# Early Humans: Infanticide & Cannibalism **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 1, 2017, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/early-humans-infanticide-amp-cannibalism/785667 "2017-05-01T22:11:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![MyFootsZZZ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/myfootszzz/32/12580_2.png) [@MyFootsZZZ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MyFootsZZZ)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2017, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/early-humans-infanticide-amp-cannibalism/785667/1 "2017-05-01T22:11:23Z")
I’m watching a 1980’s documentary called ‘Magnificent Lives of the Chimpanzees’, and they showed a mothers infant being taken by a male, killed, and eaten by the community. The narrator pretty much flat out says that humans did the same. I did a quick Google search, but only found things things that were ritualistic or a means of survival. I thought it might be more fun to ask you folks, before looking into even further. Thank you so much. Sent from my VS986 using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![dolphinboy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dolphinboy/32/330_2.png) [@dolphinboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dolphinboy)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2017, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/early-humans-infanticide-amp-cannibalism/785667/2 "2017-05-01T23:41:00Z")
I don’t think the question is did it ever happen, but how widespread and common was it? I would argue, unencumbered by the thought process, that it may have been somewhat common in some tribes of early humans, but that it was farely rare in most tribes. If you routinely kill off a percentage of your young that makes is harder to sustain a viable population, which was hard enough given all of the challenges early humans must have faced, including disease, predation and intertribal warfare. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2017, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/early-humans-infanticide-amp-cannibalism/785667/3 "2017-05-02T01:54:45Z")
Killing off and eating young might not have been routine, but there’s a certain survival logic to doing that during famine when you can’t support everyone, the young (as well as the old) are likely to die off anyway, and maybe the eventual fate of orphans in such circumstances. Which is not to be taken as me condoning anything of the sort, just that I could see where it might happen. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2017, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/early-humans-infanticide-amp-cannibalism/785667/4 "2017-05-02T02:10:57Z")
If you rule out “ritualistic” and “a means of survival”, what exactly is left? ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2017, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/early-humans-infanticide-amp-cannibalism/785667/5 "2017-05-02T02:13:27Z")
Possible, but probably not routine. At any rate, there is not enough evidence from the fossil record to say. But our best insight is to look at extant primitive societies to see how common this is. None that I know of. ---
**Author:** ![snfaulkner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snfaulkner/32/433_2.png) [@snfaulkner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snfaulkner)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2017, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/early-humans-infanticide-amp-cannibalism/785667/6 "2017-05-02T02:18:30Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > If you rule out “ritualistic” and “a means of survival”, what exactly is left? Fun? ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2017, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/early-humans-infanticide-amp-cannibalism/785667/7 "2017-05-02T02:53:08Z")
I believe there is one instance in the bible about the killing and eating of a infant, but during times of famine. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2017, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/early-humans-infanticide-amp-cannibalism/785667/8 "2017-05-02T03:06:41Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > If you rule out “ritualistic” and “a means of survival”, what exactly is left? Killing a rival man’s child prior to impregnating the woman with your own. ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2017, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/early-humans-infanticide-amp-cannibalism/785667/9 "2017-05-02T03:18:10Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > Killing a rival man’s child prior to impregnating the woman with your own. That only makes sense if the man was aware that sex leads to pregnancy or if the behavior was instinctual. But [The Master says](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/734/when-did-mankind-figure-out-that-sex-babies) the connection between sex and pregnancy wasn’t known until the Neolithic, c. 10,000 BC. And it seems unlikely to be instinctual since modern men (for the most part) don’t have such an instinct. ---
**Author:** ![Shalmanese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shalmanese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shalmanese)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2017, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/early-humans-infanticide-amp-cannibalism/785667/10 "2017-05-02T12:52:39Z")
> [@markn\_1](#): > > That only makes sense if the man was aware that sex leads to pregnancy or if the behavior was instinctual. But [The Master says](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/734/when-did-mankind-figure-out-that-sex-babies) the connection between sex and pregnancy wasn’t known until the Neolithic, c. 10,000 BC. And it seems unlikely to be instinctual since modern men (for the most part) don’t have such an instinct. You don’t have to understand something to behave like it. For example, people have been leery about procreating with their siblings well before we understood the Westermarck effect. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2017, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/early-humans-infanticide-amp-cannibalism/785667/11 "2017-05-02T14:08:00Z")
