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So, basically, anybody who wrote about it is a part of an evil white conspiracy engaging in a coordinated attack on the noble savage, and William Rubinstein is

So, basically, anybody who wrote about it is a part of an evil white conspiracy engaging in a coordinated attack on the noble savage, and William Rubinstein is just as well a bigot by virtue of publishing in Quadrant. Unfortunately for this viewpoint, Paleolithic infanticide is firmly in the "why and how" stage of research, rather than "did it happen", welcome to sources here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_infanticidal_childrearing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_infanticidal_childrearin... It was a universal phenomenon not disputed by anyone of note, some societies (i.e. Marshall Islanders) developing a complicated system of who gets not to kill their child, and assuming Australian Aboriginals should be seen as a null hypothesis with no serious evidence to the contrary, and a fair amount of supporting evidence. As for contemporary Europeans, your claim is not supported by near exponential population growth ever since the Neolithic Revolution, as agricultural mothers didn't have to walk ~9km per day carrying all her non-walking babies. Children sure died left right and center, but infanticide was a no-no since at least the Middle Ages.

defrost 3y ago
> So, basically, anybody who wrote about it is a part of an evil white conspiracy engaging in a coordinated attack on the noble savage, and William Rubinstein is just as well a bigot by virtue of publishing in Quadrant. If you say so - I'd have phrased it differently myself and pointed out the history of Quadrant articles on Australian Aboriginals that proved to be dubious at best. For anyone outside of Australia or unaware of Quadrant, its editor for many years was on a crusade to downplay European interactions with aboriginals. It's a massive multi volume kind of side issue to argue, see [1] [2] for airplane overview. As a general rule, skin colour aside, colonisers did have a tendancy to overstate their virtue at the expence of those whose land they appropriated; check in with India, Canada, much of Africa, etc. There's a bit of a pattern. Infanticide at low freqency being universal is correct - on that we agree, and Europe was just as prone as elsewhere, just as cannabilism was quite the fad in Europe a lot more recently than you might suspect if you're not already aware. Where we disagree is in this 30% of kids killed and some high percentage eaten nonsense. > Agricultural mothers didn't have to walk ~9km per day That sounds about right for anyone tending crops when planting or harvesting by hand and many mothers hand tie wraps for carrying their babies ... you, ahhh, did know that I trust? It also sounds as if you're under the delusion that Australian Aboriginals were nomadic on a daily basis and never settled down in one place for months at a time. You'd be quite wrong on that score. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Windschuttle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Windschuttle [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_wars
- jojobas 3y ago
  >Where we disagree is in this 30% of kids killed and some high percentage eaten nonsense. Well you disagree not with me but with the likes of Marvin Harris and Joseph Birdsell (their estimate go as high as 50%). >That sounds about right for anyone tending crops when planting or harvesting by hand and many mothers hand tie wraps for carrying their babies ... you, ahhh, did know that I trust? A typical peasant family could have as little as 20 acres of land, i.e something like 80*1000m, walking that many times over daily seems far-fetched, and the wealthier they were the higher the probability that a nursing mother would be left alone. Otherwise she'd sure carry one baby around, but by the time the next one came up the previous one could be left at home. You might have also heard about them traditional gender roles, where most of the hard work in the field was a man's responsibility, women mostly tending to animal and a (rather small) vegie patch/garden, spinning, weaving, sewing, cooking, cleaning, and yes, rearing children. Your conjecture that sedentary people had to walk as much as hunter-gatherers to feed themselves has to be a joke. And yes, the super low food density of any untilled land means you have to walk - a lot - to feed yourself. Doesn't mean there wasn't a temporary camp for a few weeks at a time, you still have to walk a fair distance around that camp to hunt and forage. You're getting into Bruce Pascoe territory here, with imaginary huts and grain fields.
watwut 3y ago
We are not taking Nazi seriously either when they write about Jews or other non-Germans. It is not a conspiracy theory to believe that colonizers and genociders make stuff up so that their victims sound evil.
- jojobas 3y ago
  So basically the entirety of research on paleolithic infanticide is wrong because... Nazis? On the other hand, the modern trend is to make stuff up about yourself and your ancestors who brought a lot of this world from misery of the stone age to prosperity, including for the colonized and genocided.

defrost 3y ago

> So, basically, anybody who wrote about it is a part of an evil white conspiracy engaging in a coordinated attack on the noble savage, and William Rubinstein is just as well a bigot by virtue of publishing in Quadrant. If you say so - I'd have phrased it differently myself and pointed out the history of Quadrant articles on Australian Aboriginals that proved to be dubious at best. For anyone outside of Australia or unaware of Quadrant, its editor for many years was on a crusade to downplay European interactions with aboriginals. It's a massive multi volume kind of side issue to argue, see [1] [2] for airplane overview. As a general rule, skin colour aside, colonisers did have a tendancy to overstate their virtue at the expence of those whose land they appropriated; check in with India, Canada, much of Africa, etc. There's a bit of a pattern. Infanticide at low freqency being universal is correct - on that we agree, and Europe was just as prone as elsewhere, just as cannabilism was quite the fad in Europe a lot more recently than you might suspect if you're not already aware. Where we disagree is in this 30% of kids killed and some high percentage eaten nonsense. > Agricultural mothers didn't have to walk ~9km per day That sounds about right for anyone tending crops when planting or harvesting by hand and many mothers hand tie wraps for carrying their babies ... you, ahhh, did know that I trust? It also sounds as if you're under the delusion that Australian Aboriginals were nomadic on a daily basis and never settled down in one place for months at a time. You'd be quite wrong on that score. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Windschuttle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Windschuttle [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_wars

jojobas 3y ago
>Where we disagree is in this 30% of kids killed and some high percentage eaten nonsense. Well you disagree not with me but with the likes of Marvin Harris and Joseph Birdsell (their estimate go as high as 50%). >That sounds about right for anyone tending crops when planting or harvesting by hand and many mothers hand tie wraps for carrying their babies ... you, ahhh, did know that I trust? A typical peasant family could have as little as 20 acres of land, i.e something like 80*1000m, walking that many times over daily seems far-fetched, and the wealthier they were the higher the probability that a nursing mother would be left alone. Otherwise she'd sure carry one baby around, but by the time the next one came up the previous one could be left at home. You might have also heard about them traditional gender roles, where most of the hard work in the field was a man's responsibility, women mostly tending to animal and a (rather small) vegie patch/garden, spinning, weaving, sewing, cooking, cleaning, and yes, rearing children. Your conjecture that sedentary people had to walk as much as hunter-gatherers to feed themselves has to be a joke. And yes, the super low food density of any untilled land means you have to walk - a lot - to feed yourself. Doesn't mean there wasn't a temporary camp for a few weeks at a time, you still have to walk a fair distance around that camp to hunt and forage. You're getting into Bruce Pascoe territory here, with imaginary huts and grain fields.

watwut 3y ago

We are not taking Nazi seriously either when they write about Jews or other non-Germans. It is not a conspiracy theory to believe that colonizers and genociders make stuff up so that their victims sound evil.

jojobas 3y ago
So basically the entirety of research on paleolithic infanticide is wrong because... Nazis? On the other hand, the modern trend is to make stuff up about yourself and your ancestors who brought a lot of this world from misery of the stone age to prosperity, including for the colonized and genocided.