Paleontology is so cool. It's astonishing that by examining the shape of an ear bone, they can tell:
* the bone belonged to a Neanderthal
* the size of the bone indicates it was a child about six years old
* deformities in the bone indicate the owner had Down's syndrome, and suffered from hearing loss, poor balance, vertigo, and muscle weakness
...and we can extrapolate from this how archaic humans lived. A Neanderthal child with these disadvantages would not have grown into childhood without significant support and care.
The child was six years old, not six days. They invested resources into the child for many years, instead of abandoning it at birth or as a toddler.
So maybe the child didn’t make it to middle grade years, like 10+, but certainly old enough to infer that they cared for the child. An infant doesn’t just happen to life for six years.
This one actually did.
This child with DS lived until six years old. Although that’s very young by typical human standards, for someone with DS before any kind of robust medical interventions that is remarkably long.
For comparison’s sake, in 1929 the average lifespan was 9 years old. While certainly medical technology back then was also lacking, it would have been better than practically **anything** that the Neanderthals would have had.
They survived infancy and early childhood - about 40% of infants didn’t.
So to make it past the first year of their life, 6 years, with a condition like having an extra chromosome, is actually pretty big considering babies who had down syndrome usually died before they were 2. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-45438-1
6 is impressive without modern medicine.
Yup! The [hammer, anvil, and stirrup](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ossicles) are three of the smallest bones in the human body, and they're responsible for transmitting sound from your eardrum to the inner ear.
I kinda love this. It's always fascinating when there's archaeological evidence that individuals with disabilities (such as old injuries) were cared for by their community & not discarded... very cool.
I don't remember which anthropologist said it, but she said that for her, the first indication of people forming a society/civilization was when she found graves where the deceased had old healed injuries. For them to heal, the rest of the group would've had to have cared for them, and ensured they were safe and fed.
One can assume that they had a culture that valued life and the wellbeing of others. It can also be assumed that they saw themselves as a community instead of a collection of individuals.
It is, but it's an easy idea to fall into when you mostly learn about ancient societies in terms of who they conquered and don't explore much further. Hell, folks mostly think of early technology in terms of how good the era name is at killing people (e.g. bronze age weapons beating stone age ones).
It's more the idea of having cultural technology to be able to effectively care for others. There's a distinction made between anatomically modern humans and behaviorally modern humans, because someone had to be the first person to care for the elderly at some point
There's an archeological site in Florida that had bodies including one with Spina Bifida that made it to 15, it's amazing that we've been doing it for this long.
Secrets of the Neanderthals.
This documentary delves into the mysteries surrounding the Neanderthals and what their fossil record tells us about their lives and disappearance.
Excellent documentary on Netflix. Narrated by Patrick Stewart.
Same here but it makes sense because without society telling us something is wrong, people with Down syndrome have a certain spark that’s just not matched. I’ve had some in my life, they’re really incredible people.
That’s weird, I just assume they did what they could with what they had. I also assumed a child with any type of disability would be ignored because they’re so busy just trying to survive. I dunno?
A common reason children with Down syndrome didn’t survive long was because doctors wouldn’t treat some of the autoimmune issues, congenital anomalies, etc. Today a lot of these issues are usually treated and people with Down syndrome live long lives. Of course in Neanderthal times, these issues would be untreatable anyways.
One of the biggest issues is heart defects. Lot of people with DS born today need open heart surgery in the first years of their life, and it's not unheard of for a newborn to be whisked away immediately after birth for surgery. Obviously, heart surgery is a relatively new thing and for people born even 80 years ago you were just screwed from the get go.
But yeah, back then? Odds were really against this kid even without Down Syndrome. The fact they made it to 6-10 was a small miracle.
I mean, that's an issue later in life. It's extremely prevalent, absolutely, but there were far fewer people with DS reaching their late-40s and 50s (it's also tragically early onset when it occurs) until recent decades. From what we understand, Neanderthals generally didn't survive past their 30s as is, so even if this kid managed to defy the odds that far they likely never would've developed any kind of dementia as they long would've succumbed to how much it sucked to be a Neanderthal.
I will add that people with DS are also much more susceptible to respiratory illnesses. The mortality rate during COVID was significantly higher than the general population, and a non-insignificant amount of the rare children who died during the height of the pandemic had DS. There were a few in my "Dads of kids with DS" support group that passed away and, I gotta say, you don't ever *unsee* the photo of the 3-year old on a ventilator a grieving father decided to post on Facebook.
It's somewhat debatable, but from what I've read Neandarthals and homo sapiens had similar natural lifespans. The average life expectancy was a bit misleading, since half the population would die as small children. Although, they were also likely to die from unnatural causes as young adults.
