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Date:

January 2, 1918

Short Description:

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An Eskimo mother doesn't wean her baby until her next pregnancy sets in, however long that might be. Freuchen witnesses some mothers giving the breast to fourteen-year old sons, as the custom is to nurse the lastborn for many years.

Title:

Book:

Person:

Book of the Eskimos

URL:

http://courses.knox.edu/anso231/bk_eskimos.htm

Important Text:

An Eskimo mother doesn't wean her baby until her next pregnancy sets in, however long that might be. If she does not become pregnant again, she often nurses her lastborn for many years. It is considered a sign of a woman's youth and agility that she still has a child to nurse and milk to give, and only when she had finished her usefulness to her children is she really old. I thus saw several times, both among the Hudson Bay and the Polar Eskimos, and even in southern Greenland, mothers giving the breast to fourteen-year-old boys who were already sporting in kayaks and taking part in the hunt.

Topics: (click image to open)

	Facultative Carnivore	Facultative Carnivore describes the concept of animals that are technically omnivores but who thrive off of all meat diets. Humans may just be facultative carnivores - who need no plant products for long-term nutrition.
	Eskimo	The Inuit lived for as long as 10,000 years in the far north of Canada, Alaska, and Greenland and likely come from Mongolian Bering-Strait travelers. They ate an all-meat diet of seal, whale, caribou, musk ox, fish, birds, and eggs. Their nutritional transition to civilized plant foods spelled their health demise.
	Carnivore Diet	The carnivore diet involves eating only animal products such as meat, fish, dairy, eggs, marrow, meat broths, organs. There are little to no plants in the diet.