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To: Little Bill

I would think that childbirth was far more dangerous back in those days. Given that the Roman’s were well versed in poisons, etc., I’m sure there were those who tried to chemically abort.


13 posted on 05/05/2011 5:35:31 PM PDT by Amberdawn
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To: Amberdawn

Given the already high rate of infant mortality, the estimate of “common” seems wrong. If half of kids didn’t live to 5, 10% died per year for the first five years. So many more children are buried than adults.
If infanticide were common, I would expect far more infant graves again in proportion to young children, since women had so many more children (6-12) in a life time.
Only 97 graves, as one of the largest they’ve found, seems too small to fit their “infanticide was common” mantra.
So many children died that one would rarely need to kill them unless there was an exceptional reason to do so, like keeping a female prostitute unencumbered or the wife killing the slave concubine’s child.


19 posted on 05/05/2011 7:32:12 PM PDT by tbw2
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