The Neolithic artefact that ensured our survival - BBC REEL
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 27 ส.ค. 2024
- How did motherhood look in the prehistoric era? New research uncovers the essential role that prehistoric mothers played in driving population growth during the Neolithic period.
Approximately 7,500 years ago, humans made spoons from animal bones to feed their babies with additional nourishment, other than breast milk. This incredible discovery has transformed our understanding of human evolution, culture, and our very survival as a species.
With thanks to The University of Belgrade, The National Museum of Serbia & the ERC BIRTH project led by Professor Dr Sofija Stefanović.
Video by Nena Popović
Commissioning Editor: Griesham Taan
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Fascinating! What a wonderful insight, and so explanatory: spoons as an agent of survival and culture.
How refreshing to see a positive aspect of human survival, not simply war, rape, and pillage.
Yet the population growth that having more children resulted in lead directly to war over increasingly rare resources.
@@Shaun.Stephens Good point. Hunger and jealousy have caused many conflicts.
Of course, more people would have more babies and war for resources would increase. But in reality, the human species is very warlike, with males larger than females, indicating male aggression, which is still very common in hunter/gatherer cultures that still survive today. It is refreshing and it happens only because the role of females, in general, did not include making war, but rising babies, I am sure those spoons were made by women, while the men made the spears and knives.
@@Shaun.Stephens
Yes , population growth , and beside the war many clever people were born , and possible the first genius like prehistoric Einstain.
@@psicologamarcelacollado5863 Pretty much no current, peer-reviewed, source in the field of anthropology would agree with you, but okay. You're spouting cultural myths, not scientific facts.
Wow! This is a revolutionary insight! So simple, so elegant. So patently true.
Thanks:)
Next time we are tempted to say that something good is the best thing since the invention of sliced bread, we can say baby spoons instead!
Abso-fricken-lutely!
The wonderful new food is never named but, basically, it's porridge.
Set me thinking the same way. I was also brought up on porridge, but before this, it never occurred to me how that linked me to ancestors 10,000 years ago. Something so simple, yet quite something to think about.
Thanks, I was about to ask.
Yep. Wet soft cooked grains.
The Role of the mother in those times was is one of the most important and still is, remember to treat your mothers with respect
I read somewhere, honor your father (responsibility for entire household) and mother (caretaker for all who couldn't do so on their own. Elderly and sick as well as very young). And you will live long and prosper!
Wow that was very interesting why is this the first time most of humanity has heard of this?
Thank you
Because this is new research. Previously it was unknown what the tiny spoons were used for.
In a nutshell, until not too long ago most archaeologists were men who, by and large, clearly did not look at these artifacts with the eyes of mothers used to feeding their own babies. Also, they worked (and still do in many ways) in patriarchal institutional structures that valued other types of information more. Similar to how seat belts, medicine and much else is made for the average white male often to the detriment of a majority of the world’s population. There are so many examples of this kinda thing out there. This is a particularly fascinating one, though.
@@rdklkje13 😳😳😳 wow!! That's what you saw??? WOW not everything is figured out immediately when people do archeological excavations. Sometimes things take time. Especially stone age things.
@@mysteriousdude280 you are partially right, but partially very wrong.
Yes, it can take a long time to decipher something.
But it also depends on who is deciphering. Men and women are still largely socialised quite differently, and grow up with different biases in perception. This continues to science as well.
So it is only logical that these spoons which were known for many decades were not identified as anything of purpose until more and more women worked in that area and added new theories, one of which proved to be true.
Same as with ornithology. It was only recently discovered, and by a woman, that female birds of the ‘singing’ species sing as well as males. Why was this not identified before? Darwin wrote that only males sing, and for decades no ornithologist (who are still mostly men) really cared to check that assumption. As more women came to that area, one finally proved that assumption to be wrong.
@@iz6566 Indeed. Might be worth adding that when you study Archaeology and related fields nowadays this will be pointed out in a first (or second) year History of Archaeology/Anthropology/Sociology etc course if your department is worth its mettle. Same goes for the eurocentricity of these disciplines. Nothing new here if you know the field.
"Evolution teaches us that the more established we are in our extended family the care of the offspring is easier simpler and more succeful" a very important point we must take to note
Nowadays Motherhood and Family are Dirty Words. Government is now Father and Mother.