> [@markn\_1](#): > > That only makes sense if the man was aware that sex leads to pregnancy or if the behavior was instinctual. But [The Master says](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/734/when-did-mankind-figure-out-that-sex-babies) the connection between sex and pregnancy wasn’t known until the Neolithic, c. 10,000 BC. And it seems unlikely to be instinctual since modern men (for the most part) don’t have such an instinct. First of all, that’s shear conjecture with no proof. Second, that’s about sex and procreation, not whether or not fathers knew who their children were. > [@Shalmanese](#): > > You don’t have to understand something to behave like it. For example, people have been leery about procreating with their siblings well before we understood the Westermarck effect. The truth is, we have no way of knowing what went on with regard to this in pre-historic times. And the Westermak Effect is not without its critics. Evolutionary Psychology is hard. No, really it is!! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2017, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/early-humans-infanticide-amp-cannibalism/785667/12 "2017-05-02T14:55:53Z")
> [@Shalmanese](#): > > You don’t have to understand something to behave like it. Yes, that’s what I said. Behavior without understanding is instinct. How did we lose that instinct in less than 12,000 years? > [@John\_Mace](#): > > First of all, that’s shear conjecture with no proof. Second, that’s about sex and procreation, not whether or not fathers knew who their children were. What part is “shear [sic] conjecture”? That sex=pregnancy wasn’t known until the neolithic? Cecil explained the reasoning behind this in his article. Granted, it’s not “proven”, but nothing outside of mathematics is ever proven. In most cases it’s true that fathers wouldn’t know who their children were. Even today fathers generally have no way short of DNA testing to know for certain who their children are. In a society with more limited phenotypic variation (hair color, etc) they’d have even fewer clues. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2017, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/early-humans-infanticide-amp-cannibalism/785667/13 "2017-05-02T14:59:53Z")
Every culture recognizes the same amount of phenotypic variation. In a culture where everyone has the same hair color, you just don’t pay any attention to hair color, and look for something else instead. If you can recognize different individuals, then you can also recognize that some individuals look similar. What you’re saying basically amounts to “all those neolithic people look alike”. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2017, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/early-humans-infanticide-amp-cannibalism/785667/14 "2017-05-02T15:27:36Z")
> [@markn\_1](#): > > …What part is “shear [sic] conjecture”? That sex=pregnancy wasn’t known until the neolithic? Cecil explained the reasoning behind this in his article. Granted, it’s not “proven”, but nothing outside of mathematics is ever proven. > > In most cases it’s true that fathers wouldn’t know who their children were. Even today fathers generally have no way short of DNA testing to know for certain who their children are. In a society with more limited phenotypic variation (hair color, etc) they’d have even fewer clues. (As an aside, I don’t think _ad hominem_ highlighting of a typo is your usual level of discourse.) There are known examples of this behavior in several animals, including primates: > [@](#): > > Hanuman langurs (or gray langurs) are Old World monkeys found in India. They are a social animal, living in groups that consist of a single dominant male and multiple females. The dominant male has a reproductive monopoly within the group, which causes sub-ordinate males to have a much lower fitness value in comparison. To gain the opportunity to reproduce, sub-ordinate males try to take over the dominant role within a group, usually resulting in an aggressive struggle with the existing dominant male. If successful in overthrowing the previous male, unrelated infants of the females are then killed. This infanticidal period is limited to the window just after the group is taken over. Cannibalism, however, has not been observed in this species. > > Infanticide not only reduces intraspecific competition between the incumbent’s offspring and those of other males but also increases the parental investment afforded to their own young, and allows females to become fertile faster. This is because females of this species, as well as many other mammals, do not ovulate during lactation. It then becomes easier to understand how infanticide evolved. If a male kills a female’s young, she stops lactating and is able to become pregnant again. Because of this, the newly dominant male is able to reproduce at a faster rate than without the act of infanticide. As males are in a constant struggle to protect their group, those that express infanticidal behavior will contribute a larger portion to future gene pools (see natural selection). > **[Infanticide (zoology)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infanticide_(zoology))** > > In animals, infanticide involves the intentional killing of young offspring by a mature animal of the same species. Animal infanticide is studied in zoology, specifically in the field of ethology. Ovicide is the analogous destruction of eggs. The practice has been observed in many species throughout the animal kingdom, especially primates (primate infanticide) but including microscopic rotifers, insects, fish, amphibians, birds and mammals. Infanticide can be practiced by both males and fem Infan... So far as I’m aware, there is no definitive research to show that chimp infanticide occurs for this reason, but it’s a leading hypothesis (although it would not be quite the same, since chimp social structure is different). Since we know some closely-related species engage in this behavior, it’s certainly _plausible_ that our ancestors did too. And I think the notion that we would require conscious analytical knowledge of reproduction to engage in this behavior is wrong. It’s the kind of instinctive behavior that could evolve quickly both into and out of existence, since the potential fitness advantage is large. On the one hand, in a dominance social structure, if the dominant male _can_ get away with siring most of the children, aided by infanticide, his genes will spread fast. On the other hand, if a male misjudges the strength of his position, attempting to murder other males’ children is likely to met with a rather robust response. ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2017, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/early-humans-infanticide-amp-cannibalism/785667/15 "2017-05-02T15:58:28Z")
