# 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:** 13\ **Page:** 2
**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 3, 2017, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/early-humans-infanticide-amp-cannibalism/785667/21 "2017-05-03T02:33:29Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > 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. Humans still have instincts. Babies suckle without being taught to, for example. > [@](#): > > 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. Are there statistics that prove that? ---
**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 3, 2017, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/early-humans-infanticide-amp-cannibalism/785667/22 "2017-05-03T02:56:19Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > …as I understand it, humans don’t actually display instincts as such, but there are certainly behaviors which seem fairly hardwired… I’m not really sure what distinction you’re drawing here. It always seemed to me that the notion that humans don’t have instincts is _obvious_ nonsense; but of course, it can’t be dismissed so easily when the _tabula rasa_ model in various incarnations dominated the social sciences for so long. Stephen Pinker’s [The Blank Slate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blank_Slate) is an excellent account of how and why the rather bizarre idea that there is no such thing as innate human nature gained such traction in the 20th century. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/early-humans-infanticide-amp-cannibalism/785667/23 "2017-05-03T02:56:22Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Are there statistics that prove that? Yes, although they are of course not without their critics. > **[Child maltreatment and family structure](https://aifs.gov.au/resources/policy-and-practice-papers/child-maltreatment-and-family-structure)** > > Discussion Paper 1 Produced by the National Child Protection Clearinghouse. [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/5394859\_Child\_abuse\_in\_blended\_households\_Reports\_from\_runaway\_and\_homeless\_youth](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/5394859_Child_abuse_in_blended_households_Reports_from_runaway_and_homeless_youth) [http://www.liftingtheveil.org/foster04.htm](http://www.liftingtheveil.org/foster04.htm) > **[Cinderella effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinderella_effect)** > > In evolutionary psychology, the Cinderella effect describes the phenomenon of a higher incidence of child abuse and mistreatment by stepparents than biological parents. It takes its name from the fairy tale character Cinderella, a girl who is mistreated by her stepmother and stepsisters. Evolutionary psychologists describe this effect as being a byproduct of a bias towards biological family and a conflict between reproductive partners investing in young children that are unrelated to one partner.... ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/early-humans-infanticide-amp-cannibalism/785667/24 "2017-05-03T02:58:59Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > I’m not really sure what distinction you’re drawing here. I’m not trying to draw much of a distinction, actually. But every time “instinct” comes up on this board, it derails the conversation into an argument about whether there are human instincts or whether we socialize our offspring so thoroughly that we don’t have what can be meaningfully termed “instincts”. I was hoping to head that argument off at the pass. Apparently, I failed. ---
**Author:** ![HoneyBadgerDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/honeybadgerdc/32/1033_2.png) [@HoneyBadgerDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HoneyBadgerDC)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/early-humans-infanticide-amp-cannibalism/785667/25 "2017-05-03T04:36:14Z")
> [@markn\_1](#): > > 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.) Selective breeding can get rid of traits in much less time than 12,000 years. 5 or 6 generations might be enough. Humans have been selectively breeding for some time now. ---
**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 3, 2017, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/early-humans-infanticide-amp-cannibalism/785667/26 "2017-05-03T13:28:49Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > I’m not trying to draw much of a distinction, actually. But every time “instinct” comes up on this board, it derails the conversation into an argument about whether there are human instincts or whether we socialize our offspring so thoroughly that we don’t have what can be meaningfully termed “instincts”. I was hoping to head that argument off at the pass. Apparently, I failed. There is no argument. Humans have instincts. It’s a fact beyond dispute in science, like gravity exists. Every time evolution comes up on this board, someone tries to deny it, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a fact. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 1:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/early-humans-infanticide-amp-cannibalism/785667/27 "2017-05-03T13:33:19Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > I’m not trying to draw much of a distinction, actually. But every time “instinct” comes up on this board, it derails the conversation into an argument about whether there are human instincts or whether we socialize our offspring so thoroughly that we don’t have what can be meaningfully termed “instincts”. I was hoping to head that argument off at the pass. Apparently, I failed. _Of course_ we have instincts. The socializing of offspring is, in itself, an instinct. We care for and about our offspring because we are genetically programmed to care for and about our offspring–which is another way of saying that it is instinctual. