The ancient and prehistoric worlds are often characterized as harsh, survival-based cultures. Both museums and ancient legends emphasize ancient violence, sacrifice, weapons, and war. One might think being a child in this time period might be a cruel and merciless experience. However, in both antiquity and prehistory — sentimentality, care, play, toys, and tenderness are abound.
Tools for Childrearing
Ursula Le Guin’s Basket Carrier Theory lends to the idea of carriers as a defining early technology over weapons of violence (like sometimes popular media depicts). This theory has some weight — some of the earliest cultures were successful more for their ability to make pottery than on their ability to wage war. There is cultural backing to the baby carrier to this as well. The book of Exodus, describing events of the 13th century BC Egypt, recounts baby Moses in a basket on the river. Similarly, Native American oral history contends baby carriers have been an important tool for ancient mothers for thousands of years. Many researchers even theorize baby carriers were invented in coordination with the emergence of bipedalism, as bipedal babies would struggle to cling to an upright back.
In Bavaria, Germany 7,000-year-old baby bottles were found. They confirmed that these vessels contained traces of milk, even various kinds of animal milk. Multiple were in the shapes of little mythical creatures to entertain the child, or shaped like a breast to imitate breast feeding. Other examples of these baby bottles exist throughout Bronze Age Europe, thought to help babies wean off breast milk. There are countless examples of creature shapes among the bottles, blurring the line between practical object and early toy.
One invention of childrearing is less of a physical tool and more of a legal precedent: Legal adoption. The Code of Hammurabi, the oldest known set of laws, includes multiple sections on the adoption and abandonment of children. In fact, the adopted child has legal rights to inheritance and autonomy.
Tenderness in Death
To understand anything in prehistory or antiquity, researchers must consider the contemporary graves. Burying items and people protects them from the elements to let them last to the modern day. Many burials of children, especially babies, sheds light on how important many of these infants were to their communities.
There’s a persistent myth that because childhood and infant mortality rates were so high in antiquity, that parents didn’t care about their babies. Infant mortality rates sat around 25% for much of antiquity, and earlier estimates are difficult to come to, but probably were below 50% depending on the time and place. I’ve personally heard the myth that during certain time periods, children weren’t named until the age of 5 because of their high chance of death. This simply isn’t true. Ancient times has strong evidence for tender birthday traditions for children, including birthday cakes and flowers. Each year was a celebration of survival, and a hope for longevity.
However, what happens when a baby or child dies? Contrary to the calloused myths of detached emotions in antiquity, ancient childhood burials were purposeful and sentimental.
In Ancient Rome, grave epithets revealed how parents mourned a deceased child.
“To the spirits of the dead of Eucopio, who lived six months, three days, the sweetest, most delightful, most pleasant infant, who had not yet learned to talk (CIL 6.17313).”
Also:
“Sacred to the spirits of the dead; to Lucius Valerius, an infant, who was taken away unexpectedly. He was born during the sixth hour of the night, a sign of fate not yet clear. He lived seventy-one days. He died at the sixth hour of the night. I hope that your family, oh reader, may be happy (CIL 6.28044).”
In prehistoric times, the same thoughtfulness is everywhere.
One infant (6 months to 1 year old) was tenderly buried in Çatalhöyük (modern day Turkey) between 8000 and 6400 BC. The child was placed in a finely weaved reed basket. The child themself was decorated with red ochre painted designs, and adorned with adults’ bracelets and anklets made of animal bones and colored stones.
Another newborn, likely a 2-month-old female, was found to be buried in a cave in northern Italy in 8000 BCE. The baby was adorned with 4 well-worn pendants and 60 shell beads. The ornaments were worn for a long time by members of the baby’s community before burial. The beads were on an article of clothing the newborn was buried in, possibly made for the burial. According to the intricacy of the work, these funerary decorations would have taken 8–11 hours to create.
One might note how children pointed to a hopeful future: someone to take over the farm, the community, the family, the profession. However, care for children didn’t hinge on their practical purposes. There are many examples of significantly disabled children being cared for into adulthood. In fact, in the Mesopotamian poem “Enki and Ninmah” (~2000 B.C.), the gods proclaim that infants with deformities and disabilities should be adopted if their birth parents abandon them.
There are countless examples of significant disability in prehistory — something that could be its own article in the future. From a 15-year-old boy in 5,500 BC Florida with spina bifida, to the 18-year-old woman in 2,000 BC Arabian peninsula with a significant longterm paralysis — children with significant disabilities were regularly part of communities and cared for.
Childhood graves tell a story of a complicated relationship with children: one of sentimentality, community, grief, and hope.
Ancient Play
On a plateau in Tibet, there is a hot spring with a wall of hand prints. With the angle of the rock, those hand prints aren’t for climbing, or stabilizing oneself while walking. They’re purposeful, intermingled with footprints. Around 200,000 years ago, a 12-year-old and a 7-year-old were at play, smashing their hands and feet against the impressionable clay.
Anyone who has spent time with kids knows the messy joy of finger painting. 13,000 years ago, hunter-gatherer parents in Dordogne, France knew this joy too. Not far from some of the world’s most famous, intricate cave paintings are what are called “flutings” — tracing of fingers across soft clay cave walls. It’s determined that many of the flutings are done by children, some as young as 3. The patterns are also on high parts of the ceilings, meaning adults picked up these toddlers to make their own patterns. A small back alcove of the cave, what researcher Jessica Cooney called a sort of “prehistoric playschool” is covered in these children’s patterns.
In regards to actual ancient toys, there’s considerable debate between play and ritual. A mickey mouse toy found 3,000 years from now might be thought of as some sort of god, a figurehead that thousands took pilgrimage to see at Disney World every year. Or a catholic figurine of a baby Jesus nativity might be thought of as entirely a toy, with no ritual or religion attached to it. It’s difficult to accurate interpret a figurine. However, ones made of particularly disposable and organic materials might have stronger evidence of being more toy than religious icon. They’re also rarer, because organic materials break down over time. A modern child can still somehow break half the toys they receive, even if they’re made of a hardy plastic. Wood, straw, and grass are often better toy materials over long lasting and harsher metals, stones, and bones.
One figure that’s an example of this debate is one of the oldest figures found in the Americas — a 4,500-year-old split twig animal figurine from Colorado. Because of its placement in a cave, some believe it might have had ritual significance. But many also believe it’s a toy, a plaything left accidentally or on purpose.
Some older cultures towed the line between the practical and the plaything. The Thule culture, a pre-Inuit community existing around 1,000 AD, had an extensive collection of miniature tools and items for children to use — from spears and bows, to playhouses and miniature figurines. Furthermore, there’s evidence of children exercising creativity in making pottery in Bronze Age Cyprus. This also tugs the line between play and apprenticeship. Many of the pottery items made by children were impractical and highly creative compared to the typical pottery set.
One fun toy found in France is theorized to be a 11,000 to 18,000-year-old animation of sorts, called a rondelle. It’s a two-sided bone plate with a carving of an animal in two different positions, with strings wrung on either side. When rapidly spun, the images combine in a sort of flip book animation, showing animals leaping.
There’s a lost collection of playthings, toys, and games lost to time. When left on their own, the creativity of a modern child comes out through their play. Leave them with a pile of rocks, and they’ll build a tower. Leave them with a bunch of mud, and they’ll serve you mud pies. Children have an inherent, whole, rich means of exploring the world that is nearly lost to the archeological record. Throughout history and throughout the world, we see fragments of this creativity, play, and sentimentality. There are countless societies where a child existed in many ways: as a member of their community, as a creative force, as a force for invention, and, mostly, as simply a little kid.
