José María Bermúdez de Castro, director of the National Center for Research on Human Evolution and co-director of the Atapuerca scientific team, has recently made statements in which he advocates prolonged breastfeeding talking about the breastfeeding in Atapuerca.
The scientist, in the presentation of the International Seminar on Human Paleoecology, explained that they have found evidence that the breastfeeding was, in Atapuerca, lasting 4 years and that that was very important for the survival of children and the health of adults.
Human breastfeeding, in his opinion, is of a natural duration of between 3 and 7 years, and that it is an evolutionary resource adapted to the needs of human children, so it is considered an error to despise this natural resource of health and Food so well designed.
In my opinion, which does not differ in substance from what Dr. Bermúdez affirmed, human breastfeeding is also an evolutionary event, a deeply cultural act, and in each era and place it is affected in its duration by variables not only food, but also social, economic and also even religious.
Fortunately, children in today's most developed societies have safe food and medicines that make the interruption of breastfeeding not a fact of such vital importance.
Possibly, when there is no security in the food supply, as would well happen in Prehistory, breastfeeding was an indisputable guarantee for the survival of children.
However, Nature has provided the human being with milk perfectly suited to the nutritional needs of babies and children until weaning age, so, despite the conditions of our societies, discarding it as redundant is a trend that It would be beneficial to reverse.
The duration of the breastfeeding in Atapuerca It is a fact of interest especially anthropological, but from which we can extract interesting information for the current era.
Via | The Alternative Blog
In Babies and more | Breastfeeding according to an Atapuerca paleontologist
