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Baby Boomed in America With Societal Shift to Farming: Prehistoric Cemeteries Reveal

societal shift to farming

With the development of agriculture babies prospered around the world! A new study of prehistoric cemeteries in North America has bolstered this theory. When societies shift from a nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle to one based on the more sedentary routine of farming, populations swell, the theory says. The number of skeletons of children ages 5 to 19 found in ancient cemeteries across the continent reflects North America’s first baby boom, according to Jean-Pierre Bocquet-Appel, a researcher at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris.

Staying put allows women to have more babies, and a farming economy provides more food to support the growing population, explained Jean-Pierre Bocquet-Appel. “That (baby boom) doesn’t mean the living condition was worsening,” Bocquet-Appel said. “It means there were plenty of young people everywhere, and because there were plenty of young everywhere, there were plenty of young who died.”

Via: The National Geographic News

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