Why would you imagine that?
One suspects that Billy has never held (or perhaps seen) a child.
I’ve yet to see an infant or young toddler with sufficient hair to use as a handle. Yeah, someone has never actually handled/cared for larval humans.
Find a scientist who studies human coprolites (i.e. fossilized feces) and ask him/her. Perhaps some sort of evidence exists indicating particular coprolites were not produced by an older person. Over the years, I’ve emailed various scientists with questions and I’ve found they often respond.
That was the authors’ point, that modern western women menstruate far more often than our ancestors over their reproductive life - which is (they said) thought to be a contributor to a higher rate of ovarian cancer. The study suggested - about 2 times more periods.
And - breastfeeding to a much later age probably had an effect on the “quality” of baby poop - but the key point probably is that typically there was less food all around, including for babies, so frequency was probably much smaller. In “kids these days” rants, many old timers will point out that before disposable diapers, potty training by 12 months was achievable and “parents today are lazy”. I had a summer of having to help (a little bit) with the cloth diaper process for my niece when I was 12, and I appreciate that dealing with poop more up close was a good incentive to implement early toilet training.
I have also heard that very young children have messy but not smelly poop - as I understand, this is due to the lack of some intestinal bacteria. But they pick this up from the world around them, and the unhygienic things they put in their mouth, fairly quickly. So a breast-fed 2-year-old is not likely to avoid producing some serious stink.
Elimination communication, in which the baby’s mother learns to tell when the baby is about to poop so the mother can hold the baby above a suitable location (i.e., perhaps not in the sleeping area).
No, babies were not “easy to come by”. Women often died in childbirth, and the IMR was quite high. When babies did survive, the woman typically did not become pregnant until the child was weened-- about 3 yrs.
Cave women? But I think you’ve been reading too much of The Aquatic Ape.
H/Gs don’t generate a lot of garbage. What you’re describing is better applied to early civilized humans (up to about the 19th/20th centuries), not primitive humans living a H/G lifestyle.
Why would you imagine that ?! Even in the most low-tech of environments, people don’t do that.
IIR my anthropology textbooks clearly, the most common way women around the world handle their babies is via thumbs or hands beneath their armpits, although I’ve watched amusing videos of African (Namibian, I believe ?) women rocking their babies to sleep holding one leg in one hand, an arm in the other. Like a gurgling ragdoll. But the babies didn’t seem to mind one bit, so, different strokes and that.
I think (I hope) everyone is being whooshed. 
Cartoon cavemen and cavewomen…
That’s my guess as well, as I think it’s fairly obvious from other posts Me_Billy has made that he is a responsible and devoted parent.
It also effects quantity. Solely breastfed babies poop about twice a week. They do pee a lot, though.
Ancient mothers carried their ancient babies on their back all day long, and could quickly learn to tell when the baby was about to shit, and just took the baby out of the snuggli and held out a safe distance so it didn’t shit all over mommy.
In some “uncivilized” parts of the modern world, they still do. Mothers riding on speeding buses and trains hold the baby out the window. They never drop them. Mothers are very proficient at holding babies, and never drop them.
Our ancestors often didn’t start menstruating until their mid- to late teens because of a lower nutritional status, so that was yet another reason for fewer periods.
As a non-parent who was cloth-diapered, I’ve also heard from multiple sources that cloth-diapered babies generally start potty-training earlier because a full cloth diaper is uncomfortable enough that the baby wants to start doing something about it at an earlier age. (My sibs and I were cloth-diapered at home and wore disposables if we went somewhere.)
:eek:
My brother’s best friend has 3 kids, and one of them (the oldest, no less!) pooped at the same time every day. At 8 months, they decided to start placing him on the toilet at that time, and it didn’t take him long to figure out that this was where he needed to do that, and would crawl to them and pull on their clothing until he had words. 
Yours may have; my nieces pooped after every feeding! :rolleyes: One of them made small poops, with one big huge dump every few days. My sister found that out while babysitting one afternoon, and all she could think was, “THIS came out of a baby?!?!?”
Yes I think you are on the right track! 
Not only was your whoosh subtle enough to snare Miller, one of our fearless leaders, but you bested a few other SDMB vets as well, including myself. Well played my good man!!
Check out a movie called “Babies” where they follow a baby in several locations including Africa where the baby rarely wears clothes and the mother wipes the babies butt with her own knee then wipes that off with a corncob. Other times the kid just sits in the dirt and plays and does their business there.
We dont put diapers on dogs and yet we live with their waste. In the movie you have all kinds of animals from dogs to chickens to horses walking around pooping and yet, people think human waste is so evil.
The baby in the movie growing up in the “civilized” world is the one that looks odd.
We also don’t encourage our dogs to poop in the house. We take them for walks or put them out in the yard and teach them to communicate to us when they have to go. And we don’t leave the waste where it is. And I try not to handle it up close. I’ll pick it up with a long-handled scoop with a plastic bag on the end.
Interesting to me at the moment, with a nearly 4-month-old puppy who I would like to be able to ring a bell near the door hen he has to go out.