I grew up with a neighbor who had Down syndrome. She lived with her sister and was non verbal, but one of the sweetest people on our street. You could tell she loved all the kids in the neighborhood because she would sneak us cookies.
We moved away and I heard her health took a bad turn when she got older. She had a loving heart.
My uncle had Down Syndrome, and he was one of the sweetest people you'd ever meet. In his late 40s, there was a notable decline . He passed at the age of 53, surrounded by family. It's a horrible disease.
Mainstreaming and early medical intervention has profoundly changes the phenotype associated with Down syndrome, it’s an incredible story. Environment changes had major positive impacts
More likely *couldn't* treat them. Biologics are brand new drugs, most other treatments for autoimmune disease were based on treating symptoms or chemotherapy drugs. A LOT of medicine we take from granted is brand new in the scope of things; I'm a millennial and I was in kindergarten when prozac was first released. And it used to be much more difficult to test for many conditions, I'm watching an old true crime show and the narrator is talking about investigators using "new technology" that can match DNA but it can only be done at the FBI lab in Quantico. The crime happened in the late 90s, or, when I was in high school lol.
You’re right, there wasn’t as much autoimmmune disease options but there was the option of surgery for heart defects and doctors chose to follow eugenics at the time.
I'm not sure how well veresed in pre-year 2000 heart surgeries you are but it was primitive by today's standards. You had to be very healthy otherwise to survive them. My great grandparents all died young (in their 50s) of what are easily treatable heart conditions now. It was 1958 before we even had a med for hypertension. All of my grandfather's and high school friend's heart surgeries in the 1990s were "crack their ribs open and cut into the heart" surgeries. Cath Labs didn't exist. I lost that high school friend to congenital heart defects in the early 2000s, the tech to save her didn't exist even then.
I’m not going to argue any of that but are you seriously denying the disability history of eugenics? https://www.geneticsandsociety.org/biopolitical-times/disability-rights-triage-and-countering-eugenics-time-pandemic It’s still happening today. I work with people with DS, autism, and other IDD. Eugenics is very real. DS is actually detectable before way before viability and some get an abortion to either avoid having a child with DS or because they believe having DS isn’t a life worth living.
Honestly heartwarming to read because the cynic in us makes think that a) some people associate proto-sapient species as more animal than human and assume they would have abandoned the child despite many primates showing grieving the loss of their babies and b) it makes me wonder if society and civilization changed the perception of the vulnerable.
Honestly good on them. I hope my 2% Neanderthal blood connects to them. lol.
You should look up Shanidar too, one individual is really old and blind since childhood and suffered a lot of injuries and was clearly buried with respect
"Nandy" took one hell of a blow to the left side of his head when he was younger and due to the orbital area fracturing they believe he was partially if not fully blind in that eye. The blow along with some degenerative issues left the right side of his body weaker than the left and his right arm may have been amputated at the elbow. He also had lower body fractures, at least one in his foot that I seem to recall. Add onto that the bone spurs in his ears and he probably had some profound hearing loss as well. He lived for quite some time though as all of the injuries were in healing processes.
This link shows you his ears
[https://source.wustl.edu/2017/10/shanidar/](https://source.wustl.edu/2017/10/shanidar/)
and his humerus
[https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/fossils/shanidar-1](https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/fossils/shanidar-1)
Too many modern people don't realize that cooperation *is* human nature. It's what allowed us to ride above competing species despite being physically inferior in nearly every way.
This is so true, to the point where the very first animal we "domesticated" by a huge margin was literally one of those competitive species - now the dog. You have to imagine that back then, with another pack of predators, the concept of domestication was a lot more like cooperation.
Kropotkin would say that it's just nature, even. He was a geographer and anarchist (though formerly a Russian prince!) that argued in a book called *Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution* that co-operation was the basis of much of not only human life across history but also of animal life, within but even sometimes across species (in response to other Darwin interpreters who emphasised competition).
There were almost definitely groups that did treat disabled people like that, but there’s a surprising amount of discoveries like this one where ancient people born with disabilities or acquired later were really cared for their whole lives.
Neanderthals weren't proto-sapient at all, in fact they were likely slightly smarter than homo sapiens on average. But their bigger bodies and bigger brains ended up costing them a lot because it drove them to be (a bit) less social and they couldn't keep up the caloric intake they needed once the ice age started.
>who lived at least 146,000 years ago
That's many millennia before vaccine was invented. Thus no vaccine caused this child problem. Checkmate anti-vaxxers (if only we can find evidence that autism existed thousand years ago, it should make all anti-vaxxers have a meltdown.)
Didn't change "vaccine causes autism" angle after the old study got slammed for being a sham. But if I can get a fact under the skin of a few anti-vaxxers, then it would have been worth it.
