Angela
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See:
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/201...ve-caused-skeletal-abnormalities-early-humans
Their conclusions make sense, yes?
"
These bowed femurs were found (top to bottom) in China’s Tianyuan cave, Russia’s Sunghir burial site, and the Czech Republic’s Dolní Vĕstonice site.
"By and large, these were viewed as one-off curiosities. But Erik Trinkaus, a paleoanthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, noticed a pattern: These skeletal deformations seemed to be suspiciously common in the fossil record.
So Trinkaus did the math. He assembled data on 66 individuals with skeletal abnormalities mostly dating to the past 200,000 years. The fossils, most from young adults, were found in sites scattered throughout the Middle East and Eurasia and represent several different species of Homo. Trinkaus then researched how common their conditions are in modern human populations.
He found that about two-thirds of the ancient abnormalities occur in less than 1% of modern humans. Another dozen or so didn’t match any known modern developmental disorder. Trinkaus ran the odds that archaeologists would have uncovered so many ancient abnormalities by chance, and he found that it would have been a “truly, vanishingly small probability.” That suggests, he reports today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that early humans faced some cultural or environmental pressure that led to so many deformities.
One possibility, previously proposed by other researchers: Ancient people with skeletal deformities might have been seen as shamans and given careful burials, making their bodies more likely to be preserved and later found. Another: Pregnant mothers didn’t get enough of the right nutrients, leading to more skeletal disorders. But Trinkaus notes that, whereas some skeletal disorders like rickets affect the whole body, many skeletons were found with deformities on only one side of the body. He also says many fossils in his analysis show no evidence of special rites.
However, several bodies show abnormalities consistent with known genetic mutations, and multiple individuals from at least one site exhibited several different conditions, suggesting the people might be related. It’s thought that most human populations at the time were small and isolated, Trinkaus says. In those conditions, inbreeding can lead to widespread harmful genetic mutations.
Evidence of low genetic diversity among Pleistocene humans based on ancient DNA analysis also supports this hypothesis, says Hallie Buckley, a bioarchaeologist at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand. “Of all the arguments put forward … this seems the most likely explanation.”"
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/201...ve-caused-skeletal-abnormalities-early-humans
Their conclusions make sense, yes?
"
These bowed femurs were found (top to bottom) in China’s Tianyuan cave, Russia’s Sunghir burial site, and the Czech Republic’s Dolní Vĕstonice site.
"By and large, these were viewed as one-off curiosities. But Erik Trinkaus, a paleoanthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, noticed a pattern: These skeletal deformations seemed to be suspiciously common in the fossil record.
So Trinkaus did the math. He assembled data on 66 individuals with skeletal abnormalities mostly dating to the past 200,000 years. The fossils, most from young adults, were found in sites scattered throughout the Middle East and Eurasia and represent several different species of Homo. Trinkaus then researched how common their conditions are in modern human populations.
He found that about two-thirds of the ancient abnormalities occur in less than 1% of modern humans. Another dozen or so didn’t match any known modern developmental disorder. Trinkaus ran the odds that archaeologists would have uncovered so many ancient abnormalities by chance, and he found that it would have been a “truly, vanishingly small probability.” That suggests, he reports today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that early humans faced some cultural or environmental pressure that led to so many deformities.
One possibility, previously proposed by other researchers: Ancient people with skeletal deformities might have been seen as shamans and given careful burials, making their bodies more likely to be preserved and later found. Another: Pregnant mothers didn’t get enough of the right nutrients, leading to more skeletal disorders. But Trinkaus notes that, whereas some skeletal disorders like rickets affect the whole body, many skeletons were found with deformities on only one side of the body. He also says many fossils in his analysis show no evidence of special rites.
However, several bodies show abnormalities consistent with known genetic mutations, and multiple individuals from at least one site exhibited several different conditions, suggesting the people might be related. It’s thought that most human populations at the time were small and isolated, Trinkaus says. In those conditions, inbreeding can lead to widespread harmful genetic mutations.
Evidence of low genetic diversity among Pleistocene humans based on ancient DNA analysis also supports this hypothesis, says Hallie Buckley, a bioarchaeologist at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand. “Of all the arguments put forward … this seems the most likely explanation.”"
