Neanderthals With Disabilities Survived Through Social Support

DennisTate · Oct 26, 2017

Are we really so superior these days?

Could it be that we might perhaps have a lot to learn from our supposedly inferior ancestors.

Neanderthals With Disabilities Survived Through Social Support

jmblt2000 · Oct 26, 2017

And you know this how?

DennisTate · Oct 27, 2017

jmblt2000 said: ↑

And you know this how?
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The reasoning of the archaeologists involved sounds logical to me.

https://gizmodo.com/neanderthals-with-disabilities-survived-through-social-1819801216

A re-analysis of a 50,000 year old Neanderthal skull shows that, in addition to enduring multiple injuries and debilitations, this male individual was also profoundly deaf. Yet he lived well into his 40s, which is quite old by Paleolithic standards. It’s an achievement that could have only been possible with the help of others, according to new research.

When the remains of this older Neanderthal were discovered at Shanidar Cave in Iraqi Kurdistan in 1957, his many physical injuries and disabilities were immediately apparent. Analysis of his skull showed that he suffered a crushing blow to the head near his eye socket when he was young, likely causing some visual impairment. His right hand and forearm were missing, the result of an amputation. He likely walked with a serious gait, and he suffered from hyperostotic disease (DISH), which is associated with muscular pain and reduced mobility along the spine.

But a new analysis of this specimen, known as Shanidar 1, shows he had another major disability—one not noticed during earlier examinations. New research published in PLOS One reveals that the bony growths found in this Neanderthal’s ear canals would have resulted in serious hearing loss. So this Paleolithic-era hunter-gatherer, according to the updated analysis conducted by anthropologists Erik Trinkaus from Washington University in St. Louis and Sébastien Villotte of the French National Centre for Scientific Research, was profoundly deaf.

“It would have been essentially impossible for Shanidar 1 to maintain a sufficiently clear canal for adequate sound transmission,” noted the authors in the study. “He would therefore have been effectively deaf in his right ear, and he likely had at least partial CHL [conductive hearing loss] in the left ear.” Trinkaus and Villotte say it was “a serious sensory deprivation for a Pleistocene hunter-gatherer.”

Yet despite his deafness and his other physical setbacks, Shanidar 1 died between 40 and 50 years of age (based on dental analysis). By Paleolithic standards, he was an old man. The only way he could have lived to such a ripe old age is by receiving considerable help from others. “More than his loss of a forearm, bad limp and other injuries, his deafness would have made him easy prey for the ubiquitous carnivores in his environment and dependent on other members of his social group for survival,” said Trinkaus in a statement.
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DennisTate · Oct 27, 2017

jmblt2000 said: ↑

And you know this how?
Click to expand...

This is also interesting.... (same article):

Trinkaus and Villotte says it’s not surprising that his fellow Neanderthals were able and willing to provide this level of social support. Profoundly, these extinct humans buried their dead, a funeral act that anthropologists say is indicative of social cohesion, social roles, and mutual support. What’s more, Neanderthals used pigments and feathers to modify their appearance, which the authors say is “a reflection of social identity manipulation and social cohesion.” To say Neanderthals cared for the physically impaired is therefore not a stretch.

Importantly, other examples of prehistoric social support exists in the scientific literature. A study from 2014 revealed a Neanderthal from Spain who suffered from similar hearing loss, and the remains of a five-year-old archaic human with a severe brain deformity who wasn’t rejected at birth.

Our conceptions of Neanderthals, as this new study shows, has now moved well beyond the outdated notion that they were brutish proto-humans who cowered in caves. As we’re learning, the behavioral differences between Neanderthals and modern humans are, in the words of the researchers, “modest” at best.
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jmblt2000 · Oct 27, 2017

Thanks for the info, I'll have to do some reading...archeology is not one of my favorite topics.

waltky · Nov 1, 2017

Uncle Ferd fergot to dress up fer Halloween - ever'body thought he was a Neanderthal...

Slow Flow of Human Migration May Have Doomed Neanderthals
October 31, 2017 — What killed off the Neanderthals? It's a big debate, and now a study says that no matter what the answer, they were doomed anyway.

Our close evolutionary cousins enjoyed a long run in Europe and Asia, but they disappeared about 40,000 years ago after modern humans showed up from Africa. The search for an explanation has produced many theories including climate change, epidemics, or inability to compete with the modern humans, who may have had some mental or cultural edge. The new study isn't intended to argue against those factors, but just to show that they're not needed to explain the extinction, says Oren Kolodny of Stanford University. He and colleague Marcus Feldman present their approach in a paper released Tuesday by the journal Nature Communications.

They based their conclusion on a computer simulation that represented small bands of Neanderthals and modern humans in Europe and Asia. These local populations were randomly chosen to go extinct, and then be replaced by another randomly chosen population, with no regard for whether it represented the same species. Neither species was assumed to have any inherent advantage, but there was one crucial difference: Unlike the Neanderthals, the modern humans were supplemented by reinforcements coming in from Africa. It wasn't a huge wave, but rather “a tiny, tiny trickle of small bands,” Kolodny said.

Reconstructions of a Neanderthal man, left, and woman, at the Neanderthal Museum in Mettmann, Germany.

Still, that was enough to tip the balance against the Neanderthals. They generally went extinct when the simulation was run more than a million times under a variety of assumptions. If survival was a game of chance, “it was rigged by the fact that there's recurring migration,” Kolodny said. “The game was doomed to end with the Neanderthals losing.” Kolodny said the evidence that such migrations actually occurred is suggestive rather than conclusive. Such migrations would not be expected to leave much of an archaeological trace, he said.

Experts in human origins said the paper could help scientists pin down the various factors that led to the Neanderthals' demise. It fits in with other recent attempts to explain the extinction without assuming behavioral differences between Neanderthals and our ancestors, said Wil Roebroeks of the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. The notion of such differences is largely disproven, he said. Katerina Harvati of the University of Tuebingen in Germany said while the new work could be useful in solving the extinction mystery, it doesn't address the question of why modern humans dispersed from Africa into Europe and Asia. It's important to figure out what was behind that, she said in an email.

https://www.voanews.com/a/neanderthal-extinction-migration/4094246.html
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Deltaboy · Dec 18, 2017

Very Interesting. Thanks for sharing .

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