Nope, that started after the neolithic revolution.
Before that, people had way less kids since 1. diseases weren’t as rampant then as they were after beginning agriculture (turns out that living in close corridors and near your animals that are full of diseases and parasites may not be healthy), and 2. people breastfed their babies until 3-5 years, unlike later, when people only breastfed them for a year or so, or even used wet nurses, which allowed the mother to get pregnant again soon after giving birth.
Of course a lot of kids surely died, but not nearly as much as in later societies up until the introduction of vaccines and other parts of modern medicine.
As for infanticide, I’m not particularly knowledgeable on that, but I’m pretty sure that it wasn’t nearly as common when births were much rarer and attitudes towards groups that later cultures usually killed as babies, such as disabled people, intersex people, and others that were considered ‘deformed’, were much more lenient.
Nope, that started after the neolithic revolution.
Before that, people had way less kids since 1. diseases weren’t as rampant then as they were after beginning agriculture (turns out that living in close corridors and near your animals that are full of diseases and parasites may not be healthy), and 2. people breastfed their babies until 3-5 years, unlike later, when people only breastfed them for a year or so, or even used wet nurses, which allowed the mother to get pregnant again soon after giving birth.
Of course a lot of kids surely died, but not nearly as much as in later societies up until the introduction of vaccines and other parts of modern medicine.
As for infanticide, I’m not particularly knowledgeable on that, but I’m pretty sure that it wasn’t nearly as common when births were much rarer and attitudes towards groups that later cultures usually killed as babies, such as disabled people, intersex people, and others that were considered ‘deformed’, were much more lenient.