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submitted 6 days ago by fossilesque@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/science_memes@mander.xyz

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[-] Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 58 points 6 days ago

eeeh our whole evolutionary niche is to be so social that we'll form bonds with a literal rock, i can't see the vast vast vast majority of mentally healthy humans managing to do it, more likely they'd try to gently throw the child away from the danger and sacrifice themselves.

[-] FundMECFSResearch 41 points 6 days ago

Yeah. We evolved to survive as a group. Not as individuals.

Kangaroos while they do sometimes form groups, are far far less social, and kids of dead parents aren’t adopted like what would happen in a human group.

[-] sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip 3 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Some of the skeletons that we've found from... basically the last ice age, some even further back, show humans (or proto humans) that had had badly fractured bones... but they healed up (not well by modern standards, but nonetheless), and then those bones grew, and the individual died at a much greater age than when the serious fracture occured.

... And these people are buried in graves, with grave goods, not just thrown out or left behind in the wild.

Strong evidence of early human groups actually giving enough of a shit about their members to take care of the wounded, helps to be able to date early societal formation.

https://kimwerkmeister.substack.com/p/the-first-sign-of-civilization-how

Empathy and responsibility to care for others are actually the literal foundation of human society and civilization, contra to Musk and all the fascists and Christian Nationalists recently claiming 'empathy is a sin'.

[-] psud@aussie.zone 7 points 6 days ago

Kangaroos form two sorts of groups

Like most herbivores, they have one male and many females in a mob (kangaroo equivalent to a herd)
Males outside that mob form loose groups for defence and within that they fight to establish dominance and the top roo may challenge the male lead of a mob to take it over

[-] GiantChickDicks@lemmy.ml 14 points 6 days ago

I don't think that would be the general case with humans under these kinds of circumstances. For most of history, women had many more children on average than we see in most of the world today. It was expected that many wouldn't live past three years old in much of known, recorded history. I can only imagine in circumstances even more primitive than what we know of, something like this wouldn't be as unthinkable as you're describing.

[-] prettybunnys@sh.itjust.works 16 points 6 days ago

Plenty of anecdotal stories of infant brothers and sisters not making it through hiding during the holocaust because of muffling their cries.

I don’t care enough to ruin my day by validating a of them though.

[-] philpo@feddit.org 5 points 5 days ago

It's true. There are various witnesses of the Shoa who absolutely did testify this happened. I actually spoke to one of them in school - during highschool two survivors of the holocaust did come to my (German) highschool and talked about what they went through, extremely nice people with extremely horrible stories.

One of them explained how they hid in an abandoned building and how the mother of the other family hiding with them choked their 8 week old baby when there was a official patrol nearby and they had to stay quiet. Didn't help, they got caught shortly after and as far as we were told none of the other family made it.

The worst thing? It's one of the "less gruesome" stories the whole Holocaust has...