What is the evolutionary history of breastfeeding in our species?

Question

What is the history of breastfeeding in homo sapiens and our ancestors? At what age did early humans stop breastfeeding?

Did it help advance our species?

What do you think when someone refers to modern breastfeeding as "disgusting and primitive. We are not cavemen"

How does breastfeeding tie into "survival of the fittest"?

Answer 1

I don't believe in evolution.  Pray to God that he will provide the answers that you are looking for regarding breast feeding.  Bless you my child.

Answer 2

okay?

Answer 3

It didn't just advance our species it was our survival.  What do you think our ancestors would have fed us as newborns? Water?  We would have died.  All warm blooded mammals breastfed until they were old enough to eat what the adults ate.  They were taught what to eat by the adults.

Answer 4

It's thought to be wrong today but early people without clothes would have fed the child as long as that child wanted. Pushing off the child only when other children came along forcing the child to have to give it up. Women would have helped each other with feeding the child, creating a closeness that we today can only half way guess about.  It helped advance by creating a close society where children felt like they had many mothers. The mother child relationship is thought to be the way that we become to feel emotion for each other creating the feeling of being hurt when someone else is actually hurt.

Answer 5

I really like Mathilda's answer I'd also like to add that if you go by our closest relative in the animal kingdom, the chimpanzee, breastfeed their infants until 5 years of age.  That would put the human infant between 4 and five years of age as well.  Perhaps a bit longer if you consider the large size of the human brain and the helplessness of the human infant at birth.

Breast fed babies have an IQ 6 points higher than their formula counterpart.  I'd say higher intellect would advance our species.  Breast milk also has stem cells which compensate for some deficiencies int the new born as well as Hemoglobin's that boost their underdeveloped immune systems helping insure their survival.

This is a sad opinion that is unfortunately all too common in American Society.  It is recommended by World Health organization ALL babies be Breastfed until 2 years old.  This is a minimum requirement.  Too many women in the United States are sold into a lie perpetuated by hospitals getting grant money from formula companies to sell a product that is deficient at best.  In this country even though we claim to follow WHO policy formula companies continue to market directly to consumers.  It is simply not enforced.  



Studies have proven that breastfed babies have a markedly lower incidence of Respiratory disease, diarrhea, ear infections, urinary tract infections, meningitis, and Sudden infant death syndrome.  Building a healthy strong baby ensures the survival of the species and heck it save me tax dollars.

Answer 6

Kathryn Dettwyler's book "Breastfeeding: Biocultural Perspectives" is an excellent read, and the most thorough look at breastfeeding and anthropology I've found.

Answer 7

When i think of the history of breastfeeding, I think of the first woman, Eve.  After all she didn't make a milkman now did she?  Not only that,cows milk was meant for calf's, and the human brain would come into play more so than "breastfeeding" when your speaking of the survival of the fittest!

Answer 8

If you take a look a modern hunter gatherer tribes, they breastfeed the children until they are four (average age) or five. They feed them pretty intensively until they are over two.

This has two effects. It acts as a contraceptive, and it provides a safe source of fluids for vulnerable babies and toddlers.

The contraceptive part is important. Until about 20, 000 years ago all humans seemed to be moblie hunter gatherers, moving from one site to another. You can't have more than one babe in arms at a time if you are living like that. Child number one has to be walking before the new baby comes, you can only manage one at a time.

Also, hunter gatherers had a lower child mortality rate than early farmers, there's less exposure to communicable diseases, and the odds of contaminated water are a lot lower. The nutrition of the hunter gatherers was also a lot better, they were about 4 inches taller than farmers from the same era.

This means women didn't need to be baby factories, they didn't need to have eight babies just to get two to survive, five or six would have been sufficient, so they could space the pregnancies out with prolonged breastfeeding. Also, giving birth is DANGEROUS, it was the number one cause of adult female death through history, so you wanted to avoid the risk if you could, and keep your existing children's mother alive.

I have two children that I've breastfed for three years each. They rarely got sick as babies, and never got dehydrated when they had diarrhea or vomiting. Apparently their IQ is six points higher for it too.

People need to get a life if they have a problem with it.

Answer 9

Breast feeding is great for the child's immune system- anybody who tells you otherwise is a jaded, self loathing narcissist- my oxymoronic term for yuppie, child bearing children haters.

Answer 10

Uh breastfeding LONG pre-dated humans -- all mammals breast-feed, so it's a vry old innovation (compared to human existence).

It helped mammals since mothers don't have to find as much food as oftn, to keep their very young alive.

I don't know if anyon knows how long arly humans breastfed (in the snse of what age th young stopped breast-feding).

Peopl who disapprove of breastfeeding at all are silly; those who disapprove of public breastfeeding less so.

(Bottle-feeding was a really recent thing -- less than a hundred years is my guess.)