i'm not sure if this belongs in ask science or in here, but a recent submission got me thinking: how were the mentally retarded viewed by their peers during prehistoric times?
did retardation exist back then? would there be a way to distinguish a retarded "tribe" member from the rest? how so, considering the barbaric nature of man at the time. it would seem that in the absence of civility, retardation wouldn't be as big of an issue.
what would happen to someone who was born retarded? would the parent's give them special treatment? would they get any sympathy from the rest of the tribe? would they be looked down upon? (IE: weakest member of the pack dragging the tribe down.) or would they be abandoned?
these questions and more i am wondering, thanks.
This is a perfectly fine place to ask the question, but either way you will run into the issue that we really have no way of knowing about these things in the "prehistoric period". The definition of "prehistoric" is "before writing". Without writing, we cannot access any information about how people felt about anything. We cannot access their beliefs, or their ideas. Only with the advent and adoption of writing can we understand how people thought about things, what they believed. Before writing, we can only see some actions, the ones that leave evidence behind. I am sure that mental illness and disability existed back then. We can see some evidence that has been interpreted as treatment of mental illness (skull trepination, which consists of a small hole being drilled into the skull to expose part of the brain), but we have no way of knowing what ancient people thought about these illnesses, since thoughts and ideas do not leave behind artifactual traces in the same way as an activity, or a technology, or a habit that leaves traces on the bones. Mental retardation does not have an artifact associated with it. How people felt about mental illness is too far up Hawkes' Ladder of Inference for us to understand without writing, and, by definition, history.