Watched a few lets plays of One Hour One Life, it's rather funny when the person recording gets picked up as a baby and dumped in the wilderness by their mother.
Considering how fast food apparently runs out in one area, that was to ensure baby's survival.
Heh, not really, it's to avoid overpopulating a settlement with too many mouths to feed. An ideal location managed properly can last more or less indefinitely, but usually only sustain 5-8 people at a time with early tech. If the people can get to the pie making stage and keep production reliable from there they can stockpile years worth of food, but one too many mouths to feed or a careless hunter can ruin the whole thing. One generation is all it takes for things to break down.
Common exchange is 'We have too many babies. No more,' followed by someone getting either ignored till they starve or being carried away into the wilds to die.
Furthest I think anyone's got so far is gold crafting, but the main obstacle to progression is people not obeying the three laws* and ruining the ecosystem or a settlement dying out due to lack of births and their organisation methods and tech being forgotten. Good settlements can support one or two people mucking about with tech while the others manage food, but it makes for slow progress and a lot of effort spent on staying in place since each new generation often needs taught to do a job.
*The three laws are basic player made rules to avoid ruining replenishing resources, basically don't hunt animals to extinction, don't fully drain water sources and only harvest milkweed (which is used to make rope) at the growth stage that it can regrow from.