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Examples of developmental abnormalities in pleistocene people. From left to right: Tianyuan 1, Sunghir 3 and Dolní V? Stonice 15 abnormal femurs, center, from top to bottom: the mandibular "flange" of Palomas 23, the cranial gap of Rochereil 3, the long clavicle of Sunghir 1, the agenesis of Malarnaud 1,. On the right, from top to bottom: the sacral hiatus Shanidar 1, the polygenesis Pataud 1 and the palace 16 Dolní V? Stonice. Credit: Erik Trinkaus.
Erik Trinkaus, an anthropologist at Washington University, discovered what he describes as "an abundance of developmental abnormalities" in people who lived during the Pleistocene. In his article published in Proceedings of the National Academy of SciencesHe describes his study of fossils recovered from several sites in the Middle East and Eurasia, as well as his discoveries.
The Pleistocene spans from about 2.6 million years to about 11,700 years ago – it covers the last ice age. Previous research has shown that this was also the period during which modern anatomical human beings developed and developed outside of Africa. In this new effort, Trinkaus suggests that it was also a period in which man experienced a wide variety of physical deformities. His study was to collect data on 66 fossils recovered from different sites, most of which were around 200,000 years old. He notes that most of the remains came from young adults and represented several species of Homo. Examining the physical structure of the fossils, he discovered an unusually high number of deformities such as bent arms or leg bones or malformed skulls and jaws. Intrigued by the high numbers, he summed them up, averaged them in the group studied, and compared the results to modern human anomalies.
Trinkaus found that among the fossil samples there was evidence of 75 anomalies. He also found that about two-thirds of these abnormalities appeared in less than 1% of modern humans. He also found that the abnormalities were due to various conditions such as blood disorders or hydrocephalus – but many of them could not be attributed to a cause. He suggests that the number of anomalies is extremely high for such a small group of fossils.
According to Trinkaus, inbreeding is one of the most likely causes of so many abnormalities. It is believed that the hunter-gatherer groups of the time were rather small, which increases the chances of consanguinity. It also suggests that it is possible that people with such abnormalities receive special treatment during the burial, increasing the chances of survival of their remains until the modern age for analysis.
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More information:
Erik Trinkaus. An abundance of abnormalities and developmental abnormalities in Pleistocene people, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2018). DOI: 10.1073 / pnas.1814989115
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