The Nomadic Alternative – Page 245

So in the lands where the predators prowl, the mobile mother

must carry her child with her wherever she goes. She cannot leave
it alone for ten minutes and expect to find it alive. The nature
of her contract stipulates she spend a few hours each day foraging
in the field, and that she frequently move from camp to camp. Along
with her collecting basket, she must carry her child on her shoulders
until it can manage a day's march on its own, but meanwhile she
cannot have another child. She suspends her baby from her left side
in the leather or fibre sling, the Andaman Islanders call ciba.

As Mrs. Marshall describes the 'Kung Bushmen, they are always
on the move - to the forest of nut trees, back to the permanent
water hole, or away over the horizon to look for roots or visit
the neighbours, journeys of sixty and a hundred miles with two or
three 'sleeps' on the way.

... they carry their children and their belongings in leather
capes. The naked babies ride next to the mother's skin supported
by a sling of soft duiker leather on her left side (my italics).

Once the child is weaned, at the age of three or so, the father
asserts his presence and takes over the load when the load gets
tired. The 'knee child', as they call him, sits on his father's
shoulders, his legs locked around the neck; "vibrant and at ease
... the children ride with exquisite balance, rarely needing to
hold onto their fathers' heads."

Mothers usually nurse their children on the left side. That is
the natural position. Isis suckles Horus on the left side and
nearly all paintings of the Madonna and Child observe the same
convention. For as we have seen, the child prefers to feel the
heartbeat of the mother, but this is not the whole story. Basically
man is a right-handed creature, whereas chimpanzees and gorillas
used left and right hands indiscriminately. Furthermore, to be
right-handed is to be left-brained; for within the left roof brain
lies the seat of speech and symbolic thought - those very attributes
which sever us from all other animals and mark our humanity.

Why? Specialists have puzzled over the evolutionary advantage
of right-handedness, why most people hold tools or weapons in their