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Giving children the wrong (or not enough) toys may doom a society

By KESLS RAM
Why the Inuit survived while the Norse did not has baffled archaeologists for decades. One idea was that the Norse did not eat more seafood (as the Inuit did) when farming conditions deteriorated. But this is not backed by evidence. Isotope studies of Norse teeth show that they were turning to the ocean for food. Archaeologists agree that the Inuits adapted successfully while the Norse did not, but nobody knows why.

To try to answer that question, Ms Meyer and Dr Riede looked at as many toys as they could find that had once been played with by the children of either culture. The Norse settlements yielded 72. The Inuit settlements, located in similar environmental conditions, yielded 2,397. For the researchers, this staggering difference implies that the Inuit gave their children more toys than the Norse did.

Giving children the wrong (or not enough) toys may doom a society
https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2024/12/18/giving-children-the-wrong-or-not-enough-toys-may-doom-a-society
from The Economist

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