Little Neanderthals grew up just like the children of Homo sapiens, with a few minor exceptions. This is the conclusion reached by the Spanish anthropologist Antonio Rosas, having studied a child's skeleton from the Spanish cave of El Sidron.
The Neanderthal child, who died 49 thousand years ago at the age of 7.5 years, had 26 kilograms of weight and 111 cm of height. Genetic analysis did not reveal gender, but bone density and other indirect signs indicate that it was a boy. Perfectly preserved teeth (30 pcs), including milk ones, made it possible to conclude that the little Neanderthal helped adults in serious work: perhaps he scraped the skins with his hands, holding them in his teeth, or simply ate hard, fibrous food that required a long chewing … And the lack of enamel on the teeth made it possible to conclude that the boy was malnourished or ill. Muscle attachment stripes, more prominent on the right humerus, indicate that the child was right-handed.
Paleoanthropology Group MNCN-CSIC
Only an incompletely formed spine distinguishes the skeleton of a seven-year-old Neanderthal from the skeleton of his contemporaries - our contemporary. Rosas suggests this is due to the large brains of the Neanderthals. The brain is a very energy-intensive organ, and the offspring of species with very roomy skulls tend to grow very slowly. Perhaps the huge brain of Neanderthals (on average 15% larger than the brain of modern humans) consumed so many resources during active growth that the ligaments between the vertebrae, which in Homo sapiens are the last to complete growth, were finally formed even later in small Neanderthals.
The research is published in the journal Science.
Sergey Vasiliev