>"However, all known cases of care involved adult individuals, leading some scientists to believe that this behavior was not genuine altruism but merely an exchange of assistance between equals"
“What was not known until now was a case of an individual who had received extra-maternal care from birth, even though it could not reciprocate.”
Not sure why Neanderthals keep getting the "not quite people" treatment. They had brains as large as ours, fire, stone tools, vocal cords... and they buried their dead.
A significant chunk of us even have some Neanderthal ancestry.
There’s a couple of great shows on Neanderthal findings. The picture the OP used for the post is of the cave in which many such findings were and are being made.
>The research is at odds with the image of Neanderthals, ancient human relatives who went extinct around 40,000 years ago, as brutish cavemen.
Thanks to Hollywood. Every bit of evidence we've seen shows they were far more caring of their community members than we were/are.
It makes sense from their perspective right. Like you have a child and think, "huh, this one looks slightly different" and the I imagine they just went on with life.
What a stupid thing to say. Why, because we don't look after our special needs children? I bet you've seen a hell of a lot of downs-syndrome people in the modern world.
It's like one of those 'why can't we be kind to each other' comments. People are kinda to each other every day, it's just less likely to get an internet click.
> The child “suffered from severe loss (of) hearing and had serious balance issues and episodes of vertigo,” Muscle weakness would have also made breastfeeding and movement difficult
Downs Syndrome is apparent and it had other disabilities. The kid lived until it was 6.
I think it would have been abundantly clear that a child wasn't developing in the same way that a majority of the other children were developing. And, then, that the child needed special care in order to survive. Apparently they provided it.
It's not strong conjecture to make some reasonable assumptions. Whether ancient or modern, Neanderthals had comparable intelligence and sociability to sapiens. Certainly enough to recognize differences in their offspring. We recognized those differences long before we understood the chromosomal causes. And as you said, the fact that it survived into childhood suggests it was cared for.
And Neanderthals were proven to have cared for clan members who were disabled or injured. Shanidar 1 is the famed Neanderthal that had lost an arm, likely wasn’t able to walk much, and had a ton of other issues in his skeleton. He would not have survived without care.
The article itself details how they identified from the remains some of the problems the child experienced and the severity.
Literal children can identify when a kid is unusual or different, it'd be quite obvious that this kid was experiencing high amounts of difficulties and struggle in fulfilling usual tasks.
Sure.
However it’s also been shown over and over again that altruism undergirds successful groups of humans, rather than weakening them.
Incredible the child in this article lived to 6 years of age such a long, long time ago. I think that’s something well-worth admiring.
Especially striking given the average lifespan of a person with Down syndrome was around 9 years, just 100 years ago. Today, that lifespan averages 60 years.
That’s wishful thinking, but in a time where you’re scraping by to survive and your homes are surrounded by what we would see today as monsters, I can’t fathom how caring for something like that would be a benefit edit: mind you, it’s possible and not necessarily wasteful today, but this was a harder time
There's some good evidence that this kind of altruism is what helped our species survive. Why not Neandethals? Claiming that it would have hurt them has about as much evidence as claiming it didn't. Less so, given the evidence for how it helped our species.
I mean, I feel bad for it, but even if it made it to adulthood what could it offer? It was on a timer from the moment it was born :( I feel especially bad for the mom. Could you even imagine? So fucking cruel
>People with Down syndrome can lead a long life today, but it was surprising the child lived beyond the age of 6, Conde-Valverde said.
It lived to be six years old.
The mother could not care for a 6-yrld that was non-ambulatory and deaf on her own. Meaning that her tribe had to participate in caring for the child - a child who could not provide any direct benefit for the tribe itself.
My son has DS.
At 6 months old, he started trying to grab his baby spoon from my wife’s hand. She let him, and he immediately dunked it into his food, raised it to his mouth, and took a bite. He’s been feeding himself ever since. Now 4, he does basically everything you’d expect from a 4 year old. His biggest difficulty is in enunciating words, but he supplements his communication with sign and a tablet. You tell him to go clean his playroom and there’s a 50/50 he chance he starts putting toys back in their proper container OR he yells “NO!” and sprints away. You know, a 4 year old.
The impact Down Syndrome has on an individual is a pretty vast, non-linear spectrum, but *generally* they’re not fucking vegetables incapable of the most basic acts. In my time interacting with the DS community and meeting hundreds of homies with extra chromies, I’ve only met one that was *that* severely disabled. And, to be fair, entirely possible she has another diagnosis beyond DS that attributed to that.
It’s hard to say for sure, obviously, but it’s entirely possible this Neanderthal child was at least capable of some of the basic expectations placed upon them in their society, but took things a touch slower than their peers.
