How Ancient Humans Actually Kept Their Children Alive — Transcript

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1. 0:00Tonight, you're going to put your child
2. 0:01to bed in a room of their own. A crib
3. 0:03with soft sheets, a baby monitor glowing
4. 0:05on the nightstand, the door closed, the
5. 0:07house quiet. You won't think twice about
6. 0:08it. But, for 99.9% of human history, a
7. 0:11baby sleeping alone in a room would have
8. 0:12been dead by morning. No crib, no
9. 0:14monitor, no pediatrician to call. Just
10. 0:16the dark, the cold, and everything out
11. 0:18there that could smell a newborn from a
12. 0:19quarter mile away. For over 300,000
13. 0:22years, every single one of your
14. 0:23ancestors faced the same problem. Human
15. 0:25babies are the most helpless creatures
16. 0:27on the planet, and keeping one alive was
17. 0:29the hardest thing our species ever had
18. 0:31to do. How they did it changes
19. 0:32everything we think we know about
20. 0:34parenting, about family, and about what
21. 0:36your body was actually built for. Let's
22. 0:38start with the problem, because the
23. 0:39problem is you. A newborn horse stands
24. 0:41up and walks within hours of birth. A
25. 0:43newborn chimpanzee grips its mother's
26. 0:45fur and holds on from the first minute.
27. 0:47A newborn human can't even hold up its
28. 0:48own head. It can't walk for a year. It
29. 0:50can't feed itself for years. It can't
30. 0:52survive a single night without someone
31. 0:54else keeping it alive. Of all the
32. 0:55primates on Earth, human babies are born
33. 0:57the most unfinished, and the reason is
34. 0:59your brain. The human brain is so large
35. 1:01that if it grew to the same proportion
36. 1:03as a chimpanzee's before birth, it would
37. 1:04never fit through the birth canal. So,
38. 1:06evolution made a trade. Human babies are
39. 1:08born with brains roughly 25% of their
40. 1:10adult size. A chimpanzee is born at
41. 1:12about 40%. That means 75% of your brain
42. 1:15development happens after birth, while
43. 1:16you are completely defenseless. This is
44. 1:18not a design flaw. This is the deal. We
45. 1:20got the most powerful brain on the
46. 1:21planet. The price was the most helpless
47. 1:23infant on the planet. And for 300,000
48. 1:26years, every mother who gave birth faced
49. 1:27this equation. A baby that couldn't
50. 1:29cling. A baby that couldn't run. A baby
51. 1:31that couldn't even stay quiet when a
52. 1:33predator was close. In a world full of
53. 1:34leopards, hyenas, and snakes, that baby
54. 1:36was not a gift. It was a target. So, how
55. 1:38did they keep it alive? The answer is
56. 1:40something modern humans have almost
57. 1:42completely abandoned. They didn't do it
58. 1:43alone. In 2009, anthropologist Sarah
59. 1:46Blaffer Hrdy published a book called
60. 1:48Mothers and Others. Her argument was
61. 1:49simple and devastating. Humans are not
62. 1:51like other great apes. A chimpanzee
63. 1:53raises all of her offspring almost
64. 1:54entirely by herself. She carries, feeds,
65. 1:57and protects her baby solo for 5 years
66. 1:59before she can have another. If anyone
67. 2:01else tries to touch that infant, she
68. 2:02attacks them. Humans are the opposite.
69. 2:04We are what biologists call cooperative
70. 2:06breeders. We evolved to raise children
71. 2:08as a group, not because it was nice,
72. 2:10because it was the only way to keep them
73. 2:11alive. Without the energy and protection
74. 2:13provided by others, the enormous cost of
75. 2:15growing a human brain inside a helpless
76. 2:17body would have driven our species to
77. 2:19extinction. We didn't survive because we
78. 2:21were strong. We survived because we
79. 2:22shared the weight, and the data on this
80. 2:24is staggering. Among the Efe foragers of
81. 2:26the Ituri forest in the Congo,
82. 2:28researchers found that a baby is held by
83. 2:29an average of 14 different people in a
84. 2:31single 8-hour period. 14. The infant is
85. 2:34transferred from one pair of arms to
86. 2:35another roughly eight times every hour.