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/early-humans-infanticide-amp-cannibalism/785667/28 "2017-05-03T18:18:52Z")
It’s a fascinating topic to speculate about prehistory and human behavior. As an example, it took from the “population bottleneck” about 70,000 years ago, until 10,000 years ago, for humans to figure out how to do agriculture. Yet when nomadic humans from Siberia, with no agricultural background, moved into North America about 12,000 years ago, it only took a few thousand years to develop agriculture is several locales. Did human brainpower change that dramatically from 70,000BC? These are the same brains that figured out from observation and remembering, the regular paths of the planets. I would be very surprised if they did not have a good clue that sex causes babies long before 10,000BC. After all, excluding occasional kinkiness, only one thing goes in and babies come out. You don’t need to be a rocket surgeon to figure it out. And inheritance? I can see my step-other’s chin on several of her grandchildren; my brother has my father’s weird ears; I don’t doubt that early humans could see inherited characteristics and understand the role of parentage. We have a bad habit of assuming primitive means stupid. Cecil falls into a similar trap in asserting that “looking for food [occupied] every waking moment…”. Many anthropology studies fin that hunter-gatherers had long periods of contemplative downtime unless times were extraordinarily tough. They would not have been too busy. We can also debate the “instinctive” recognition of one’s own children. Whether people recognize their children, when they know they are theirs, there’s a significant favoring that happens- many cultures are replete with stories of nepotism in the face of rules against it. So it’s not surprising. As for cannibalism? It was standard behavior in some cultures to kill all the males when one tribe took over another tribe or village, and proceed to use the females; yet North American Indians, for example, were also known to adopt young males into the tribe and treat them as part of the group - just the opposite, a sort of “waste not want not” philosophy. Many cultures have a simple taboo against any cannibalism (except maybe ritualistic). The problem is that in a society subject to periodic shortages, how do you know when times are so desperate that it is acceptable to eat another person? It’s as dangerous as deciding to eat seed grain during the winter… you are destroying the future to survive the present, creating a problem further on. Besides, the motivation is to “kill the other guy’s children”. Presumably, the eating part, for chimps, is just a bonus. As mentioned, the primary goal is to reduce resource use and put the females back into fertility to pass on your own genes… and this is also a known human behavior. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2017, 6:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/early-humans-infanticide-amp-cannibalism/785667/29 "2017-05-04T06:10:05Z")
A story about current infanticide: BBC, “[The midwife who saved intersex babies](http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-39780214)”. Not linked to cannibalism, but used as a post-birth abortion method. ---
**Author:** ![purplehorseshoe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/purplehorseshoe/32/2996_2.png) [@purplehorseshoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/purplehorseshoe)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2017, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/early-humans-infanticide-amp-cannibalism/785667/30 "2017-05-05T00:10:33Z")
That’s a neat article, **Nava** , but I have a quibble with the phrase “post birth abortion” though. That’s like a post-mortem murder or something … The timeframe for that word has expired. ---
**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 5, 2017, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/early-humans-infanticide-amp-cannibalism/785667/31 "2017-05-05T01:10:54Z")
> [@purplehorseshoe](#): > > That’s a neat article, **Nava** , but I have a quibble with the phrase “post birth abortion” though. That’s like a post-mortem murder or something … The timeframe for that word has expired. I tend to think that’s the point Nava was making - I took it as ironic. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2017, 1:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/early-humans-infanticide-amp-cannibalism/785667/32 "2017-05-05T01:29:25Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > 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. Wouldn’t that just be the lack of an instinct not to harm our own children? Is there evidence that unrelated children are harmed more often than unrelated adults? ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2017, 7:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/early-humans-infanticide-amp-cannibalism/785667/33 "2017-05-05T07:18:07Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > I tend to think that’s the point Nava was making - I took it as ironic. Yep. The only reason those particular babies don’t get aborted when the word still applies properly is that their parents don’t know about them being “defective” until the birth takes place. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/early-humans-infanticide-amp-cannibalism/785667.md?page=1)