Hunter-Gatherer Childcare Studied

CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND—According to a statement released by the University of Cambridge, evolutionary anthropologist Nikhil Chaudhary of the University of Cambridge and his colleagues suggest that the infants of ancient hunter-gatherers were likely to have received attentive care and physical contact for approximately nine hours a day from about 15 different caregivers. Chaudhary and his team members drew this conclusion after working with Mbendjele BaYaka hunter-gatherers who now live in what is now the Republic of Congo. They found that the children of the Mbendjele BaYaka often have more than 10 caregivers, and sometimes more than 20. These people, including older children and adolescents, support the mother in responding to more than half of her baby’s cries, resulting in improved maternal rest and well-being and thus enhanced maternal care. The young people also gain childcare experience. “For more than 95 percent of our evolutionary history, we lived as hunter-gatherers,” Chaudhary said. “Therefore, contemporary hunter-gatherer societies can offer clues as to whether there are certain child-rearing systems to which infants, and their mothers, may be psychologically adapted,” he theorized. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Developmental Psychology. To read about the earliest known infant burial in Europe dating to about 10,000 years ago, go to "UPDATE: Mesolithic Baby Carrier."