87. 2:37The mother holds the baby about 40% of
88. 2:39the time. The other 60% the child is in
89. 2:42someone else's arms entirely. Ants,
90. 2:44older siblings, grandmothers, neighbors,
91. 2:46women who aren't even related to the
92. 2:47child. Some of them breastfeed the baby
93. 2:49themselves. Among the Aka of Central
94. 2:51Africa, anthropologist Barry Hewlett
95. 2:53found that fathers are within arms reach
96. 2:54of their infants more than 47% of the
97. 2:56day. These are not modern fathers
98. 2:58performing a parenting trend. These are
99. 3:00men living the way humans lived for
100. 3:01hundreds of thousands of years. The baby
101. 3:03was never alone. The baby was never on
102. 3:05the ground. The baby was never not
103. 3:07touching somebody, and there was a
104. 3:08reason for that. A baby on the ground
105. 3:10was a dead baby. When early humans
106. 3:12became bipedal millions of years ago,
107. 3:14they lost the body hair that primate
108. 3:15infants used to cling to their mothers.
109. 3:17Chimpanzee baby grips its mother's fur
110. 3:19from the moment it's born and hangs on.
111. 3:21A human baby has nothing to hold, so
112. 3:22mothers carried them every hour, every
113. 3:24day, for years. They fashioned slings
114. 3:26out of animal hides and plant fibers. A
115. 3:2910,000-year-old burial site in Italy
116. 3:31revealed an infant named Neve, buried
117. 3:32with what archaeologists believe was a
118. 3:34decorated baby carrier. But the carrying
119. 3:36wasn't just transportation. It was
120. 3:38survival technology. When a human infant
121. 3:40is picked up and held against a body,
122. 3:41its heart rate drops. Its breathing
123. 3:43stabilizes. It stops crying. Scientists
124. 3:45call this the transport response. It is
125. 3:47an ancient biological program wired
126. 3:49directly into the nervous system. In the
127. 3:51wild, a crying baby attracts predators.
128. 3:53A baby that goes silent the moment it is
129. 3:54carried is a baby that stays alive. Your
130. 3:56infant still does this right now. When
131. 3:58you pick up a screaming newborn and hold
132. 4:00it to your chest and it suddenly calms,
133. 4:02that is not comfort. That is a
134. 4:03300,000-year-old predator evasion reflex
135. 4:06still running inside your child's body.
136. 4:08The baby believes it is being carried to
137. 4:10safety, so it goes quiet so it doesn't
138. 4:12get you both killed. But carrying alone
139. 4:13wasn't enough. You also had to feed
140. 4:15them. And what ancient humans fed their
141. 4:17babies would make most modern parents
142. 4:19flinch. Mothers breastfed for a minimum
143. 4:20of 2 to 3 years. In many hunter-gatherer
144. 4:22groups, 4 years or longer. This was not
145. 4:25a lifestyle choice. This was the only
146. 4:27option. There was no formula. There were
147. 4:28no bottles. There was no clean water
148. 4:30safe enough for an infant to drink.
149. 4:32Breast milk was the only sterile,
150. 4:33nutritionally complete food a baby could
151. 4:35receive. And it carried antibodies that
152. 4:37fought infections in a world with zero
153. 4:39medicine. Breastfeeding also did
154. 4:41something else. It suppressed ovulation.
155. 4:43A mother nursing a child around the
156. 4:44clock would not get pregnant again for
157. 4:45years. This was nature's birth control.
158. 4:48Because if you had two helpless infants
159. 4:50at the same time in the Paleolithic, the
160. 4:52odds of losing both went through the
161. 4:53roof. And when the baby started needing
162. 4:55more than milk, there was no baby food.
