Did elephant energetics decide Hannibal’s Alpine crossing route?

 

A new analysis sheds light on the most likely route for the Carthaginian general’s famous crossing of the Alps. The study, led by the University of Oxford and iDiv/Friedrich Schiller University Jena, reveal that the Col de la Traversette would have been the least energy-intensive route. The findings have been published today (July 6, 2026) in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The study provides a novel perspective on one of history’s most famous military journeys: Hannibal’s route across the Alps in 218 BC with an army of 40,00 men, 7,000 horses and 37 war elephants. The researchers applied a bioenergetic approach to evaluate competing theories about Hannibal's crossing by focusing on the energy demands of the journey, particularly for the army’s war elephants.

The findings support the Col de la Traversette as the more likely route, rather than the Col du Clapier, which previously was the leading candidate. Using route modelling and elevation data, the team estimated the energy cost of each possible Alpine crossing. This drew on modelling methods based on contemporary African elephants which estimate the energy costs of movement based on body mass and terrain slope.

The results suggest that the Col de la Traversette would have been the shortest and most energetically efficient route, with a total cost for the whole army of 5.42 TJ (10^12 joules). The route ranked second, at 6.02 TJ, crossed the Alps at the Col de Montgenèvre and reached the Po Valley from Susa. The Col du Clapier route was ranked third at 6.28 TJ, while the route crossing Col du Mont Cenis was the least efficient option at 6.45 TJ.

Compared with the Traversette route, the routes via Col de Montgenèvre, Col du Clapier and Col du Mont Cenis would have required 11%, 16% and 19% more energy for the army as a whole, respectively.

The team’s results also underline the biological challenge of moving the army through the mountains. On the Traversette route, the men would have lost 19% of their body fat reserves during the crossing, potentially explaining their high mortality. Surprisingly, the model suggests that the war elephants would have fared better, only losing 4% of their reserves. Such high energy reserves likely explain why many, if not most, elephants survived the crossing.

The study demonstrates how movement ecology can offer new perspectives on Hannibal's decision-making, and how interdisciplinary research can shed new light on historical events by combining ancient sources with modern analytical methods.

Study co-author Professor Fritz Vollrath (Department of Biology, University of Oxford, and Save the Elephants UK) said: “Applying insights gained from studying the energetics of African elephants in Kenya is bringing a novel dimension to the longstanding debate over Hannibal's Alpine crossing.”

Co-author Dr Emilio Berti (German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) and the Friedrich Schiller University Jena) added: “The question of Hannibal's exact route has been debated for generations. The new analysis does not eliminate all ambiguity, but it does strengthen the case for the Traversette route by demonstrating that it would better accommodate the demands of moving a large army that included elephants through extremely difficult alpine terrain.”

It is still unclear why exactly Hannibal used elephants during the Punic wars. Potentially, he intended them to provide a tactical element of surprise in his first battles against the Romans. Alternatively, he may have hoped they would awe and help recruit the Celts of Northern Italy to his side.

 URL: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2612764123. 

Modern humans and Neanderthals may have shared long-term cultural continuity

Peer-Reviewed Publication

Kyoto University

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A distant view of the Üçağızlı II Cave in southern Türkiye.

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Credit: KyotoU / Naoki Morimoto

Kyoto, Japan -- Tens of thousands of years ago, our own species, Homo sapiens, coexisted with Neanderthals, Homo neanderthalensis. Many of us living today carry a small amount of Neanderthal DNA, indicating that the two species may have shared much more than just the same land. Now, a breakthrough archaeological discovery has revealed that the two species did not merely cross paths: they possibly shared a common culture that spanned over 20,000 years.

Humans migrated from our original home in Africa to other parts of the world in the Out of Africa event, but human fossils around this time have been scarce in the Levant, a primary corridor between Africa and Eurasia. In search of more evidence of both modern humans and Neanderthals, an international team of researchers -- including scientists from Türkiye, France, and Japan, including Kyoto University -- headed to Üçağızlı II Cave in southern Türkiye for excavations.

At this site, five years of meticulous millimeter-by-millimeter excavation revealed evidence of both species living in the same space, utilizing identical stone tool technologies and survival strategies. Remarkably, the evidence also suggests this shared behavior extended beyond practical aspects and included the use of non-utilitarian materials.

The researchers found that both Neanderthals and modern humans selectively collected a specific type of marine seashell that had virtually no value as food, and which had previously been associated exclusively with modern humans. This shared preference for a non-utilitarian, potentially symbolic object suggests that cultural exchange occurred across the biological divide, transcending species barriers.