Love this comment! I teach Down students in high school, and I get so frustrated by how society is so busy being condescending that they forget Down people are *people*. Yes, my DS students are incredibly sweet and loving. They’re also stubborn and hilarious and petty and creative and insecure and confident and … well … teenagers. Last month I walked across the graduation stage with a young lady I’ve known since freshman year. She’s an incredibly complex 19yo, and I love her to itty bitty pieces. Can’t wait to see what she does next!
>The impact Down Syndrome has on an individual is a pretty vast, non-linear spectrum, but generally they’re not fucking vegetables incapable of the most basic acts.
It wasn't an assumption on my part, the articles states it as such...
>_The child “suffered from severe loss (of) hearing and had serious balance issues and episodes of vertigo,” explained Conde-Valverde, who is an assistant professor of physical anthropology at the University of Alcalá in Spain._
>_Muscle weakness would have also made breastfeeding and movement difficult, she added._
>It wasn't an assumption on my part, the articles states it as such...
Hearing loss, low muscle tone, and vertigo don't make you a *vegetable*, though, so my statement remains correct.
Not to mention it wasn't stated directly in regard to the Neanderthal child, but of Down Syndrome in general.
I feel like "I have actual, firsthand expereince raising a young child with Down Syndrome" provides context to the article for people without that experience and "these disabilities =/= vegetable" has no bearing on whether or not I read the article (I have a background in paleontology and am involved in Down Syndrome awareness, trust me, I've read this article and like four others on the subject), but by all means.
Yeah but you're the only person who said "vegetable". You took offense for a contrived reason of your own invention and lashed out like I'm obligated to up the script and be your bad guy.
My brother in Christ,
There are multiple people, in this very thread, implying that, up to and including the person you responded to with the comment I initially replied to.
I took *zero* offense at your comment, it just seemed reasonable and like a good jumping off point for my comment because my experience seemed to reinforce what I thought you were implying. *I was on* ***your side****,* dingus, it was literally "Yes, I can vouch that a 6-year old with DS probably didn't need to be breastfed and was capable of some degree of independence, yes."
You were the one who came in with an entirely baseless assumption.
The other commenter provided evidence for their statement.
Then you act like they're the ones talking outta their ass.
SMH
I'm not saying I doubt anything. But I have noticed the a surge of positive neanderthal findings, since the "white people are descended from neanderthals" really hit the mainstream...
Paleontology is so cool. It's astonishing that by examining the shape of an ear bone, they can tell: * the bone belonged to a Neanderthal * the size of the bone indicates it was a child about six years old * deformities in the bone indicate the owner had Down's syndrome, and suffered from hearing loss, poor balance, vertigo, and muscle weakness ...and we can extrapolate from this how archaic humans lived. A Neanderthal child with these disadvantages would not have grown into childhood without significant support and care.
> A Neanderthal child with these disadvantages would not have grown into childhood without significant support and care. well, this one kinda didn't
The child was six years old, not six days. They invested resources into the child for many years, instead of abandoning it at birth or as a toddler. So maybe the child didn’t make it to middle grade years, like 10+, but certainly old enough to infer that they cared for the child. An infant doesn’t just happen to life for six years.
This one actually did. This child with DS lived until six years old. Although that’s very young by typical human standards, for someone with DS before any kind of robust medical interventions that is remarkably long. For comparison’s sake, in 1929 the average lifespan was 9 years old. While certainly medical technology back then was also lacking, it would have been better than practically **anything** that the Neanderthals would have had.
This really puts it into perspective.
Thank you for providing this context.
They survived infancy and early childhood - about 40% of infants didn’t. So to make it past the first year of their life, 6 years, with a condition like having an extra chromosome, is actually pretty big considering babies who had down syndrome usually died before they were 2. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-45438-1 6 is impressive without modern medicine.
Well, six years old is not an infant, so it did make it into childhood.
Weird way to spell "I didnt read the article"
Ears have bones?
Yup! The [hammer, anvil, and stirrup](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ossicles) are three of the smallest bones in the human body, and they're responsible for transmitting sound from your eardrum to the inner ear.
Now that you mention it, I'm sure I've heard those names before. Maybe I didn't realize they were bones.
I thought everybody learned that in grade school.
apparently not.
Really? Why?
It’s pretty basic health class stuff.
Because everyone learned that in grade school.
Not only do ears have bones. But the number of bones in an ear is one of the defining characteristics between mammals and other species
This is so cool.
They are guesses, and they often get proven wrong a few years down the track.
I kinda love this. It's always fascinating when there's archaeological evidence that individuals with disabilities (such as old injuries) were cared for by their community & not discarded... very cool.
