Imagine if babies had translucent skin

Take a moment to consider dead babies.

Up until very recently, in everywhere outside the US, infant and child mortality was extremely high.

Almost as high as current US rates.

For most of human history, baby and child skulls were a rather common thing.

If you dug anywhere people used to live, you'd dig up dead people.

And most of them, were children.

What would *you* think, if you were a caveman or a medieval peasant who stumbled across a child's skull?

Sure, maybe you're a Greek farmer 5,000 years ago and find a dwarf mammoth skull and go "holy fuck, giant man with one eye!"

But, for every mammoth skull you encounter, you'd encounter a hundred small human skulls with a frightening amount of teeth

And this'd be common in all cultures, everywhere.

Everywhere people lived, you'd encounter shit tons of small skulls packed full of far too many teeth.

I wonder what effect this had on folklore, on evolved fear reactions.

After all: people who didn't wonder why they were finding so many of these skulls in their area, probably ended up leaving some for the next guy to find.

If you found a whole lot, it'd mean something was making child mortality high. Maybe starvation, maybe a zoonotic plague, maybe bad weather, etc.

It wouldn't be a *good* sign you should raise kids in that place.

I wonder how much of Fair Folk tradition, arose from the abundance of creepy child skulls in history.

Changelings, for instance.

You're an medieval farmer and child has a congenital disease.

You are convinced they've been replaced by a changeling, such as a mamuna.

It dies, because you feared it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dziwo%C5%BCona

Odds are, you, a medieval peasant, are going to be even more convinced if you for some reason ended up seeing their skull.