"Our findings indicate a deep level of cultural interaction," says a corresponding author Naoki Morimoto of KyotoU. "These two distinct but closely related human groups were not just adapting to the same environment: they were probably sharing symbolic preferences."

The modern human fossils recovered from Üçağızlı II Cave date to a period between approximately 50,000 and 60,000 years ago, placing them broadly within the pivotal Out of Africa timeframe, which has been pinpointed genetically. This suggests that these individuals found between Eurasia and Africa may represent a close relative of the founding lineage of all living non-African populations today. Alternatively, they could be previously unknown survivors of an earlier, preceding wave of modern humans migrating into the Levant.

By capturing this critical window of co-existence, the discoveries at Üçağızlı II Cave fill a long-standing gap in the global archaeological and paleontological record, potentially rewriting our understanding of how early human species interacted, communicated, and shared their worlds with each other.

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The paper "Long-term cultural continuity across the Neanderthal–modern human sequence at Üçağızlı II Cave, northern Levant" appeared on 6 July 2026 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), with doi: 10.1073/pnas.2609061123

Early Americans’ primary diet was mammoths, other large mammals

Early humans in North and South America relied heavily on hunting of large mammals, including mammoths and giant ground sloths, for food and sustenance, according to newly published research by a team including two University of Wyoming archaeologists.

The findings by UW Professor Todd Surovell, Professor Emeritus Robert Kelly and colleagues from other institutions are the latest development in a long-running debate over the behaviors and movements of early Americans before the extinction of large, plant-eating animals -- such as mammoths, other elephant-like creatures, giant ground sloths and large camels -- between 11,000 and 13,000 years ago.

The new research -- published in the journal Science Advances -- also supports the idea that the animals’ extinction was due primarily to hunting by humans. The paper’s lead author is Ben Potter, of the University of Alaska-Fairbanks.

“Early Paleoindians were highly residentially mobile hunter-gatherers who used homogeneous technology and made unpatterned use of vast territories in the context of a rapid geographic expansion across numerous ecologically distinct regions of North and South America within a few hundred years,” the researchers wrote. “Focus on megaherbivores facilitated rapid human expansion into different ecosystems before the … extinction of megafauna led to regional diversification through adaptations to locally available resources.”

The new study focused on people in Eastern Beringia -- stretching from the Mackenzie River in Canada through Alaska and westward to the Bering Strait land bridge -- between 13,300-14,000 years ago; the so-called Clovis people in North America between 12,800-13,400 years ago; and the Fishtail projectile point people of South America between 11,600-12,900 years ago. The researchers synthesized the zooarchaeological records from sites in all of those regions -- including the La Prele Mammoth site in Wyoming, where Clovis people killed or scavenged a Columbian mammoth nearly 13,000 years ago -- to reach their conclusions.

For all three regions, the researchers estimate that at least 98 percent of these Early Paleondians’ diet came from the large mammals. That makes sense, according to the new paper, in part because large-bodied, fat-rich prey yields relatively more calories and nutrients than smaller animals.

Additionally, the researchers note that Early Beringian people -- likely the first to enter the Americas over the Bering land bridge, according to Surovell, Kelly and others -- encountered primarily large mammals, with few potential plant resources. There is no indication of fishing by these people in the archaeological record there. So those mammals were the humans’ primary food source, a relationship that continued as people moved southward through a passageway between the massive Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets in North America, running from modern-day Alaska through Alberta, Canada, to the Great Plains, between 12,000 and 13,000 years ago.

“When these megafauna-focused hunter-gatherers entered the midcontinent, they first encountered many of the same (and similar) species in very similar steppe-tundra ecosystems and used a similar subsistence and high-mobility strategy,” the researchers wrote. “While the timing of the opening and ecological viability of the Ice-Free Corridor remains unresolved, once it was open, woolly mammoth habitat extended through the Ice-Free Corridor from Beringia to the proglacial tundras of the midwest United States. Humans shifted their subsistence focus to very similar Columbian mammoth found throughout North America as far south as highland Central America and, to a lesser extent, mastodons and gomphotheres in other North American regions. (Fishtail projectile point) populations expanding through South America tracked similar megafaunal prey, including large ground sloths (mylodonts and megatheres) and gomphotheres, and other megafauna such as camelids and equids.”

The study acknowledges that other scientists have examined similar data but “interpret them in polar-opposite ways,” with those interpretations leading to conclusions that the early Americans were dietary generalists, not “megafauna specialists.” The new paper addresses some of the differing interpretations.

