The Aymara People of the Andes
Learn how the Aymara tradition of carrying their babies is reflected in their concept of time and language– and how infant carriers built empires.
The Inuit Amauti
It’s difficult to make sure baby stays warm in the winter but imagine living in the arctic full time. Learn how the Inuit have combined baby carrier and coat to keep themselves and their babies warm.
Body Hair
Non-human apes don’t need a tool to carry their infants in part because they have body hair for their infants to cling to but it’s more complicated than simply having body hair and a baby that can grasp it.
Baby Feet
Human feet are unique in the ape family, made for walking instead of grasping. For our babies this means two fewer grasping limbs to help cling to their mother, which means that during the evolution of bipedalism, infants had a harder time hanging on. How did our ancestors survive?
Medieval Babywearing | European Infant Carriers
With the talk of which culture has the exclusive rights to this or that, some have wondered if people of European descent should use infant carriers at all. To which I can only groan (and share this post).
Big Babies
It’s not just that human babies are helpless at birth, it’s that they’re so huge, at least when we compare them to the size of other apes’ newborns. Fortunately we have all kinds of technology to help us carry them around. But how far back in history were our evolutionary ancestors dealing with these big babies?
They See Me Riding
Why is it that some mammals can just leave their babies in a den or nest, while others carry theirs around (or have them cling on) through out the day?
