>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

>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.