Ancient authors emphasize that Spartan childhood was a continuous, rigorous testing period, starting literally at birth. The child was, by some accounts, doused in wine by its mother. If it survived this test it was then presented to a special commission, which determined whether, from the child's constitution and apparent strength, he or she would be allowed to live. It's life then would be a series of tests of increasing rigor, administered until the child reached 20. Military training commenced from early childhood for both boys and girls, and by the teens the boys were expected to spend a period living off the land. This included thefts and raids directed against the resident serf population, the helots. Marriage was apparently mandatory at age 20, although grooms would continue to live in the barracks. Although I am certain that anthropologists could point to ancient or modern cultures that instituted some of these practices, overall this combination of training-for-life and eugenics seems to be contrary to the human bonding that one expects in most communities. In addition, some accounts of Spartan life are considered to be excessively laudatory and hagiographic. So is there any objective evidence of these winnowing practices by the Spartans, for instance archeological evidence of infanticide, murder of helots, etc?