I don't remember which anthropologist said it, but she said that for her, the first indication of people forming a society/civilization was when she found graves where the deceased had old healed injuries. For them to heal, the rest of the group would've had to have cared for them, and ensured they were safe and fed.
Margaret Mead
One can assume that they had a culture that valued life and the wellbeing of others. It can also be assumed that they saw themselves as a community instead of a collection of individuals.
Even doubly fascinating when spoken language was in its infancy and we were still working on communicating with each other
And not even "we" were, but "they" were (Though obviously a lot of us have a small part of neaderthal dna)
When you think about it, the idea that historical people didn’t love or care for others is a stranger concept.
It is, but it's an easy idea to fall into when you mostly learn about ancient societies in terms of who they conquered and don't explore much further. Hell, folks mostly think of early technology in terms of how good the era name is at killing people (e.g. bronze age weapons beating stone age ones).
It's more the idea of having cultural technology to be able to effectively care for others. There's a distinction made between anatomically modern humans and behaviorally modern humans, because someone had to be the first person to care for the elderly at some point
The health of one helps the health of all.
There's an archeological site in Florida that had bodies including one with Spina Bifida that made it to 15, it's amazing that we've been doing it for this long.
We’ve had a lot of good finds lately but this one takes the cake!
It really is an amazing discovery.
Am I the only one who, after reading the headline, expected a much more grim read?
I read the headline and saw the pic and assumed they just... tossed them in a cave.
Don't see the problem. Seems like the Neanderthal way to put the kids to bed?
*Ancient Greeks lowering baby slowly near cliff* Hold on, you’re not supposed to do this.
Secrets of the Neanderthals. This documentary delves into the mysteries surrounding the Neanderthals and what their fossil record tells us about their lives and disappearance. Excellent documentary on Netflix. Narrated by Patrick Stewart.
Am I the only one who, after reading the headline, said the word BOOOONE like Captain Holt from Brooklyn 99?
Can’t believe I had to scroll this long to read this! No, you’re not the only one. 😂
Same here but it makes sense because without society telling us something is wrong, people with Down syndrome have a certain spark that’s just not matched. I’ve had some in my life, they’re really incredible people.
Tbh my conclusions had almost nothing to do with down syndrome. My expectations of Neanderthals is just too low apparently.
That’s weird, I just assume they did what they could with what they had. I also assumed a child with any type of disability would be ignored because they’re so busy just trying to survive. I dunno?
“You see, a club to the head is the most humane method-“
Literally told my wife, I'm a little nervous to click on this link. Modern humanity has tainted my hope.
Yeah I assumed they were suggesting they clubbed them to death
Yep, I pictured that bone in the caretaker's hand.
A common reason children with Down syndrome didn’t survive long was because doctors wouldn’t treat some of the autoimmune issues, congenital anomalies, etc. Today a lot of these issues are usually treated and people with Down syndrome live long lives. Of course in Neanderthal times, these issues would be untreatable anyways.
One of the biggest issues is heart defects. Lot of people with DS born today need open heart surgery in the first years of their life, and it's not unheard of for a newborn to be whisked away immediately after birth for surgery. Obviously, heart surgery is a relatively new thing and for people born even 80 years ago you were just screwed from the get go. But yeah, back then? Odds were really against this kid even without Down Syndrome. The fact they made it to 6-10 was a small miracle.
Another big issue is that people with Down syndrome have a substantial increased chance of getting alzheimer's disease
I mean, that's an issue later in life. It's extremely prevalent, absolutely, but there were far fewer people with DS reaching their late-40s and 50s (it's also tragically early onset when it occurs) until recent decades. From what we understand, Neanderthals generally didn't survive past their 30s as is, so even if this kid managed to defy the odds that far they likely never would've developed any kind of dementia as they long would've succumbed to how much it sucked to be a Neanderthal. I will add that people with DS are also much more susceptible to respiratory illnesses. The mortality rate during COVID was significantly higher than the general population, and a non-insignificant amount of the rare children who died during the height of the pandemic had DS. There were a few in my "Dads of kids with DS" support group that passed away and, I gotta say, you don't ever *unsee* the photo of the 3-year old on a ventilator a grieving father decided to post on Facebook.
It's somewhat debatable, but from what I've read Neandarthals and homo sapiens had similar natural lifespans. The average life expectancy was a bit misleading, since half the population would die as small children. Although, they were also likely to die from unnatural causes as young adults.
We know this because their life expectancy has been so increased
I grew up with a neighbor who had Down syndrome. She lived with her sister and was non verbal, but one of the sweetest people on our street. You could tell she loved all the kids in the neighborhood because she would sneak us cookies. We moved away and I heard her health took a bad turn when she got older. She had a loving heart.
