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What has been called a "mind-blowing" study of Neanderthal teeth concluded that children have experienced severe winters and difficult diseases during their formative years in ancient Europe, which is not the case. arrived at more modern men after research was undertaken.
As Ars Technica have reported, scientists have studied the relationships between heavy metals and oxygen isotopes contained in the tooth enamel of young Neanderthal children from southeastern France who lived there 250 000 years and discovered that these children lived dangerous winters and much more varied seasons they are today.
Since tooth enamel is created in extremely thin layers, scientists can learn a lot about the beginnings of human life through the chemical traces that they contain. In this case, Tanya Smith of Griffith University and a team of scientists were able to study the tooth enamel. of two Neanderthal children who lived on the Payre site in France.
The age at which the children had lived was determined by performing thermoluminescence tests on burnt flint pieces found at the site, and the tooth enamel perfectly preserved the details of the first three years of life of these young Neanderthals.
"The two Neanderthals participating in the study were also exposed to lead in their early years, making them the first known cases of this exposure." https://t.co/YUMhPuRP1X
– Ars Technica (@arstechnica) November 2, 2018
To learn more about the environment in which these Neanderthal children would have lived, just badyze the relationship between the oxygen-18 isotope and oxygen-16, determined by factors such as: evaporation, temperature and precipitation. If higher oxygen levels are indicated, this would indicate that the conditions are generally dry and warm with more pronounced evaporation.
According to Smith, the Neanderthals studied at the Payre site in France, lived at a time when winters were much harder than today.
"This is particularly conducive to Neanderthals, who have survived the extreme variations of the environment and the glaciation in Eurasia, being mysteriously extinct during a fresh interglacial phase."
After badyzing the teeth of the two children of Neanderthal, the scientists discovered that, during the first three years of their life, they would have suffered from malnutrition or serious diseases that can sometimes be detected by their enamel. For example, Payre 6, Neanderthal's first child, showed that before they were two years old, they had spent a week just a short time before starving or falling ill.
Payre 336, the second Neanderthal child, also experienced a period of illness or famine during the winter, before the enamel placement, which lasted for about two weeks and was followed by Another episode during the following autumn. Previous research has shown that these conditions may be quite normal and that Neanderthal children have particularly suffered from severe winters until the spring.
The new study that determined through the study of tooth enamel that Neanderthal children were prone to serious illness and possible malnutrition during more pronounced winter months. been published in Progress of science.
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