Parenting is still hard for those who wish their children to succeed. In our modern society there is an ever increasing number of things which we must figure out and be ready to do if we want our children to succeed. Unfortunately, many parents treat their kids like pet humans. They seem to thing that all you need to do is feed it and clothe it, and somehow the rest will automatically follow. This is the primary reason we have so many kids who are failing and getting into trouble.
Never heard about the spoons before. Thanks!!
You must have a hard time eating soup 🤔
Thanks for these wonderful insights, study and beautiful presentation!
Probably because scientists rarely researched motherhood. I believe that there are many more objects in the archaeological remains that indicate baby care. We just need to start looking for them.
Fascinating....good documentary!
My my my. What a beautifully exquisite and touching science based documentary. Thankyou BBC for breaking boundaries.
As a mother, it seems to me that the “spoons” would have been for soothing a crying teething toddler. A one/two year old or caregiver can feed by hand/finger without a utensil.
You have zero evidence for your contention, and are viewing these artifacts with the much more informed mind of the 21st century. You’ve never examined the spoons yourself, and you obviously missed the clear grooved marks of the milk teeth on the wood of the spoons in the photos provided. If you look closely at them, you will see some are clearly grooved from the food being repeatedly scraped against milk teeth, yet you can confidently contend that you know better! It’s therefore obvious that you’re not a scientist bc you’re happy to create facts that are clearly not in evidence! If the spoons had been used for teething, there would have been evidence of chewing on them instead of the sliding grooves which are clearly visible. Not only that, but I give the Neolithic mothers credit for not giving wooden implements to their children for the purpose of teething, bc I’m sure they were aware that giving their babies splintering wood objects to alleviate the effects of teething would introduce wooden slivers into their babies’ tongues and esophaguses. I’m opining that bone was used for this purpose.
Loved this great job!
I've never been interested in prehistoric cultures, but the archaic image of mother and child intrigued me, so I listened. Brilliant lecture that in 5 minutes shows that our species survived by the skin of our teeth: the spoon enabled the entire village to care for children. If our species is going to continue, we must not forget this message. We must co-operate with each other. Look at the world today. Are we co-operating? What we see are wars and rumors of wars. . . . And in the background, nuclear arms.
Merci ! Vraiment intéressant.
Reminds me of the old saying, It Takes a Village To Raise a Child. So true.
Great insight!
Remarkable. If I am understanding what the Professor is saying, it sounds as if the agricultural revolution that took place in the countries and kingdoms of the western Mediterranean took place because of the change in how human babies were fed? Baby food? I wonder if the use of these 'baby spoons' started out as a social fad of some sort? Maybe other sorts of small, so common as to be nearly invisible, artifacts causing other technological change? Maybe something like waxed paper in the late 1800s or early 1900s? A remarkable finding.
I think she meant the agricultural revolution made grains available for baby food, which allowed mothers to wean their babies sooner, which in turn allowed them to have more children. The spoons are evidence that they were feeding their babies with this grain based baby food.
@@mh8704 Yes, and 2-3 baby's per woman + child mortality would put the average close or below the 2.1 replacement rate. Add a war or famine and you are looking at a shrinking population. Push the average up by 1 baby per woman and you are at a much better chance of at least a stable population.
Brilliant interpretation of artifacts, never published before.
Woah! That is some seriously fascinating theories. Somehow it all seems revolutionary but also basic and obvious - if that makes any sense?
Excellent. This is because Feminism has had such a beneficial impact on Archaeology. Past male dominated archaeoligy didn't consider these things important.
I noticed that too! There are so many things men just wouldn’t think of unless they already had their own family, and maybe not even then! A supreme reason for the education and participation of women in this world. Somebody educate the Afghans please???
@@catherinewilson1079 It's not just the Afghans who need educatin. Look at half of the Americans.
What are you talking about?? m how doyou know that male archeologists didn't consider this??
I am from Serbia and i don't think that our male prophesors do what you crazy american feminist think.
It is just new research , and that is it.
@@radepiljov7969 you are quite wrong and I am not American.
I remember saying this in one of my college palaeoanthropology classes back in the late 1960's and early 1970's. I was told in no uncertain terms that there is no evidence for women having any impact on how early humans lived, and that they thought that the only part we had was having babies, and doing the gathering half of the hunting and gathering. I couldn't see how it would be possible that women would play a big role in how societies functioned, so I wrote my final paper on it. I got a "F" for the course, and was told I had no place in the department, and that I should choose a different major. I did, and I did quite well in my second major. Still, this feels vindicating since it is precisely the sort of thing I was talking about. If any of the professors who were at the university when I was there was still there, I'd go shove this video and and any research I could find about it in their face and demand that my grade be changed. It would be all I'd need to get a degree in anthropology from the University. Then I'd hold two bachelor's degrees alongside my master's and PhD. Not that it would change anything about my life. It would just be nice to be recognized by the school as having been right well ahead of time, in a time when women weren't so valued as we are now.