I apologize for the snarky [sic] comment. You’re right, it was uncalled for. I know that in many animals the males instinctively kill babies of females they mate with. My point, which apparently I’m not making clear, is if that were instinctive behavior in early humans, it would still be instinctive behavior today. 12,000 years is too short a time for evolution to get rid of an instinctive behavior. What other instinctive behavior has disappeared in such a short time frame? Even if there were selection pressure to eliminate that behavior, in only 12,000 years there would still be remnants of it. Men would have an innate aversion and hostility to existing children of a new mate and would constantly be fighting the urge to kill them. (Ok, I’m leaving myself open for wry anecdotes here, but this behavior isn’t universal.) ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2017, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/early-humans-infanticide-amp-cannibalism/785667/16 "2017-05-02T16:31:32Z")
Well, I guess it depends what time period you want to consider in saying “humans” might have done this. Anatomically modern _H sapiens_ has been around for something like 200,000 years. I share your skepticism that any such thing was likely (at least as a routine social strategy outside of war) within relatively modern history, because it’s related to the whole social structure. But I’d hesitate to rule it out over the course of 100,000 years or more. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2017, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/early-humans-infanticide-amp-cannibalism/785667/17 "2017-05-02T16:50:11Z")
> [@kanicbird](#): > > I believe there is one instance in the bible about the killing and eating of a infant, but during times of famine. The Biblical account entered the Western/Christian mythos stemming from its citation in …Josephus’s The Jewish Wars, originally written in Aramaic around 77 C.E., and then translated into Greek. Indeed, it might be possible to credit Josephus with the creation of the character of Maria, although certainly the motif of the starving mother under siege existed long before him, even appearing in a context that would have been familiar to Josephus. This is the account in 2 Kings 6:28–29 of the woman of Samaria during the siege of that city by Ben-hadad, king of Syria. This woman complain to the king of Israel after she and her neighbor have, between them, eaten her son, not because of the state to which she has been reduced, but rather because of the dishonesty of her neighbor in reneging on an agreement to share her own child: “This woman said unto me, Give thy son, that we may eat him today, and we will eat my son tomorrow. So we boiled my son and did eat him; and I said unto her on the next day, Give thy son, that we may eat him; and she hath hid her son.” The king rends his garments in sorrow and despair. While it is not impossible, or even all that improbable, given the exigencies of a siege, that an incident of the kind Josephus describes actually took place during the siege of Jerusalem, it seems more likely, then, that he included the melodramatic and ritualized scene as a traditional trope of desperation. From “The Maternal Monstrous: Cannibalism at the Siege of Jerusalem” in **Consuming Passions: The Uses of Cannibalism in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe** , Merrall Llewelyn Price (Routledge:2003). Well worth reading. As is: **Medicinal Cannibalism in Early Modern English Literature and Culture** , Louise Noble (Palgrave:2011). Something of a side interest of mine… ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2017, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/early-humans-infanticide-amp-cannibalism/785667/18 "2017-05-02T18:08:51Z")
The thing with us hoo-mans is that we have enormous cultural variation. It could be that certain tribes would take over another tribe’s territory and kill the babies. And other tribes might adopt all the babies. And the behavior might depend on how reliable the food resources were or what time of year it was. Saying that “early humans did X” is always fraught with danger when there is no fossil evidence of “X” behavior and we don’t know of any extant cultures that do “X”. ---
**Author:** ![MyFootsZZZ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/myfootszzz/32/12580_2.png) [@MyFootsZZZ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MyFootsZZZ)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2017, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/early-humans-infanticide-amp-cannibalism/785667/19 "2017-05-02T18:12:16Z")
Interesting responses. Thank you all again. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2017, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/early-humans-infanticide-amp-cannibalism/785667/20 "2017-05-02T23:32:12Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > If you rule out “ritualistic” and “a means of survival”, what exactly is left? Baby back ribs for dinner? > [@markn\_1](#): > > That only makes sense if the man was aware that sex leads to pregnancy or if the behavior was instinctual. But [The Master says](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/734/when-did-mankind-figure-out-that-sex-babies) the connection between sex and pregnancy wasn’t known until the Neolithic, c. 10,000 BC. And it seems unlikely to be instinctual since modern men (for the most part) don’t have such an instinct. There are many arguably “instinctual” behaviors (as I understand it, humans don’t actually display instincts as such, but there are certainly behaviors which seem fairly hardwired) that we don’t do anymore, or at least we’re not open about doing. Benign things like picking our nose, for example, are quashed by social conditioning to become either something we don’t do, or we don’t do in public, or we don’t admit we do. More serious things, like rape and murder, we make laws against. I think the increased rate of physical child abuse in blended, foster, and adoptive households suggests that there is an “instinct” to harm the offspring of another person that still exists. We may not eat our young, but our unrelated adults too often hurt, injure, and even murder them at a rate higher than we do our biological children. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/early-humans-infanticide-amp-cannibalism/785667.md?page=2)