Specifically, Surovell, Kelly and colleagues say the argument that eating only large mammals would not sustain human populations nutritionally has been refuted by research showing that high-protein diets, known as keto diets, are in fact healthy.

“Except for the likely opportunistic consumption of easily obtainable fruits or nuts, these highly mobile Early Paleoindians apparently consumed a diet mostly of meats, including both protein and fat,” the researchers wrote.

Additionally, they say there’s a good reason that there’s little evidence of the early Americans accessing bone marrow from the animals they killed or scavenged: There was plenty of food to be had without processing the bones.

“The pattern of sometimes minimal bone processing is more consistent with megafauna specialist behaviors in a resource-rich environment, where meat and fat are easily obtainable, both off the carcass and in terms of higher encounter rates, both resulting in reduced energy costs,” the researchers wrote. “Overall, Early Paleoindian strategies indicate that it was more efficient to kill new animals than to fully process every kill.”

And arguments that the early humans weren’t capable of killing giant mammals don’t hold up to the evidence, the researchers say. The tools used in hunting -- such as Clovis points and Fishtail projectile points -- were definitely capable of penetrating the hide of mammoths through the use of atlatls and spears, and the Paleoindians likely hunted in groups to increase their rate of success.

“Archaeological evidence for Early Paleoindian subsistence, technology and mobility patterns supports the contention that the first continent-wide adaptive strategies in Eastern Beringia, subglacial North America and South America were big game specialists, not dietary generalists,” the paper concludes. “The pattern began with woolly mammoth exploitation in Western Beringia (Northern Siberia) in the steppe-tundra habitat and its continuation into Eastern Beringia (Alaska). Woolly mammoth habitat connected Beringia with the Ice-Free Corridor and the Great Lakes region, where hunters encountered a similar species, the Columbian mammoth, facilitating rapid expansion throughout North America.

“At the southern extremity of Columbia mammoth, as early populations entered Central America, they encountered new habitats and the megaherbivores giant ground sloths and gomphotheres. Early Paleoindians followed these new taxa through the new bottleneck of Panama into and throughout South America. The megafaunal specialization emphasis of Early Paleoindians allowed for rapid expansion requiring little change in overall adaptive strategies, resulting in the continent-wide similarities we observe in the Early Paleoindian record.”

Only when the large mammals became extinct -- primarily a result of overhunting -- did the early Americans vary their diets to include smaller mammals such as bison, waterfowl, birds, fish, shellfish and plants, the researchers say. 

New genomic study uncovers family ties linking Scythian elite burials across the Eurasian steppe

 

Ancient DNA reveals how political power and elite status may have been maintained among Iron Age nomadic societies

Peer-Reviewed Publication

Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

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Burial mound "Kurgan Shilikty 16" in Kazakhstan before the excavation works took place.

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Credit: © Rinat Zhumatayev

To the point

• Elite family networks: Ancient DNA reveals close family relationships linking elite individuals across multiple Scythian kurgans, suggesting that high social status may have been inherited through family lineages.
• Golden Man genome: The study includes the first genome-wide data from the famous Scythian Saka “Golden Man” of the Issyk archaeological site in Kazakhstan.
• Inherited status: Elite individuals were more related to each other, even when buried at different sites, than to lower-status individuals buried at the same sites.
• Elite women: Nearly half of the elite individuals in the dataset were female, indicating that women could attain high social status within Iron Age Scythian society.
• Social organization: The study finds no clear evidence that elite status was associated with either patrilocal or matrilocal residence patterns, suggesting complex forms of social organization among Scythian elites.

A new ancient DNA study published in Science Advances provides evidence that political power among Scythian elites may have been inherited through family lineages that extended across multiple burial sites. By combining archaeology, anthropology and genetics, the new study offers fresh insight into how social inequality and political authority developed among ancient nomadic societies.

The Scytho-Siberian archaeological horizon emerged during the first millennium BCE and stretched from the Altai mountains to the Black Sea. The Scythians have been portrayed as highly mobile horse-riding nomads who traveled the vast Eurasian steppe during Iron Age. Across the Eurasian steppe, the Iron Age witnessed the appearance of large burial mounds, built for high status individuals. These elaborately constructed monumental graves often contained richly adorned women and men accompanied by gold ornaments, weapons and scarified animals.

In contrast, other individuals were buried in much smaller and simpler mounds with few or no grave goods. Such striking differences have long been interpreted as evidence of growing social inequality and the emergence of powerful elites among the Iron Age population. However, one essential question has remained unanswered: how was elite status maintained and transmitted? Were positions of power earned through individual achievement or were they inherited?