Million dollar question: Do you still have that paper?
Very interesting thanks for the lesson
Just wondering:
1) How does a woman’s tooth show how many births she’s had?
2) How does a baby’s bones show how long they were breastfed?
Seriously.
Hi,
1=Teeth have rings, like trees. Experiences that change the amount of calcium available in the body can be seen in changes to the rate of calcium accumulation in teeth. Pregnancy requires large amounts of calcium for the growing fetus: slow growth period for teeth. Disease and malnutrition also leave records on teeth.
2= A child’s bones accumulate calcium as they grow. Calcium from different sources will likely have different chemical signatures. The varied diet of a human mother will produce calcium different from the milk of strictly herbivorous domesticated animals or from seafood or other dietary calcium sources.
@@procrastinator41 Amazing. Thank you.
Very interesting thesis on human development and culture.
If those people new this women, and stories she come up with, they probably made them especially for her.
I hate this form of media! I don’t want to read all those texts that pop up all the time. I like reading but feeling the pressure to read fast whenever it changes or pausing the video is just annoying! Just have someone narrating this.
Edit: my problem is not the person speaking different language. But the texts popping up on the side while there’s music and pictures in the background.
fascinating!
Interesting. Love history
Neolithic mothers were not pressured by society, or follow on milk manufacturers, to shorten their breastfeeding duration either. In modern era the global average for nursing period is still in years with UK mothers having the shortest globally in just a few months. Follow on milk producers do not disclose their research as to what makes up their formula and we do not publically know the nutritional profile of human milk as it compares to other animals. Also, we need to analyze the number of each neolithic mothers babies survival past infancy, and into adulthood, compared to mesolithic and modern mothers, to have a cohesive understanding of this scenario. Certainly not all “baby spoons” took 25 hours to produce either....
It is possible to prechew food and pass it directly to the mouth of children. Still being done in many parts of the world. No utensil needed.
Interesting
Are you sure it wasn't a combined effort of neolithic women and men that lead the growth in population?
Huehuehue
The men did the f*cking, the woman did all the rest of the work.
@@seandepoppe6716 I don't think they would necessarily have had the same backward ass attitude that so many seem to in our century Sean.
@@kimblecheat he's prolly right on tho
Excellent information 👍❤️
The family is the most basic and fundamental support system for an individual. A new mother ,the baby and others too. Today , dysfunctional families have created a degenerate society.
This seems obvious. Infant mortality was a huge problem, andd still is in many parts of the world. I think the community understood the importance of taking care of families on population growth! These ancestors were not less intelligent than we are! Some are foolish thinking "We are smarter, because we have cooler gadgets!". But i ask anyone who grew up before "smart phones", how many numbers did you have memorized then compared to today?
Population growth has led universally to degradation of human health and our environment's health. Most of our worst diseases came from our domestic animals (flu from pigs and fowl, smallpox from cattle. etc.). Most of our other health problems came from our neolithic-to-modern diet.
source about the diet and disease thing?
I'd rather have that than having to stalk animals in the savanna only to get chomped down by a lion.
The source is Guns Germs and Steel
What's the online source for the breastfeeding woman figurine?
Срби, јавите се :)
tu smo
And now the grandparents are cast aside in favour of the nuclear family mothers are struggling to look after their children and are expected to. Work…resulting in very small numbers of children in each family or women choosing not to bother having children at all..it’s come a complete circle
Actually, the trend now is for grandparents to be actively involved in care of their grandchildren, to allow the parents the time to do paid work.
@@daniellamcgee4251 Both trends are happening at once. Many boomer grandparents are not so much "cast off" as too busy with the new normal of "enjoying retirement" to want to mess with child rearing again, or because of the economics they are themselves still working. In the case that grandmothers are rearing young, that is often not a choice so much as the only way the family unit can make the economics work... it is impossible to run the household on one income and daycare is impossibly expensive as well. In fact in the USA, daycare is now so expensive that it doesnt even make economic sense for a mother to go back to work because that extra income wont even pay for daycare. So families with a willing grandmother are really the only ones able to have the mother go back to work.
