Researchers believe a fossil discovered in a cave in Spain belongs to a child with Down syndrome who lived more than 146,000 years ago. (Scientific Advances)
A fossilized ear bone provides evidence that a Neanderthal child with Down syndrome lived to at least age 6 and was cared for by others.
The remains of the girl, whom investigators named Tina, were discovered in Cova Negra, a cave in Valencia, Spain.
TO study Published this week in the journal Science Advances, it details how an analysis of Tina’s ear bone reveals that the girl who lived at least 146,000 years ago had a congenital pathology in the inner ear associated with Down syndrome that would have caused severe hearing loss and vertigo.
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While people with Down syndrome now live into adulthood, the study notes that other examples of people with the chromosomal disorder in prehistoric times have shown very short life expectancies.
“It is therefore remarkable that the individual represented by fossil CN-46700 lived at least 6 years, which far exceeds the usual life expectancy of children with Down syndrome in the prehistoric population,” the authors of the study concluded. “It is reasonable to think that the long survival of individual CN-46700 could only have occurred because it received continuous care and attention during that time.”
The remains were originally excavated in 1989, but the new fragments were only recently found. Researchers built a three-dimensional model to analyze it.
Based on their findings, the researchers said the child likely would have needed more attention than a mother could provide on her own, suggesting that other members of the child’s social group also helped.
“What was not known until now was any case of an individual who had received help, even if he could not return the favour, which would demonstrate the existence of true altruism among Neanderthals. That is precisely what the discovery of ‘Tina’ means,” says Mercedes Conde, a professor at the University of Alcalá (Spain) who led the study.
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