If 21st-century babies are weaned on a globalised diet that has only recently been available, what was used to wean babies in prehistoric times?
Chris Stantis and Kirsten Verostick
University of Utah, US
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That is an amazing question, and something that has led several archaeologists to focus on early childhood diet and feeding practices. We know nutrition in early years has key outcomes for wellness throughout a person鈥檚 life, and individual health can shape population dynamics and culture.
What babies ate is a difficult question to approach at an archaeological site, as a person鈥檚 food waste is often thrown away in communal refuse heaps (imagine trying to separate who ate what by going through your own rubbish). By chemically analysing the skeletons of children throughout history and prehistory, archaeologists estimate that babies have often been introduced to complementary foods at around six months old (which is also when the World Health Organization cautions that breast milk alone isn鈥檛 enough for infant health).
Through historical texts, modern hunter-gatherer strategies and artefacts, we can see across the pre-globalised world that infants were often fed altered forms of what was available to everyone. Those who grew grains (maize, wheat or rice, for example) would prepare porridges; if dairy was part of the diet, then milk, cheese or yogurt could be included for key nutrients. Vegetables and fruits were used, of course, and honey appears as a complementary food during the weaning process for many societies, possibly for both its caloric richness and its medicinal properties. Meat and seafood could be cooked down or chewed by a caretaker.
As today, all of this depends on what the baby would actually eat!
Hillary Shaw
Newport, Shropshire, UK
Globalisation has vastly increased the range of specific foods we eat, but the broad food groups remain much the same as in preindustrial, even prehistoric, times. Before farming began, fruit and vegetables were collected (root vegetables store well in cool, underground places), wild grass seeds yielded flour for bread and animals and fish were caught.
Pizza isn鈥檛 just Italian, but instead is one of the most ancient dishes made worldwide, just baked flour with any other food on top.
Farmers enclosed land for crops and animals so they were easily available, saving the bother of hunting and gathering them.
The main change was when dairy products became widespread for adults, as it is hard to milk wild animals. That small step to farming started 鈥渉istory鈥�, as people then needed a variety of professions (guards, irrigation engineers, builders, land lawyers, vets, labourers etc.) and a money economy. You then got kings, priests as calendar keepers and luxury trades (musicians, sculptors and tomb builders) 鈥� growing inequality as well as crops.
That started the conflicts and innovation we call 鈥渉istory鈥�. But the foods people ate weren鈥檛 so different before then.
Guy Cox
Sydney, Australia
First of all, in ancient societies, babies were breastfed for much longer than is usual in our modern world. By the time they were fully weaned, they were probably hunting and gathering in their own right (or pretending to).
As to what they were fed, it would hardly be the same in Asia, Africa, Australia and Europe. But there would be common ground 鈥� vegetables that could be mashed, fruit that was either soft enough to eat or was easily softened. If the clan feasted on a freshly caught animal, crushing a long bone between two stones would provide tasty and nourishing bone marrow, which was easy for the little kids to swallow. If nothing else was handy, a parent could always chew on something then pass it to their child.
Agriculture provided many more choices, but that wasn鈥檛 really prehistoric. By the way, my wife and I made very little use of multinational baby foods when our children were little 鈥� we were determined to prepare their food ourselves (with the help of modern technology, of course).
Garry Trethewey
Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary, South Australia
I suspect this question is less to do with a child鈥檚 transition from breast milk to solids and more to do with the dominant Western way of seeing the world. It doesn鈥檛 ask how babies wean themselves, it asks how an agent (an adult) operates on the baby. This tends to happen where babies have no opportunity to try things for themselves.
I submit that nothing 鈥渨as used鈥� to wean babies. If we look at some traditional cultures, there is a length of time that breastfeeding 鈥渏ust happens鈥�, as it does in many wild mammals. At this time, the baby puts things in its mouth 鈥� a rock, a stick, some food taken from its mother. With wallabies, the baby hangs out of the pouch and tastes things. It eventually learns what is good and what isn鈥檛. Later, whether by the mother鈥檚 refusal or its own lack of interest, the baby no longer feeds from a nipple.
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