12 Feb 2013

February 12th


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Life is so easy now. Sometimes I wonder how people survived in bygone days without medical teams to help in times of crisis. For instance, in the past, women gave birth with only the aid of people close by—maybe the local midwife if the village was big enough to need one. What happened if the pregnant woman was carrying several babies?

I watched a BBC television last night on that subject. The British Cold Case team arrived at a site which had been occupied from the earliest times in Baldock, Hertfordshire, which is north of London and close to where I live. They'd been called to investigate the former life of a woman lying on her side, who had been buried two thousand years ago with the skeletons of three babies around her. Tests put together an interesting picture of her past life.  



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The 4ft 11 inch tall woman lived in 100AD beside a Roman occupation, midway between when Julius Caesar arrived in 55BC, was driven off, and returned one year later, and when the Romans left in 500AD. The tale of Kind Arthur dates from this latter period.

However, the woman wasn't Roman, but Celtic, so she wouldn't have had any assistance from their doctors. By linking DNA to two of the three babies to the thirty-five-year-old mother, they ascertained that she was the earliest recorded mother of triplets in Britain. She must have died in childbirth. The second child couldn't get through the birthing canal without aid, and the third remained inside her. The man buried above her could have been her husband. In those days, a couple married for life and supported each other into their dotage. He could have asked to be buried close to her.

Has the human race grown too soft and reliant on procedures to become pregnant and give birth? Could we survive unaided now days?

10 comments:

  1. What an interesting story. Thanks for sharing and no, I wouldn't have wanted to give birth without the knowledge that a fully equipped medical team was right there!

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    1. I agree. I would have died at 19 during the birth of my first without the medical team.

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  2. This was interesting. I've often wondered the same but with diseases, you know. How did peeps back then survive viruses and bacterial infections? It had to be good nutrition. Something here in the States most people lack.

    Hugs and chocolate,
    Shelly

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    1. Good food and natural cures, like herbs, I think.

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  3. Hi Francene .. I saw that episode a while ago .. I love those reconstructions - they make fascinating watching ..

    Cheers Hilary

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    1. I love them too. We can learn so much from the past.

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  4. They kind of tackled this question in the third season episode of "The Walking Dead" where Lori dies. She has to have a c-section and can't survive it in the post-apocalyptic world. So yeah...we needs medical procedures.

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    1. I guess only the strong survived to pass their genes on to us.

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  5. Interesting. And to that, I think most likely no. However, there is thought that we have become so healthy that childbirth could be easier as we could sustain and fight off infection better as well as the baby.

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    1. I'm not sure we are healthier than we were back 500 years ago. They passed their strength from generation to generation.

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Please tell me what YOU think.