• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Neanderthal Child With Down Syndrome Highlights Altruism Among Ancient Humans

June 26, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

Researchers in Spain have discovered the remains of a Neanderthal child displaying a number of traits that are consistent with Down syndrome. However, unlike other prehistoric individuals with the condition, the youngster didn’t die as a baby, indicating that both the child and its mother received ongoing care and support from the rest of their ancient tribe.

Advertisement

The study authors came across the incredible find when analyzing bones that were originally unearthed way back in 1989 at the paleolithic site of Cova Negra in Valencia. Among these fossils were several inner ear fragments showing congenital malformations that would likely have caused hearing loss and vertigo. 

Advertisement

“The only syndrome that is compatible with the entire set of malformations present in [the remains] is Down syndrome,” write the researchers. “It is therefore notable that the individual… lived to at least six years of age, which far exceeds the usual life expectancy of children with Down syndrome in prehistoric population[s],” they continue.

Indeed, Down syndrome is the most common human genetic disorder and is also seen in great apes, yet survival beyond infancy is thought to have been rare prior to the modern era. Among chimpanzees, one particularly moving case has been described in which a baby with Down syndrome was cared for by its mother and sister but died before the age of two.

Among our own species, five prehistoric cases of Down syndrome have been documented between 3629 and 400 BCE, with none of these individuals living longer than 16 months.

Based on the size and developmental stage of the bones from Cova Negra, however, the study authors conclude that this particular child was between six and seven years old at the time of death. “It is reasonable to think that the long survival of [this child] could only have occurred because it received continuous care and attention during that time,” they write.

Advertisement

Providing a little more detail on the nature of this support, the researchers explain that “because of the demanding lifestyle of Neanderthals, including high levels of mobility, it is difficult to think that the mother of the individual would have been able to provide such care alone and also carry out normal daily activities over a prolonged period of time. It is likely, therefore, that the mother required the continuous help of other members of the social group, either for assistance in performing other daily tasks (or to relieve her from performing them) or to directly assist in providing the necessary care for the child, or both.”

Such conclusions contribute massively to the discussion surrounding the origins of empathetic and humanitarian behaviors within the Homo lineage. While evidence for caregiving among Neanderthals has been documented in the past, some anthropologists have argued that this emerged as a kind of self-interested pact between individuals who could return the favor.

Yet the authors of the new study say their case “is particularly interesting because social care was destined to an immature individual who had no possibility to reciprocate the assistance received.” This, in turn, strengthens the argument that caregiving among Neanderthals has its roots in true altruism, rather than stemming from a need to secure future services from indebted individuals.

Putting these findings into context, the researchers say their findings indicate that “caregiving and collaborative parenting occurred together in Neanderthals and that both prosocial behaviors were part of a broader social adaptation of high selective value that must have been very similar to that of our species.”

Advertisement

The study is published in the journal Science Advances.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. China vehicle sales slid 18% in August – industry body
  2. Fed’s Powell: Reopening economic bottlenecks could be “more enduring”
  3. The World’s Oldest Bottle Of Wine Might Actually Be Safe To Drink
  4. How Coffee Could Protect Against Alzheimer’s: Espresso Found To Inhibit Tau Proteins

Source Link: Neanderthal Child With Down Syndrome Highlights Altruism Among Ancient Humans

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • One Star System Could Soon Dazzle Us Twice With Nova And Supernova Explosions
  • Unethical Experiments: When Scientists Really Should Have Stopped What They Were Doing Immediately
  • The First Humans Were Hunted By Leopards And Weren’t The Apex Predators We Thought They Were
  • Earth’s Passage Through The Galaxy Might Be Written In Its Rocks
  • What Is An Einstein Cross – And Why Is The Latest One Such A Unique Find?
  • If We Found Life On Mars, What Would That Mean For The Fermi Paradox And The Great Filter?
  • The Longest Living Mammals Are Giants That Live Up To 200 Years In The Icy Arctic
  • Entirely New Virus Detected In Bat Urine, And It’s Only The 4th Of Its Kind Ever Isolated
  • The First Ever Full Asteroid History: From Its Doomed Discovery To Collecting Its Meteorites
  • World’s Oldest Pachycephalosaur Fossil Pushes Back These Dinosaurs’ Emergence By 15 Million Years
  • The Hole In The Ozone Layer Is Healing And On Track For Full Recovery In The 21st Century, Thanks To Science
  • First Sweet Potato Genome Reveals They’re Hybrids With A Puzzling Past And 6 Sets Of Chromosomes
  • Why Is The Top Of Canada So Sparsely Populated? Meet The “Canadian Shield”
  • Humans Are In The Middle Of “A Great Evolutionary Transition”, New Paper Claims
  • Why Do Some Toilets Have Two Flush Buttons?
  • 130-Year-Old Butter Additive Discovered In Danish Basement Contains Bacteria From The 1890s
  • Prehistoric Humans Made Necklaces From Marine Mollusk Fossils 20,000 Years Ago
  • Zond 5: In 1968 Two Soviet Steppe Tortoises Beat Humans To Orbiting Around The Moon
  • Why Cats Adapted This Defense Mechanism From Snakes
  • Mother Orca Seen Carrying Dead Calf Once Again On Washington Coast
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version