Lynn Shea mentions the range of normal -- yes indeed.

I am just under halfway through Sarah Blaffer Hrdy's relatively new book
MOTHER NATURE, which was mentioned on Lactnet a few months ago when it was
first published.   Among many interesting things in it is a discussion of the
range of conditions in different foraging cultures (which are taken as
similar to paleolithic human cultures), and the very different weaning and
child-spacing patterns that are associated with those different economic and
climatic and social conditions.

Her whole emphasis throughout is that nature and culture are not so easily
divisible -- that cultural conditions and biological ones are a mutual
feedback loop.

(Early on she repeats a joke that the human populations with the latest known
average weaning ages are the !Kung San and women anthropologists - among
which she includes herself, naturally.   It made me want to tell her she
should add, "and subscribers to Lactnet!")

Elisheva Urbas
who has no financial interest in this book, only intellectual interest :)
NYC

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