The infant mortality rate in ancient times could have been lower than it is believed

May 2021 in an African cavePanga-i-Saidi, the remains of a child were discovered who died about 78 thousand years ago. Judging by the surviving bones, at the time of his death he was only 2-3 years old. It was not possible to determine the sex of the child, because the structure of the body of boys and girls at this age is the same. The body was neatly laid in the grave, there was even a pillow under the head. Since thousands of years ago, medicine practically did not exist and people could die even from a cold, it is logical to assume that the cause of the death of a child is illness. Archaeologists find many children's graves and in some places there are even more of them than burials with adults. Based on this, it is believed that in ancient times, infant mortality was very common. However, recently scientists have found a powerful argument against this version.

Why did ancient children die more often? Scientists have a new guess

Why do children die more often than adults?

At the moment, it is believed that the children'smortality in ancient times was high due to the fact that children were a vulnerable category of the population. And this is not surprising - babies have not fully formed organisms and, moreover, they are highly dependent on adults. According to the calculations of some scientists, thousands of years ago in the first year of life, up to 40% of babies died. The main diseases of primitive people were eating disorders, skin diseases, injuries, and so on. If the wound gets infected, died from blood poisoning, or tetanus was almost inevitable. Even a cold was dangerous - people could easily suffer from the cold and not cope with the complications that arose.

Previously, children really had more risks of dying, but it is possible that they were tougher than us.

Tetanus Is an acute infectious disease,the causative agent of which is a tetanus bacillus (Clostridium tetani). The disease affects the nervous system and leads to muscle tension and cramps. There are many tetanus vaccines available today, so infections are minimal. According to data for 2012, 30-35 cases of tetanus are registered in Russia every year.

Almost all ancient methods of treatment werebased on the belief that every person and object has a soul. People believed that during sleep or after death, the soul leaves the body and stays near the living. Sometimes a stranger's soul enters the body of a healthy person, which becomes the cause of illness. And it was allegedly possible to cure such people only by expelling the evil spirit. For this, various spells, prayers and conspiracies were used.

Previously, shamans and other people "who know how to communicate with spirits" were engaged in the treatment of diseases.

Of course, the methods of treatment in different parts of the world were different. Over time, medicinal herbs began to be used to cure diseases. Medicine in its current form appeared only in the 20th century - before that, doctors practiced very strange procedures.

Cause of infant mortality

Recently the assumption of high mortality in childrenin ancient times was questioned by Australian scientists. As part of the scientific work, the results of which were published in the American Journal of Biological Anthropology, they carefully studied the statistics on the population of 97 countries over the past 10 years. By comparing the birth rate in different countries with the infant mortality rate, scientists came to the conclusion that infant mortality in ancient times was high only because there were simply more children in numbers than adults.

In ancient times, children were mind
died more often because there were more of them

And indeed, thousands of years ago, people did notonly they didn’t have contraception - they didn’t even know how children were “made”. So women of mature age could give birth to a child, and then immediately become pregnant again. And based on this, we can conclude that the more children are born, the more they die. The statistics studied by the researchers proved this. It turned out that in places with low fertility (Japan, Iceland, and so on), babies die less often. And in countries with high fertility, like the Republic of Mali, there is a higher mortality rate.

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Today, the greatest danger to people iscoronavirus, which still continues to spread. Fortunately, children suffer from this disease much less frequently than adults. Recently, my colleague Andrey Zhukov lucidly explained why children are less likely to become infected with coronavirus and tolerate it more easily. Highly recommend reading, here is the link.