The remains of a Neanderthal infant were found in a cave in Israel, dating back more than 50,000 years. The skeleton, named Amud 7, was surprisingly complete, and yielded some surprising findings. The growth of the teeth showed that only two had erupted, making the child around six months old at death. But the size of the brain case and the limb bones indicated a child that would be around 12-14 months old! The bones of Amud 7 were compared with known specimens of Neanderthal children who were somewhat older at death, and the conclusion is that Neanderthal children grew at an astonishing rate in the first year.
The energy demands of such growth imply that nutrition was abundant where they lived. Neanderthals began eating solid food at about six months, just like ancient and modern homo sapiens. We don't yet know if Neanderthal children may have started walking at a much earlier age. But is this "abnormal" in the line of human development? It's possible that the line that became homo sapiens is the outlier in that human infancy is longer than it could have been. Read more about Neanderthal babies at ZME Science. -via Damn Interesting
(Image credit: AI/ZME Science)
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