23 have any problems giving birth. Also we do a lot of preventative care these days so you might assume if you hadn’t or had drugs/caesarean/blood transfusions etc for your birth it would of been fatal but often it actually would of been ok in the end but obviously we have to do a lot of interventions to catch the cases where it wouldn’t have been ok but that’s does result in inflating people’s perceptions of the risks

One though on diseases and illnesses. The Western / Mainstream populations carry infections even when they are healthy that are fatal to Brazilian indigenous tribes.
Tribes have been wiped out by western people going near them and carrying diseases. It is now illegal to go near the tribes.
A few years ago two tribes men stole a tool I think it was an axe. They came back coughing and spluttering a day or so later.

So you have to assume that cave people and babies were immune or got immunity from their mothers milk to the diseases and infections around them.

That was tens of thousands of years later though - we definitely know that infant mortality was very high in the middle ages and probably even higher after the industrial revolution, but it's likely much lower than that in small scale hunter gatherer societies.

In evolutionary terms we are not designed to have a baby every 18 months or to have 10 pregnancies in our lifetimes, so our ideas about how risky childbirth is is probably related to that.
We also evolved as a communal child-raisers so probably naturally would have a pregnancy every 4 years, maybe 4 babies in our lifetimes and the feeding and caring would have been shared between our female relatives.

Chimpanzees, which are quite similar to us, also have a baby every 3-4 years and carry their babies for the first couple of years, and have an infant mortality rate of about 20%.

This https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1090513812001237#s0015
estimates hunter-gatherer infant mortality at about 27%.

Another interesting thing to consider about cave women's lives, is that although we tend to think of life then as being incredibly hard and dangerous (which I'm sure it was), hunter gatherer societies tend to have much more leisure time than agricultural/industrial societies. There's a lot more time spent doing nothing and women had more time not working or performing childcare. The move to agriculture actually impacts women more than men in terms of loss of leisure time.

This is such an interesting thread! Thank you, @Lorddenning1.

Another thing I question is the belief that people in the past cared less about their children because of infant mortality. Why should they feel less than us? And you only have to look at the writings of the time to see how deeply people felt.....

You only have to look at infant burial sites to see that we have always cared deeply for babies. The oldest grave found in Africa is from 78,000 years ago and is of a toddler laid to rest in a cave with what is suspected to be a pillow.

Although post partum sepsis will have been a big issue.

This thread is brilliant and hilarious. Yes, I do sometimes wonder about these things. Thanks, OP.

This is not the reason. The unique problems humans have giving birth stems from selection pressure for walking upright (resulting in a narrower pelvis) and intelligence (large brains and large heads).

I wonder what I would be like as a cave women, are the women second class or can there be alpha females?
Would we have friends or is anyone outside family an enemy?
Would we be jealous if next door had a better saber toothed tiger rug than us?

Good thread!
All those ancient little models of big fat mommas like the Venus of Willendorf suggest there was some respect for motherhood at least.
I think small hunter gatherer societies aren’t generally very hierarchical compared with where we are now.

I travelled in China in 2010 and at that time this method was still being used in rural China but not in major cities. I only saw toddlers actually making use of the slits including children past the age of potty training who wouldn’t have been in nappies anyway.

For all those people wondering about early human life, I recommend the Clan of the Cave Bear books by Jean Auel - which were recommended to me by an anthropology professor. The story of the main character is a bit silly, but it is full of insights into the overlap between neanderthals and modern humans.

What are you actually basing these claims on?

I saw this when in China years ago twice. I got the impression it was dying out as most babies were wearing nappies.

The Scottish clans were based on family. But family also included close friends who became an official part of the extended family.
When I was young working class parents used to refer to their close friends as their child's Auntie or Uncle. I assume that was a leftover from the Clan thinking.

I wouldn't have thought the Scottish friends Aunite / Uncle thing is a left over from the clan era.
More a way of informally addressing adults without using first names just too informal or calling them Mr or Mrs just too formal.

I remember when I started work, feeling really weird calling the Big Boss by his first name and Mr seemed too schoolish so for 5 years I avoided calling him anything.

Thanks for the recommendations on the books, I'll be looking them up.
Are there any more? When I say that, I'd be interested in family life as a whole in early humans. Thanks xxx

Re childbirth I would guess women 10,000 years ago would be significantly fitter than an average today - it was normal to walk ten miles a day, to carry foraged food and collected water, etc. I’m sure there was a study somewhere (can’t remember where I saw it) that tested the bones of female hunter gatherers and estimated from their density that they were equivalent to female Olympic rowers today! So having that fitness base and stamina and obesity being pretty much unknown would have helped delivery. However there was still nothing they could have done for large heads and small pelvises or awkward presentations…

Even tiny newborns make noises and grimace before voiding bladder/bowels, so I imagine they didn't use nappies just held them over a bush whenever the need arose.

@BigButtons
"Few made to adulthood."

I once read in a book, that the biggest cause of death was for everyone, Childhood, for women, Childbirth, and for men, war.
However, this was referring to the early modern period (ie 15th and 16th century), so not cave man. And even then, although experts may say the average age of death was 35, some lived to quite an old age. Average had to take into account those that died as children.
Secondly, the biggest cause of death does not mean everyone died.
Childood in this sense, meant under the age of 5.
Once past the age of 5, you generally had a good chance to survive to adulthood.
But I doubt there is enough information re caveman to know either way.

Note. I can't remember the book, but was when I was studying history.

This book is absolutely wonderful! I read it just as I was coming out of a horrible breastfeeding/not-breastfeeding time for me, and it was really comforting!

Evidence is very scant going back to pre history as you say. We can only guess. Disease, infection and danger from animals and other tribes, plus periodic lack of food would mean a much higher likelihood of death - sepsis post partum, tears etc. I am glad I live now. I would have died at birth and so would my mother.

I remember when they found a skeleton of a younger man with a broken leg who had been alive in cave man times. They said the leg had started to heal, and he had been alive for about 4 days after he broke his leg. They also said he would have needed help to live that long.
But when you think of all the accidents and operations for illnesses that we have now, you can see why a good number of us would have died young.