163. 4:57No mashed fruit in a jar, no soft cereal
164. 4:59from a box. What there was was
165. 5:00premastication. The mother, or the
166. 5:02grandmother, or whoever was holding the
167. 5:04baby, chewed a piece of meat or a tough
168. 5:05root until it was soft and partly broken
169. 5:07down by their saliva. Then they pushed
170. 5:09it from their own mouth directly into
171. 5:11the baby's mouth, lip to lip. Saliva
172. 5:13carrying digestive enzymes and immune
173. 5:15cells straight into the child. Some
174. 5:16anthropologists now believe this is the
175. 5:18evolutionary origin of human kissing.
176. 5:20Not romance, not affection. A mother
177. 5:22feeding her child the only way she
178. 5:24could. And then there were the
179. 5:25grandmothers. This is the part of the
180. 5:26story that nobody expects. Most animals
181. 5:29die shortly after they stop being able
182. 5:30to reproduce. There is no evolutionary
183. 5:32reason to keep a body running once it
184. 5:34can no longer pass on genes. But human
185. 5:36women live for decades after menopause.
186. 5:38Why? In 1997, anthropologist Kristen
187. 5:40Hawkes at the University of Utah
188. 5:42published a study on the Hadza people of
189. 5:44Tanzania, one of the last
190. 5:45hunter-gatherer groups on Earth. She
191. 5:47found that post-menopausal women were
192. 5:48among the hardest working and most
193. 5:50productive foragers in the entire group.
194. 5:52They spent hours in the heat digging
195. 5:54tough tubers from hard ground. They
196. 5:56collected foods that young children
197. 5:57could never get on their own, and they
198. 5:59fed their grandchildren. This meant that
199. 6:01mothers could have another baby sooner
200. 6:03because grandmother was already feeding
201. 6:05the last one. Hawkes called this the
202. 6:06grandmother hypothesis. The reason human
203. 6:09women outlive their fertility is because
204. 6:11grandmothers who helped raise
205. 6:12grandchildren passed on more of their
206. 6:14genes. Your long lifespan exists because
207. 6:16300,000 years ago an old woman digging
208. 6:18roots in the African sun was the
209. 6:20difference between a child living and a
210. 6:21child starving. Menopause is not a
211. 6:23breakdown. It is a strategy, one of the
212. 6:26most successful strategies our species
213. 6:27ever evolved. And here's the part that
214. 6:29should unsettle every modern parent
215. 6:31reading this. For 300,000 years, no
216. 6:33humans have raised a child alone, never.
217. 6:35It was always a group, always a network
218. 6:37of hands, always someone to pass the
219. 6:39baby to when you couldn't hold your eyes
220. 6:40open anymore. The average mother in a
221. 6:42hunter-gatherer band had somewhere
222. 6:43between 5 and 15 people actively helping
223. 6:46her raise each child every single day.
224. 6:48Today, in most industrialized countries,
225. 6:50that number is two, often one. You are
226. 6:52sitting in an apartment at 3:00 a.m.
227. 6:54with a screaming infant and nobody is
228. 6:55coming. No grandmother down the path, no
229. 6:57aunt in the next shelter, no neighbor
230. 6:59who will hold your baby while you sleep
231. 7:01for an hour. The exhaustion and
232. 7:02loneliness that modern parents feel is
233. 7:04not weakness. It is not a failure of
234. 7:06character. It is the result of trying to
235. 7:08do alone what your body was never once,
236. 7:10in 300,000 years of evolution, designed
237. 7:12to do alone. For the entire history of
238. 7:14our species, the question was never
239. 7:16whether one person could raise a child.
240. 7:17The answer to that was always no. The
241. 7:19question was whether enough people cared
242. 7:21about that child to keep it alive. And
243. 7:23for 300,000 years, enough people always
244. 7:25did because that's the only reason any
245. 7:27of us are here. That's all for today.
246. 7:29Anyway, please donate or subscribe to
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