Human evolution: Neanderthal children developed like us (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, March 17, 2021, 22:37 (1134 days ago) @ David Turell

A new skeleton of an eight-year-old fossil shows this:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/neanderthals-humans-development-brai...

"They used fire; they almost certainly buried their dead; and they seem to have self-medicated with local plants and fungi. One recent study also claims that Neanderthals constructed a mysterious stone circle in a French cave, for unknown symbolic reasons.

"But for years, debate has raged over whether Neanderthals were also humanlike in their physical development. Did their bodies mature quickly in a developmental “fast lane” that primates such as gorillas employ today? Or did Neanderthals develop in a “slow lane” once thought unique to modern humans?

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"When the team then compared J1's skeleton against thousands of modern human children, J1 most closely resembled today's seven- and eight-year-olds. In short, J1 was growing in a manner indistinguishable from today's children.

"However, Rosas's team says that his skull differs slightly from modern crania. The skull's inner surface bears signs that the bone may have felt pressure from a growing brain, and his brain size was about 88 percent of the average Neanderthal adult's, lacking about a baseball's worth of volume.

"This difference implies that the boy's brain was still growing, the researchers argue. If so, J1's brain development may have been slower than that seen in modern humans, whose brains are fully grown before the age of seven.

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"After all, adult Neanderthals didn't have cookie-cutter brains. J1's brain was on the smaller side for adults, but hardly without precedent, Ponce de León and Zollikofer say. Some adult Neanderthals had brains even smaller than J1's—and some Neanderthals younger than J1 had bigger brains.

“'While we know El Sidrón’s brain volume at the time of its death, we have no idea about the adult volume that it could have reached,” the two researchers write in a joint email. “However, overall, the paper makes a convincing case for the slow development of the Neanderthals (at least as slow as ours), putting the idea of 'human uniqueness' to a rest!'”

Comment: No question they were more like us than originally thought.