Im not sure if the title made sense but how babies cry to communicate, did they do that in the like prehistoricy times. Cause I refuse to believe that people who were surrounded by bears, moose, just aggressive/kill you quick wild life, lived with screaming babies around.
*Youre in a mudhut*
Husband- Oh my god theres a bear outside
Wife- What do we do
Baby- WAHHHHHHHH
Husband and Wife- :/
In: 6206
People survived *because* babies cried how they do.
Think waaayy back to prehistoric times, when we were constantly on the verge of death and extinction.
No guns, no houses, maybe nothing more than a sharp stick.
You know what the most dangerous animal alive in those times was?
Humans.
Humans live in large groups (you will basically never come across only 1 or 2 humans in the wild. Hunting groups might be only a dozen, but home base for the tribe itself, where the babies are, is probably more like 100).
They are fiercely loyal to other members of the same tribe.
They are the only animal that can throw projectiles, the only animal that can communicate attack strategies precisely.
Humans are absolutely deadly, which is why almost every animal (including bears and moose) will run away from them at the first opportunity.
The whole point of the baby’s cry is to alert the most dangerous predator in the world, humans, and to draw them near.
There is no animal, or pack of animals, that can survive an attack of a tribe of humans, even in pre-historic days.
If a mother bear accidentally stumbles upon a baby and that baby cries, that bear is *fucked*.
Maybe it can kill 1 or 2 people first, but it’s still going to die.
If an entire wolf pack comes close enough to a human tribe in the middle of the night to cause a baby to cry, that wolf pack is *fucked*.
Pick any animal or group of animals you like, and it’s the same deal: they get close enough to a baby to make it cry, and they are *fucked*.
The reason we consider things like bears dangerous today is because people today do silly things these days like go off by themselves, or live on a farm with only a few people, far away from their larger “tribe”.
That was a rare occurrence in prehistoric days, and would have almost never happened with a baby around.
A baby in prehistoric days always had effectively an army of at least a couple dozen men within earshot of it, and that private army was strong enough to destroy any animal on the planet.
And once they domesticated canines, it must have greatly reduced the occurrences of surprise attacks.
Lots of r/HFY material here.
It wouldn’t be just one mudhut and the bear would be scared to approach.
A group of humans are the most deadly apex predator on the planet. They communicate, form plans, use tools, including fire!, alter the environment to suit them, oh and can persistence hunt almost any animal to death by just walking after it like a terminator. We’ve also had our best friend dogs for about 20000 years.
I’m not historian but don’t believe any creature has considered humans it’s primary diet. A rogue Lion can attack and kill humans but they are not the niche it evolved into.
You cannot extrapolate out a cougar being in close contact with 1-2 kids today attacking them to cougars or bears ending the species in prehistoric times. Today people are so safe that they are not worried about dying to animals and the animals habitats have shrunken, so more close contact mutual surprises leading to a panicked attack can happen. In old times people would be scared of the animal danger and doing more to mitigate the higher risk.
Humans have been very dangerous animals for hundreds of thousands of years, picture 20 people holding spears, what animal could go up against that,
There probably were quite a few human babies that were taken by predators. But you have to remember: we lived in tribal groups. 10 human males with weapons beats any single animal in nature. We were the top predator, not often hunted.
The fact that they do shows that it isn’t a problem. Otherwise nature would have squelched that long ago.
Humans are *massively* communal. We make ants look like loners. Your baby, screams and all, would have been embedded in a group of mutual aid, support and security. Language, affinity, shared survival, harvesting and hunting, not to mention narratives, religions, histories, territorial feelings, familial bonds, compassion, friendships and loves all help to bond a human group together into an extremely serious proposition. This is human nature. And you want to go hunt their young? Jeez, good luck with that.
To get to your baby, then, a predator would have to go through you, your family, your friends and neighbours, and that’s a fearsome proposition. We are one of the most dangerous animals on earth, after all. So yeah, cry baby, cry! 😀
Humans are relentless predators that look bigger than they are and live in packs of a few dozen
Their babies evolved to cry for attention all the time because they didn’t need to hide from anything
People didn’t live in environment like an active warzone, most of their life was pretty chill and peaceful. Yeah there was dangers but they didn’t wake up everyday thinking “oh god today I may die”. They had camps in safe places where they think as home and lived there. Hunting was done by hunter parties (which didn’t contain babies)
So not everyday was a crazy adventure of killing or surviving, in fact even us modern humans live much more exciting lifes lol.
Okay, this got long. TL;DR: this wouldn’t actually be a problem.
First off all, it was rare to have just a man, woman and baby, it was usually a whole tribe or extended family unit, and that meant safety in numbers. And ever since we got dogs we’ve also had them as an alarm system, deterrent and weapon in one. It’s common practice today to capture bears that go into populated areas, traumatise them by having dogs barking aggressively at them outside their cage, and then letting them go, because now they’ll stay away from areas with barking dogs. (Autocorrect really wanted the dogs to be baking. Imagine a golden retriever kneading dough angrily.)
Secondly, predators, especially bears, are generally lazy and risk averse. Even a single human with a spear, a torch and a loud voice would seem a lot more trouble than they’re worth (humans being quite scrawny in the scheme of things), and they don’t really have any inborn tactics to deal with us. A lot is made of humans being persistence predators but wolves are the true archetype of this, they chase their prey for hours to exhaust the weakest link. Animals just standing their ground and fighting confuses them to the point they might just… leave. Especially if the animal has an advantage like a sling, spear or fire.
Thirdly, as much as it might seem that way to us, babies don’t just cry out of the blue. They cry because they’re hungry, lonely, or have soiled themselves, and they usually start by whimpering and groaning, if you stay on point and act quickly you can keep your baby from crying entirely.
Lastly, as I alluded to earlier, being loud helps scare away animals. If you go hiking in bear country it’s often recommended that you make noise, rattle the undergrowth and talk, maybe wear bells, because this keeps you from surprising animals (which might make them attack you) or looking like prey not wanting to be spotted (making them attack you), it makes you look like you aren’t scared of anything. The auditory equivalent of the colours of poison dart frogs, if you will. It’s entirely possible the wail of a baby could have this same effect. That’s just a hypothesis, mind, I wouldn’t want to rely on it.
All of these together means that it almost definitely wasn’t an issue.
Side notes: Masai people have actually scared lions off of their prey just by walking confidently at them, convincing the lions that these humans weren’t to be messed with.
Dogs are excellent guardians of both humans and livestock because they’re observant, loud, and tend to stand their ground to protect their pack. Livestock guarding dogs are a whole category of breeds that does this so well that they’re being used in conservation efforts, their mere presence scaring away predators that would otherwise be hunted to keep the herds safe. The karelian bear dog just seems to hate bears and are really good at keeping them away.
There is footage of stags standing their ground and wolves trying to get it to flee because they don’t know what to do if it doesn’t. There’s also footage of stags running to freezing rivers and then just standing there, because the wolves don’t want to fight in those, the wolves try to harry it from the shore but eventually leave.
Bison will usually form a protective circle around their calves when wolves come. If they kept their formation and did this consistently then wolves could never successfully hunt them. Unfortunately for the bison, they tend to eventually panic and start a stampede, which is exactly what the wolves want. Forming a circle with spears pointing out and occasionally throwing rocks would be an excellent defensive tactic our forefathers may have used.
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