LOL, they used to torture themselves to restore the land! I call the Sun Dance disregard for pain; and I'd be curious as to the numbers on the deaths at the Dance. I'm under the impression that the strongest and bravest young men underwent the ritual torture, not the old and weak.
you haven't seen and lived a subsistence lifestyle
Well, you don't know that. But not for long, anyhow.
I wonder if you would find it so appealing the first time you had a child born with a handicap and you had to take him out into the forest to die?
Was that common? I know the Spartans did that, but I've never heard of a tribe that did. I have heard of Hopi that had cripples live to fifty, and an Australian aboriginal tribe that carried a legless woman for her entire life.
The nomadic tribes on the other hand could not afford to have constant drains on the tribal resources. As to the sun dance it wasn't a disregard for pain but a social custom that would identify the strongest and bravest for reproduction. You had the scars you got the girl. Or girls as the case may be.
For the old warriors there was the custom known as "Staking" where they would tie an old warrior to a stake with a lead for his last battle. His positions were then divided and his widow(s) left to die unless one of her daughters took pity on her and could talk her husband into giving her a place in her tent. Or if they were young enough to be taken in by other men in the tribe as second wives.
I don’t have any kids but I have helped a few into this world and help raise them under the most primitive of conditions. Give me the 21-century to raise kids any day. It may not be perfect and what is? But it beats the devil out of raising them in primitive conditions where they die from diarrhea or from stepping on a piece of sharp stone.
Sort of the reason that men may invent but it is the families that are the motivation for the inventions.
a.cricket
I read something maybe 25 or 30 years ago, I think it was in National Geographic, about a tribe somewhere (Borneo? South America? Can't remember!), where the tradition was that when you reached a certain age, your son would carry you out into the woods and leave you there to die.
In the article, the writer saw this happen, and he tried reasoning with this guy who had his dad sitting on his shoulders, being carried out of the camp for his death trip. He pleaded with the guy not to kill his father, using "western logic" (for lack of a better term) on him. He said stuff like hey, he's your father, he raised you, he provided for you, he protected you, it's not right for you to cart in out to the woods and leave him to die!
The guy, after hearing this, agreed! He turned around, and put his dad down.
But then the other tribesmen saw this, and started ridiculing him and laughing at him. At that point, he picked his father back up, gave the American writer a dirty look (as if to say "you idiot, how could I have been so stupid as to listen to your twaddle!"), and carted the old man out to die.
The old man, of course, never protested in the least.
There are strange, sad, even disgusting things that happen in this world. Humans are capable of some pretty nasty stuff -- and, doing so with no guilt whatsoever. Witness the atrocities committed in "the most civilized nation on earth" a half century ago.
Anyway, to answer your question, I don't know if it was common, but it was certainly not unheard of.