The new study analyzes genome-wide DNA from 85 Iron Age individuals, including 38 elite and 47 non-elite individuals from across Central Eurasia. The study includes 46 newly sequenced genomes and the first genome-wide data from the famous Scythian Saka “Golden Man” of the Issyk archaeological site in Kazakhstan, one of the most outstanding archaeological discoveries of the Central Eurasian steppe.

Golden Man

One of the most significant discoveries from the Central Eurasian steppe is the Issyk kurgans in Kazakhstan, located about 50 km east of Almaty. Excavations of this royal burial complex associated with the Iron Age Saka culture revealed the “Golden Man” burial dating to 400–300 BCE. The individual was buried in a wooden chamber containing more than 4000 gold ornaments, weapons, gold embroidered headdress, zoomorphic artifacts, and a silver bowl with unknown writing.

In this study, genome-wide data from the “Golden Man” provides the first genetic insight from this iconic individual. The results place him within the genetic variation of Iron Age Saka individuals and also helps to resolve a long-standing question by indicating that the individual was most likely male than female.

Family ties across elite burials

By analyzing ancient genomes from individuals buried in elite Scythian graves and comparing them to non-elite burials, a team of international researchers have identified evidence of close family relationships linking elite individuals across multiple cemeteries, in some cases more than 100 km apart, as well as signs of unions between relatives. These results indicate that elite status was maintained within interconnected family lineages, that shaped political authority and social organization across Central Eurasian steppe.

“We did not expect to find that social status was passed down from generation to generation but it was clear that high-status individuals were more related to each other, even when buried at different archaeological sites, than to people of lower status who were buried at the same sites with the elites” says Ainash Childebayeva, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at UT Austin and a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and the Institute of Genetics and Physiology.

The researchers found no clear evidence that elite status was associated with either patrilocal or matrilocal residence patterns, suggesting that social organizing among Scythian elites were more complex and not based on gender differentiation.

Elite women in Scythian society

The study also sheds new light on the role of elite women in Scythian society. “An important observation from our study was the noticeable presence of elite women” says Ayshin Ghalichi. “Nearly half of the elite individuals in our dataset were female, indicating that women held high social status within Iron Age Scythian society.“

The presence of elite women in richly furnished graves, together with genomic evidence linking high-status individuals across burial sites, points to a social world in which status, authority and kinship were closely connected. The findings suggest that political authority among Iron Age Scythian groups may have been organized through extended elite family networks rather than through simple residence patterns based on either male or female lines.

Leyla Djansugurova from the Institute of Genetics and Physiology in Almaty, Kazakhstan, explains the broader cultural significance of the study: “Scythians and Sakas are collective names for nomadic tribes of the early Iron Age who inhabited the Central Eurasian region from the Danube to the Altai. The ancient Greeks called them ‘Scythians’ (Herodotus coined the term), while Persian and Indian sources called them ‘Sakas’. Historically, the term Scythians more often refers to the western tribes (Black Sea region), and Sakas to the eastern ones (Central Asia, Altai). All these tribes were united by the so-called Scythian-Saka animal style in art, a distinctive military skill, and nomadic herding. They did not have their own written language, but they left behind grand burial mounds, the study of which has shaped the global understanding of the culture of the nomadic peoples of Eurasia during this period. The most striking example of the Scythian-Saka culture is the ‘Golden Man’ from the Issyk burial mound, which has become the national symbol of Kazakhstan. Many other Golden Men/Women finds by Kazakh archaeologists are known. The value of this genetic study not only estimated by the fact of obtaining the first reliable DNA data on numerous objects belonging to the Saka elite, such as the Golden Man from the Issyk burial mound, the Urzhar Princess, the Shilikty Golden Man, and others, but also by the fact that Scythian-Saka elite individuals were being examined alongside non-elite individuals found at the same sites. This approach has allowed to determine the specifics of elite marital relationships and identify related necropolises. Thus, this genetic study significantly enriches our knowledge of the Scythian-Saka culture.”

By integrating archaeological, anthropological and genomic evidence, the study reveals that Scythian elite society was shaped by family ties extending across burial sites and regions. These findings provide new insight into how high status was maintained, how political authority developed, and how social inequality emerged among ancient nomadic societies of the Eurasian steppe.

 

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Journal

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.aef0108 

Were Clovis foragers big-game hunters, or just big-game scavengers?