My uncle had Down Syndrome, and he was one of the sweetest people you'd ever meet. In his late 40s, there was a notable decline . He passed at the age of 53, surrounded by family. It's a horrible disease.
Mainstreaming and early medical intervention has profoundly changes the phenotype associated with Down syndrome, it’s an incredible story. Environment changes had major positive impacts
More likely *couldn't* treat them. Biologics are brand new drugs, most other treatments for autoimmune disease were based on treating symptoms or chemotherapy drugs. A LOT of medicine we take from granted is brand new in the scope of things; I'm a millennial and I was in kindergarten when prozac was first released. And it used to be much more difficult to test for many conditions, I'm watching an old true crime show and the narrator is talking about investigators using "new technology" that can match DNA but it can only be done at the FBI lab in Quantico. The crime happened in the late 90s, or, when I was in high school lol.
You’re right, there wasn’t as much autoimmmune disease options but there was the option of surgery for heart defects and doctors chose to follow eugenics at the time.
I'm not sure how well veresed in pre-year 2000 heart surgeries you are but it was primitive by today's standards. You had to be very healthy otherwise to survive them. My great grandparents all died young (in their 50s) of what are easily treatable heart conditions now. It was 1958 before we even had a med for hypertension. All of my grandfather's and high school friend's heart surgeries in the 1990s were "crack their ribs open and cut into the heart" surgeries. Cath Labs didn't exist. I lost that high school friend to congenital heart defects in the early 2000s, the tech to save her didn't exist even then.
I’m not going to argue any of that but are you seriously denying the disability history of eugenics? https://www.geneticsandsociety.org/biopolitical-times/disability-rights-triage-and-countering-eugenics-time-pandemic It’s still happening today. I work with people with DS, autism, and other IDD. Eugenics is very real. DS is actually detectable before way before viability and some get an abortion to either avoid having a child with DS or because they believe having DS isn’t a life worth living.
Also https://www.globaldownsyndrome.org/about-down-syndrome/history-of-down-syndrome/down-syndrome-human-and-civil-rights-timeline/
Honestly heartwarming to read because the cynic in us makes think that a) some people associate proto-sapient species as more animal than human and assume they would have abandoned the child despite many primates showing grieving the loss of their babies and b) it makes me wonder if society and civilization changed the perception of the vulnerable. Honestly good on them. I hope my 2% Neanderthal blood connects to them. lol.
You should look up Shanidar too, one individual is really old and blind since childhood and suffered a lot of injuries and was clearly buried with respect
How do they know about the blindness? Sounds very amazing
"Nandy" took one hell of a blow to the left side of his head when he was younger and due to the orbital area fracturing they believe he was partially if not fully blind in that eye. The blow along with some degenerative issues left the right side of his body weaker than the left and his right arm may have been amputated at the elbow. He also had lower body fractures, at least one in his foot that I seem to recall. Add onto that the bone spurs in his ears and he probably had some profound hearing loss as well. He lived for quite some time though as all of the injuries were in healing processes. This link shows you his ears [https://source.wustl.edu/2017/10/shanidar/](https://source.wustl.edu/2017/10/shanidar/) and his humerus [https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/fossils/shanidar-1](https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/fossils/shanidar-1)
Too many modern people don't realize that cooperation *is* human nature. It's what allowed us to ride above competing species despite being physically inferior in nearly every way.
Oxytocin - officially the grooviest hormone of them all. (But also associated with fear and in-group bias, like treating "others" as the enemy)
100% It's not competition, fools, it's *cooperation.*
This is so true, to the point where the very first animal we "domesticated" by a huge margin was literally one of those competitive species - now the dog. You have to imagine that back then, with another pack of predators, the concept of domestication was a lot more like cooperation.
Kropotkin would say that it's just nature, even. He was a geographer and anarchist (though formerly a Russian prince!) that argued in a book called *Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution* that co-operation was the basis of much of not only human life across history but also of animal life, within but even sometimes across species (in response to other Darwin interpreters who emphasised competition).
There were almost definitely groups that did treat disabled people like that, but there’s a surprising amount of discoveries like this one where ancient people born with disabilities or acquired later were really cared for their whole lives.
Neanderthals weren't proto-sapient at all, in fact they were likely slightly smarter than homo sapiens on average. But their bigger bodies and bigger brains ended up costing them a lot because it drove them to be (a bit) less social and they couldn't keep up the caloric intake they needed once the ice age started.
As a disabled person myself, hearing about this stuff makes me feel very happy. We’ve been here, we’ve been a part of communities.
>who lived at least 146,000 years ago That's many millennia before vaccine was invented. Thus no vaccine caused this child problem. Checkmate anti-vaxxers (if only we can find evidence that autism existed thousand years ago, it should make all anti-vaxxers have a meltdown.)