@@patreekotime4578 Yes, that all makes sense. I don't actually know the statistics, and you would know more about the USA than me. I know that also there are clashes with grandparents over child-rearing, choice of spouse, etc , so there can be rifts in the family. I was just going on the observational trend where I live. There are a lot of grandparents collecting kids from school, etc. etc. I know grandparents in their 60s who look after their grandchildren around their own work hours.
With wages so low, and child care so high in the US, I can understand why grandparents supporting with child care would be the only option. But even if not a necessity, it's often the best option. Depending on the grandparent! Some people, in general, aren't fit to be involved in child rearing. Including some parents!
I moved away from my family, so ended up single-parenting without that support of extended family to assist in daily life, including financially. But I have no idea how I would have survived in the US!
Working in various forms of healthcare, I have met grandparents, and great-grandparents in their 70s, 80s, and 90s who have been, as the OP, put it 'cast off' by family. In some cases, it's the elderly person who disconnected from their children's family. I do understand what the O.P. is writing about. Just the greater trend where I live appears to be involvement with child rearing. But maybe it depends on age, and I haven't seen enough of aged care to see if the trends are equal.. Maybe I am just seeing the grandparents who are out and about, and not on cruises etc!
I appreciate your understanding and perspective regarding trends in the USA. Thanks for your comment, which obviously got me thinking! :-)
@@daniellamcgee4251 I don't see that "trend" in the U.S. at all, but I greatly hope to - for a whole variety of reasons. Currently there's still too much geographic mobility and cultural norms of the nuclear family and relatively independent seniors. These aspects of our culture have probably also influenced how compatible people generally are in multi-generational living. There are necessary "people skills" for that. Maybe economic changes will help eventually.
And it ultimately ended with some people having WAY too much time on their hands. Lots of speculation here.
I love this, amazing! (but sedentary=culture, still? Idea frustrating, what about semi/nomadic indigenous peoples?)
Having to read the subtitles, I don’t think she means there was no culture prior to sedentary living, simply that this was what cultural developments had led to at this point and place in human existence.
@@rdklkje13 Depends on how you define culture. Today we are settled alright, but far from cultured by any definition.
From what I understand, the current thinking is that semi/nomadic people wouldn’t have had the time or stability for anything extra. No spare time to ponder or create much in the way of anything above feeding and clothing themselves.
@@tara5742 Pretty much, you need to settle down to grow crops, a reliable food source but also one that could create surplus. As such, not every member of that society would have to devote themselves to food production, unlike in hunter gatherers/nomads. This allowed people to specialise in certain skills and for the massive acceleration of cultural development. Of course culture was present before this, it just progressed more slowly. It's still accelerating today as less of the worlds population has to continuously worry about having enough to eat.
this figure with great eyes and nose, strange foot, lots of holes in head, hand on sidebody, looks similar of Dr.Kusch figure he digged in Austria .
It was so called "danube valley civilization" and other rivers through Balkans and eastern Europe to Black sea.
I was surprised how they are very well connected in that time.
Serbia first civilizacion 🇷🇸💪
How do we know how often people in the Stone age were breastfeeding??
Fascinating !
I wish she'd mentioned what animal the bone spoons were made from
Likely whatever animal had been killed for food that had the proper sized bones.
@@katrussell6819 WOW ! Really ? You think ? I was interested because all animals have hollow bones. Yet this carving seems to be almost solid.
I feel like this maybe lamb or sheep bones~ what do you guys think?
@@edwardfletcher7790 All animals have [some] hollow bones but not all animal bones are hollow.
@@davidbennett9691 OK , that's my point, which non hollow ones were used.
I wish she'd explain how she knows how many babies mesolithic and neolithic women had, from their remains.
Actually, it was cereals that turned us into weaklings
And it is what lead us to the current overpopulation and more and more struggle for resources on a finite planet. Without it, our environement would have been preserved.
It is fascinating for me being an Englishman living in American for so many years seeing words used in their original form. The word Artefact is the original spelling as far as i remember. It is unusual in the fact that for very few words the American spelling of Artifact has become the generalized version around the world. Lovely, great to see the original being used.
what about in cultures .that eat with their hands .
Thumbnail Was misleading.
Has the women had children? I nursed my babies until 4 and still got pregnant and tandem nursed. I never stopped nursing while I had children. So I nursed 10 years straight and had 5 children. So this hypothesis is silly.
Seems like it's been well known for a long time that agriculture gave us new food sources & humans became more successful. Edit: I am surprised at the sexism, hostility towards men, projecting of social values onto a wildly different people, and outright fantasizing going on in this thread. Ew.
