[bambax]

> Historically, these genes would not have been passed from mother to child as both would have died in labour.

How do we know that? As the name implied, Caesar was born this way, a little over 2000 years ago. It's likely the procedure is much much older, too. So what timeframe are we talking about?

What we didn't know how to do 100 years ago was how to save mother and child once birth had begun and the baby's head had started to go into the canal and got stuck. But humanity have known how to do caesarean birth for a very long time (there are even cases of women doing it to themselves).

Also, from an evolutionary perspective it doesn't matter if the mother survives birth; it only matters whether the baby lives. So it's at best incorrect to phrase the problem this way:

> Women with a very narrow pelvis would not have survived birth 100 years ago. They do now and pass on their genes encoding for a narrow pelvis to their daughters.

[3131s]

> Also, from an evolutionary perspective it doesn't matter if the mother survives birth; it only matters whether the baby lives.

Wouldn't it though? A mother that lives can go on to give birth to more children.

Not to mention that a mother's survival might affect her child's chance of survival.

[ptaipale]

The previous comment was probably written in an extremely patriarchal context... a king's offspring would be taken care of even if the mother died. Though even there, the chances of being stabbed in the back might have been increased without motherly protection.

[gnud]

Things I learned from QI: The word Caesarian does not come from Caesar, but from Cadere, meaning to cut.

[bambax]

Well I stand corrected but so should you: Caesar was named this way because it was said one of his ancestors had a Caesarian birth.

[qb45]

Wiki says it's an ancient urban legend.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaius_Julius_Caesar_(name)#The...

[ptaipale]

It is probably just a myth that Caesar was born this way.

At the time, the mother most likely couldn't survive a section, because the resulting infections would kill anyone who had such surgery performed. And Caesar's mother lived to old age.

[gambiting]

People have performed all sorts of surgeries for thousands of years, and while yes, the percentage of them getting infected and resulting in death was probably very high, it doesn't mean that every single surgery ended that way - in the end, people have been amputating limbs or getting wounded on the battlefield and surviving without any sterilization. So while it's rather unlikely, it's possible that Caesar's mother survived the operation.

[ptaipale]

True, but deep wounds in the abdomen are much, much more difficult regarding infections than e.g. limb amputation. Surviving that was very extremely unlikely. Roman law said that the child must be cut out of a dead mother's womb, to bury it separately, but by that time the woman was dead or dying.

As far as I could find, the earliest written source claiming Caesar was born with C-section is from about 1000 years later.

[y04nn]

This is the first Cesar that is born by cesarian is name is Scipio Africanus[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scipio_Africanus

[y04nn]

I also have a lots of doubt about this study, the article says 'Researchers estimate cases where the baby cannot fit down the birth canal have increased from 30 in 1,000 in the 1960s to 36 in 1,000 births today.' 1960 -> 2016 = 56 years, can natural evolution show signs so fast? Also 'cases where the baby cannot fit down the birth canal' is a subjective, standards may have evolved, maybe babies are also bigger?

[dragonwriter]

> can natural evolution show signs so fast?

Yes, in fact, I think the accepted dominant manifestation of natural evolution is rapid change in trait distribution in response to significant change in enviromental pressure, and near stasis otherwise, not continuous slow change.

Changing a trait from near certain death of mother and child to one which, while it has some increased risk, is normally survivable without lasting adverse consequences for either mother or child is an enormous change in terms of the degree of selective pressure against the trait.

That's not to say there aren't other potential contributors, but it's not unreasonable for natural evolution to have measurable effects in the timeframe in question in those circumstances.

> maybe babies are also bigger?

The article expressly calls that out as a contributing evolutionary trend that was itself limited by the fact that beyond a certain point, that becomes fatal. So, that's certainly true, but in no way a contradiction to the point in the article.

[undersuit]

>maybe babies are also bigger?

Well adults are bigger. Average height has been increasing worldwide and better nutrition is the accepted cause. So maybe(most definitely) a pregnant well-fed mother will produce a larger baby than a mother eating more like those in generations past. We've been evolving for safe delivery of babies while teetering on starvation, not when so well fed that 25% of the US population is obese.