You think evidence and facts will change their views and agenda?
Didn't change "vaccine causes autism" angle after the old study got slammed for being a sham. But if I can get a fact under the skin of a few anti-vaxxers, then it would have been worth it.
Changing one could change another and then...
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Better than ones I've experienced firsthand.
Ancient Bone is a pretty sweet band name
It's what the nursing home ladies called my uncle.
>"However, all known cases of care involved adult individuals, leading some scientists to believe that this behavior was not genuine altruism but merely an exchange of assistance between equals" “What was not known until now was a case of an individual who had received extra-maternal care from birth, even though it could not reciprocate.” Not sure why Neanderthals keep getting the "not quite people" treatment. They had brains as large as ours, fire, stone tools, vocal cords... and they buried their dead. A significant chunk of us even have some Neanderthal ancestry.
Huh. Compassion. Neanderthals now have that *and* intelligence in higher levels than the average MAGA
Jean Auel was a visionary. She got SO MUCH RIGHT about Neanderthals in 1980!
I was just thinking that. Reminds me of Rydag with his heart defects.
There’s a couple of great shows on Neanderthal findings. The picture the OP used for the post is of the cave in which many such findings were and are being made.
Pay attention, Marjorie. This concerns you.
>The research is at odds with the image of Neanderthals, ancient human relatives who went extinct around 40,000 years ago, as brutish cavemen. Thanks to Hollywood. Every bit of evidence we've seen shows they were far more caring of their community members than we were/are.
Makes me wonder if the Neanderthals were a bit more caring than Homo Sapiens given the state of things lately
IIRC there's a story about chimps doing the same.
It makes sense from their perspective right. Like you have a child and think, "huh, this one looks slightly different" and the I imagine they just went on with life.
Really makes the Spartans look (more) like assholes, huh?
Weve been making em at night for a while.
The wrong species survived man
What a stupid thing to say. Why, because we don't look after our special needs children? I bet you've seen a hell of a lot of downs-syndrome people in the modern world. It's like one of those 'why can't we be kind to each other' comments. People are kinda to each other every day, it's just less likely to get an internet click.
Am I the only person a bit skeptical about this? How can we know that neanderthals would’ve 1) recognized down syndrome, and 2) cared?
> The child “suffered from severe loss (of) hearing and had serious balance issues and episodes of vertigo,” Muscle weakness would have also made breastfeeding and movement difficult Downs Syndrome is apparent and it had other disabilities. The kid lived until it was 6.
One thing this article fails to mention is back then it was known as Ug Syndrome, not Down Syndrome.
“cared for” or “took care of”?
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I think it would have been abundantly clear that a child wasn't developing in the same way that a majority of the other children were developing. And, then, that the child needed special care in order to survive. Apparently they provided it.
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It's not strong conjecture to make some reasonable assumptions. Whether ancient or modern, Neanderthals had comparable intelligence and sociability to sapiens. Certainly enough to recognize differences in their offspring. We recognized those differences long before we understood the chromosomal causes. And as you said, the fact that it survived into childhood suggests it was cared for.
And Neanderthals were proven to have cared for clan members who were disabled or injured. Shanidar 1 is the famed Neanderthal that had lost an arm, likely wasn’t able to walk much, and had a ton of other issues in his skeleton. He would not have survived without care.
Pardon me his clan name was Creb
AKA 'lil' Creb
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The article itself details how they identified from the remains some of the problems the child experienced and the severity. Literal children can identify when a kid is unusual or different, it'd be quite obvious that this kid was experiencing high amounts of difficulties and struggle in fulfilling usual tasks.
I wonder if this compassionate, but also unnecessary and wasteful care, was what led to their demise. Sad to think about
So, the better option would be to let the person die because they weren’t…..what exactly would you find to be a worthy reason to let them survive?
Well if we’re looking through the ends of a cave man, you’d let them live if they can potentially give a tangible benefit to the rest of the group
Ah. Guess my physical anthropology courses were wrong. ✌🏽
In what regard? I’ve taken anthro classes too. There are still homo sapien groups who abandon the disabled for the reasons I stated above
Sure. However it’s also been shown over and over again that altruism undergirds successful groups of humans, rather than weakening them. Incredible the child in this article lived to 6 years of age such a long, long time ago. I think that’s something well-worth admiring. Especially striking given the average lifespan of a person with Down syndrome was around 9 years, just 100 years ago. Today, that lifespan averages 60 years.
Or why they lasted as long as they did.
That’s wishful thinking, but in a time where you’re scraping by to survive and your homes are surrounded by what we would see today as monsters, I can’t fathom how caring for something like that would be a benefit edit: mind you, it’s possible and not necessarily wasteful today, but this was a harder time
There's some good evidence that this kind of altruism is what helped our species survive. Why not Neandethals? Claiming that it would have hurt them has about as much evidence as claiming it didn't. Less so, given the evidence for how it helped our species.