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Clovis fluted points from Blackwater Draw, New Mexico.

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Credit: Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports

There are currently 15 well-documented Late Pleistocene localities in North America in which Clovis points are found associated with proboscidean remains (of mammoth, mastodon, and gomphothere). Archaeologists routinely assume these localities represent evidence that Clovis people hunted these multi-tone animals, and in turn invoke that evidence to claim humans had a role in the extinction of these large mammals. Yet, archaeologists have not thoroughly tested their assumption, nor fully considered the possibility that Clovis foragers were facultative scavengers, which might as readily account for the association of artifacts with proboscidean remains at some or even all these localities. A significant obstacle to differentiating hunting from scavenging archaeologically is the challenge of equifinality.

Five researchers from Kent State University, Southern Methodist University (SMU), the Smithsonian, the University of Michigan, and the University of Utah explored whether Clovis foragers hunted, scavenged, or did both, and whether it was possible to tell the difference archaeologically. The new research is now published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.

To set a broad foundation for considering the question, they began their study showing the near ubiquity of scavenging among non-human animals. They document the fact that the paleoanthropological, ethnohistoric, and ethnographic records showed that scavenging was also quite common among human groups past and present. Following that, they consider the many opportunities scavengers have – and Clovis foragers might have had – in exploiting proboscidean carrion. Lastly, they assess the proposed archaeological evidence for Clovis hunting and scavenging and show that while Clovis foragers likely practiced both. “Researchers cannot currently distinguish the two archaeologically and thus cannot reliably show how many Clovis proboscidean sites represent hunting versus scavenging events,” said Kent State’s Metin I. Eren.

“While Clovis foragers likely hunted mammoths, it would be odd indeed if Clovis foragers – alone among ethnohistoric and ethnographic human groups and nearly all omnivores and carnivores – did not scavenge,” said SMU’s David J. Meltzer. Meltzer added that “scavenging also could possibly explain the high δ15N values recently reported for the Anzick child, which could readily result from his mother eating maggots and not mammoth meat.” The researchers concluded that given the present state of knowledge, the Clovis archaeological record cannot be used to argue that Clovis groups routinely hunted proboscideans, or that there are sufficient “kill sites” to support a human role in proboscidean extinctions.

The Smithsonian’s Briana Pobiner, the University of Utah’s James O’Connell, and the University of Michigan’s John D. Speth were the other contributing authors to the study.

“If we cannot definitively conclude that proboscidean killing took place at any single Clovis site because there is archaeological equifinality with scavenging, then proboscidean overkilling is not supported either,” Eren said. “Despite some archaeologists’ and other scientists’ long-standing beliefs, there is just no definitive scientific evidence for a human role in the North American Late Pleistocene extinction of proboscideans.”

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Journal

Journal of Archaeological Science Reports

DOI

10.1016/j.jasrep.2026.105896 

 

Human activity has not always harmed biodiversity – quite the opposite

 For millennia, farming in Switzerland did not reduce plant diversity but helped increase it, University of Basel researchers have shown in a detailed reconstruction covering the past 7000 years. Only recent decades paint a different picture.

The fall of the Roman Empire and major plague outbreaks: These events not only affected people but also reduced plant diversity on the Swiss Plateau, as human land use temporarily declined. Researchers led by Dr. Fabian Rey and Professor Oliver Heiri at the University of Basel report this surprising finding in the journal Nature Communications.

Their analyses are based on sediment deposits in three Swiss lakes: Moossee near Bern, Burgäschisee near Herzogenbuchsee, and Hüttwilersee in Thurgau. The researchers extracted sediment cores from these lakes and then analyzed the material deposited in the sediments over the course of millennia. This allowed them to infer and date variations in both plant diversity and agricultural land use in the areas surrounding the lakes.

“This is an exceptionally comprehensive and precisely dated dataset,” says Oliver Heiri. “It allows us to reconstruct changes in plant diversity around the lakes over the past 7000 years at a time resolution comparable to long-term ecosystem studies in modern ecology – and for a period long before modern ecology existed.”

Agriculture made the landscape more diverse

Since the Neolithic period, plant diversity increased with increasing agricultural activity. “You might think that human impact must be bad for plant diversity, because that’s what we see today,” says Fabian Rey. “But agriculture back then made the landscape more diverse.” Before early agricultural activities, the Swiss Plateau was largely covered by forest and was therefore a relatively uniform ecosystem.

“As agriculture expanded, a mosaic of habitats emerged over time,” says Rey. Fields, pastures, hedgerows, and later orchards of tall fruit trees alternated across relatively small areas. This provided varied conditions for plants adapted to those specific environments.

