Population Structure, Infant Transport, and Infanticide among Pleistocene and Modern Hunter-Gatherers

Abstract

It has been suggested recently that systematic infanticide was necessary and widespread among Pleistocene hunter-gatherers. Although there is ethnographic evidence which supports that position, a sizable body of relevant negative evidence has received little attention. When all the evidence currently available is examined, it suggests strongly that systematic infanticide was atypical among Pleistocene hunter-gatherers, just as its practice among modern Eskimos and Aboriginal Australians is atypical of present-day human populations.