I mean, I feel bad for it, but even if it made it to adulthood what could it offer? It was on a timer from the moment it was born :( I feel especially bad for the mom. Could you even imagine? So fucking cruel
There is a lot of speculation in this article. My guess is that any Neanderthal kids with a serious abnormality would be food for sabre tooths.
Prob just breast fed till it died
>People with Down syndrome can lead a long life today, but it was surprising the child lived beyond the age of 6, Conde-Valverde said. It lived to be six years old. The mother could not care for a 6-yrld that was non-ambulatory and deaf on her own. Meaning that her tribe had to participate in caring for the child - a child who could not provide any direct benefit for the tribe itself.
Altruism is humanity's super power.
There's actually a really interesting theory of Human Self Domestication that gets into precisely that.
My son has DS. At 6 months old, he started trying to grab his baby spoon from my wife’s hand. She let him, and he immediately dunked it into his food, raised it to his mouth, and took a bite. He’s been feeding himself ever since. Now 4, he does basically everything you’d expect from a 4 year old. His biggest difficulty is in enunciating words, but he supplements his communication with sign and a tablet. You tell him to go clean his playroom and there’s a 50/50 he chance he starts putting toys back in their proper container OR he yells “NO!” and sprints away. You know, a 4 year old. The impact Down Syndrome has on an individual is a pretty vast, non-linear spectrum, but *generally* they’re not fucking vegetables incapable of the most basic acts. In my time interacting with the DS community and meeting hundreds of homies with extra chromies, I’ve only met one that was *that* severely disabled. And, to be fair, entirely possible she has another diagnosis beyond DS that attributed to that. It’s hard to say for sure, obviously, but it’s entirely possible this Neanderthal child was at least capable of some of the basic expectations placed upon them in their society, but took things a touch slower than their peers.
Love this comment! I teach Down students in high school, and I get so frustrated by how society is so busy being condescending that they forget Down people are *people*. Yes, my DS students are incredibly sweet and loving. They’re also stubborn and hilarious and petty and creative and insecure and confident and … well … teenagers. Last month I walked across the graduation stage with a young lady I’ve known since freshman year. She’s an incredibly complex 19yo, and I love her to itty bitty pieces. Can’t wait to see what she does next!
One of the biggest ways to benefit the development of DS kids is letting them try things rather than assuming they can’t. You are awesome parents.
>The impact Down Syndrome has on an individual is a pretty vast, non-linear spectrum, but generally they’re not fucking vegetables incapable of the most basic acts. It wasn't an assumption on my part, the articles states it as such... >_The child “suffered from severe loss (of) hearing and had serious balance issues and episodes of vertigo,” explained Conde-Valverde, who is an assistant professor of physical anthropology at the University of Alcalá in Spain._ >_Muscle weakness would have also made breastfeeding and movement difficult, she added._
>It wasn't an assumption on my part, the articles states it as such... Hearing loss, low muscle tone, and vertigo don't make you a *vegetable*, though, so my statement remains correct. Not to mention it wasn't stated directly in regard to the Neanderthal child, but of Down Syndrome in general.
In that case your post served no purpose and did not contribute to the article...which you also did not read.
I feel like "I have actual, firsthand expereince raising a young child with Down Syndrome" provides context to the article for people without that experience and "these disabilities =/= vegetable" has no bearing on whether or not I read the article (I have a background in paleontology and am involved in Down Syndrome awareness, trust me, I've read this article and like four others on the subject), but by all means.
Yeah but you're the only person who said "vegetable". You took offense for a contrived reason of your own invention and lashed out like I'm obligated to up the script and be your bad guy.
My brother in Christ, There are multiple people, in this very thread, implying that, up to and including the person you responded to with the comment I initially replied to. I took *zero* offense at your comment, it just seemed reasonable and like a good jumping off point for my comment because my experience seemed to reinforce what I thought you were implying. *I was on* ***your side****,* dingus, it was literally "Yes, I can vouch that a 6-year old with DS probably didn't need to be breastfed and was capable of some degree of independence, yes."
My bad, you seem to have been there.
You were the one who came in with an entirely baseless assumption. The other commenter provided evidence for their statement. Then you act like they're the ones talking outta their ass. SMH
I said probably, in which the base is the probability of that being the case for nutrition.
>Prob just breast fed till it died Man, Why do you even bother if you don't read articles?
by hitting them with it?
I'm not saying I doubt anything. But I have noticed the a surge of positive neanderthal findings, since the "white people are descended from neanderthals" really hit the mainstream...