However, there were also recurring periods when plant diversity declined sharply: For example, during the Migration Period following the fall of the Roman Empire, or when plague outbreaks claimed many lives in the Middle Ages. “In times when people were less able to continue farming, the forest grew back and plant diversity declined at the landscape level,” explains Heiri.

Times of crisis caused diversity to decline

More agriculture, more biodiversity: However, this parallel trend lasted only until around World War II. Over the past 80 years, plant diversity has declined sharply. The research team attributes this to the intensification of agriculture since then.

Instead of a fragmented mosaic of habitats, large, uniform areas have emerged that are easier to farm using heavy machinery. The increasing use of fertilizers and pesticides also caused many specialized plant species to retreat.

“However, our data also show that plant diversity has recovered from earlier declines when people returned to farming practices that included varied landscapes,” says Rey. This suggests that the trend of the past 80 years could also be reversed if farming practices change again.

Pollen from seven millennia

The data for the study are based on more than a decade of analyses of sediment cores, conducted in close collaboration with researchers from the University of Bern and the Department of Archaeology of Canton Thurgau. To collect the data, Fabian Rey extracted pollen samples from every centimeter of the cores, which he chemically processed, prepared, and analyzed under a microscope. For each sample, he identified 500 pollen grains, enabling him to determine the diversity of plants around the lake.

The intensity of agricultural use during each period was determined based on the presence of specific pollen in the samples – including both cultivated plants and species that thrive on farmland – as well as a comparison with archaeological and historical data.

The scientists dated the layers using the 14C method, a technique for determining the age of organic material. The sediment cores date back approximately 7000 years, to the Neolithic period.

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Journal

Nature Communications

DOI

10.1038/s41467-026-74214-6 

Were Neanderthals really so different from us?

 

New fossil finds indicate that early childhood development was surprisingly similar to that of modern humans.

Were Neanderthals fundamentally different from us modern humans from the very beginning? Researchers have pondered this questions for decades. A new study on unusually rare remains of Neanderthal infants from the Sesselfelsgrotte cave in Lower Bavaria now delivers significant new insights. The results, to which FAU researchers also contributed, suggest that Neanderthals and modern humans were considerably more similar in their earliest childhood development than had been assumed to date.

The physique of adult Neanderthals differs considerably from modern humans, but there are also surprising similarities. “Our results indicate that both human forms progressed through strikingly similar growth processes, at least during the later stages of pregnancy,” explains Prof. Dr. Thorsten Uthmeier, Chair of Prehistoric Archaeology at FAU. These new findings provide new insights for the ongoing debate: “Genetic analyses have demonstrated that Neanderthals and modern humans were closely related. Nevertheless, there is an intense debate about whether this genetic relatedness is sufficient for Neanderthals to be considered a subspecies of the species we belong to, Homo sapiens.”

Using high-resolution micro computer tomography (micro-CT), an international team of researchers has investigated the fossils from three young Neanderthals who lived approximately 75,000 to 50,000 years ago – bone fragments from a Neanderthal fetus and milk teeth from two children. The new analyses of the fetus that died around the time of birth indicate that the development of the skeleton before birth is largely similar to the patterns we can observe in modern humans.

Surprisingly similar development before birth

The micro CT analyses revealed that the fetus’ bones show typical characteristics of rapid growth in the last third of the pregnancy. Overall, this paints a picture that is remarkably similar to the prenatal development of modern humans.

In some bones, researchers found indications of slightly more advanced growth compared to modern humans. However, these differences do not change the key conclusion of the study: There do not appear to be any fundamental differences in the biological programs of Neanderthal and Homo sapiens in the earliest stages of their development.

Teeth give insights into early childhood

Scientists were also able to gain a deeper understanding of the life of young Neanderthals after examining two milk teeth.  In them, the team of researchers found mineralization disorders that indicate physiological issues before or slightly after birth. Such changes are connected, among others, to a lack of vitamin D or calcium, but it is no longer possible to determine their exact cause.

If the interpretation is confirmed, the finds from the Sesselfelsgrotte cave may become the oldest known proof of such early developmental disorders in Neanderthals.

The study was conducted within the framework of the SHARP project funded by the National Geographic Society and led by Alvise Barbieri at the Interdisciplinary Center for Archaeology and Evolution of Human Behaviour (ICArEHB) at the University of Algarve.

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Journal

Royal Society Open Science

DOI

10.1098/rsos.260485