❤❤❤❤❤❤❤🎉😊
Spoons? Sounds like a topic for Stefan Milo.
Interesting point, but this video could easily have been condensed to one or two sentences and still conveyed as much info.
Baby spoons made from bone, ok got it.
👍
*OH MY GOSH! she said Mother not "Birthing Person!* (per the new Biden administration in Newsweek) Really!
Major fubar to also say the women give birth! Now WHY would they say that?
Yes , we in Serbia are not still lost our mind like Americans and Brits.
Well I am about to blow archeology apart because I have art that makes these look like demented children created them. I have art that is better than most modern humans have made, so what aren't we being told?
serbian sounds like a mix between russian and latin or greek or something. very strange
I am from Serbia and you are absolutly right.
We are mix of slavic people(original Serbs) and old romanized people from Balkans(ilyrians).
And of course we got big greek influence too.
A case where social evolution drove physical evolution.
In these days of "birthing persons" and "chestfeeding" and the uncertainty of exactly what a woman is, it is refreshing to see a presentation that is based in reality. I suppose that survival was paramount to these ancient people while enabling the mentally ill was probably way down on their to-do lists.
👍👍👍
it really DID take a village
As fascinating as it is, this is the Eurocentric view. First Nations people in Australia have lived this life continuously for at least 50,000 years. The "Neolithic" is a convenient European invention.
Yeah it would be more accurate to say something like”how prehistoric European people survived”. Most of the people indigenous to the Americas lived a lifestyle comparable to the Eurasian Neolithic as well as in Africa and Australia as you mentioned. Would like to know if any of those populations had a similar demographic expansion prior to European contact. Archaeology is still pretty Eurocentric, although that’s changing
@@jamessarsgard1342 you do realize most of Africa had iron making knowledge ages before the modern Europeans came to Africa, so life was way advanced than neolithic Europe even before "the coming of Europeans" to Africa. Also it's very hard to find such biodegradable historic things in Africa because of the climate and environment but yeah advancements in agriculture allowed "BANTU" to spread all over subsaharan Africa, which I bet involved baby food
So, they got stuck in this part of the tech tree?
How petty, when ego is involved.
Fascinating archaeology... yet reported without the merest questioning of implicit patriarchal values and norms. Why do we presume that women being able to pump out more babies and reduce the normal healthy period of breastfeeding was unquestionably a good thing?
I agree, that sounded a bit ... problematic and kinda like internalized sexism. Even though the general topic makes sense from a population dynamics point of view. Without that, humans might have had a harder time establishing. Still, how she put it was not very nice.
If they were only having 2 or 3, there is no population increase whatsoever. 2 only replaces the mother and father when they die. 3 is bare minimum because of accidental death. We would not have grown as a species without agriculture and the ability to have more children than just enough to replace us. Of course I think the 10 to 13 of later years is a bit much, but at least there was usually enough food to keep them alive. That’s improvement. We would never have survived any major disasters if we were always living on the edge of extinction.
"Pump out?" How ugly you make sound, a great, privilege, joy & comfort. You indoctrinated feminists are so blinded by hate and rhetoric that it's the most noticeable thing about you.
The name of this video is ridiculous. Grains = civilization, the thing that is destroying the planet, not survival of the human species. That said, it was fascinating seeing these very old spoons and thinking of the world they were used in, though it was a world of declining health, rotting teeth, and children ripped from their evolved place by their mother's side so that the mother could return to back breaking work.
think for a moment on all the knowledge we'll have once the patriarchy falls and women's perspective is once again inlcuded!!!!!!!!!
I love the spoons, and I bet male archeologists didn't understand their purpose.
Well that would be very sexist of you Olga13, for shame.
Nobody knows for sure ..
It’s “artifact” not “artefact”.
Artefact is the British spelling, and this video was produced by the BBC, i.e., BRITISH Broadcasting Corporation.
Terrible assumptions made
Not gone lie. I didnt wanna read subtitles I wanted to watch the actual video. Good way to turn people away. Especially when it's of importance. Peace.
Lol
Ok
Reading!?! In this day and age?!? How Daaare they!
@@olorin4317 lol. I just was not in the mood.
How inconvenient of the scientist explaining the artifacts not to have learned English specifically to be able to communicate with you in the way you choose.
Most people watching educational videos can read
Apparently some who can't, can somehow still comment
So, actually inequality grew in the Neolithic period.