Birth was already difficult for Neanderthaler women

Written by Dr. H. P. Bustami

Friday, 12 September 2008

Birth of a Neanderthaler, 3-D-Computer-Model (Courtesy: Ch. Zollikofer)
Large brains in humans form a special obstacle to women during the birth of their babies. The diameter of the head of human neonates is - due to our large developed brain in relation to the body size - far larger compared to the neonates of other mammals. Often the birth canal of the pregnant women is to small for a birth without complcations. Until now it was assumed that this is something special for us, the last remaing humanoid primate on the planet, the modern human (Homo sapiens). A spectacular 3D-construction of a Neanderthaler (Homo neanderthalensis) neonate and the computer simulation of the birth by a Neanderthaler woman, based on fossiles of female and neonate neanderthalers, was now conducted by scientists from Switzerland. The surprising finding: already Neanderthaler women faced these birth difficulties like recent women from Homo sapiens throwing a total new light on the Neanderthaler life story...

The anthropologists from the University of Zurich, Switzerland, reconstructed a skeleton of a neonate Neanderthaler (found in caves in Russia, Krim) out of 141 bone peaces. The 40.000 years old ice-age-baby died immediately after birth and was so carefully buried by its unknown parents that the remainings survived the Ages. The brain size of this neonate was equal to a brain of a baby of modern humans suggesting - together with the knowledge about the speed of brain growth in Neanderthalers - a similar individual life story (first pregnancy, sexual maturity and life span) like for a nowadays humans found in the 1930th.

Neonate and 4-year old Neanderthaler child

Neonate and four year old child of Neanderthalers found in a cave in Russia

To address the question if - similar to births in modern human females - the head of a neanderthaler baby just barely passed through the birth canal of a neanderthaler womans pelvis, the scientists also reconstructed a birth event with computer simulation based on a fossile female Neanderthaler pelvis
Amazingly the birth was equal difficult as it is the case in modern humans.

The conclusion drawn is that already early in humans evolution (probably already with the last common ancestor of us and the Neanderthaler some 500.000 years ago) the price for developing such a sophisticated brains was high and paid by an increasing difficulty to give birth to the offspring: The larger brains in adults needed steady larger heads already in neonates.

This comparison between a birth of a Neanderthaler women and women of modern humans reveals new insights about the just seemingly more primitive Ice-Age-adapted human speci which disappeared 30.000 ago from Earth. Probably the development of the Neanderthaler might have been even slower than that of us implying later sexual maturity and so probably less offspring, a lower birthrate than in Homo sapiens. Maybe this contributed to the extinction of our fossile cousins.

Dr. Ponce de Leon, one of the authors of the study, which was just published in "Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS, September 2008)" sums up: So, in spite of considerable differences between the two human species from the anatomical point of view, we and the Neanderthalers- considering birth, brain development and life story - are amazingly connatural".

Source: http://idw-online.de/pages/de/news276581

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