[HN Gopher] Fossil of Neanderthal child with Down's syndrome hin...
___________________________________________________________________
Fossil of Neanderthal child with Down's syndrome hints early
humans' compassion
Author : bryanrasmussen
Score : 32 points
Date : 2024-07-05 17:42 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| WalterBright wrote:
| I'm not sure the conclusion is entirely justified. I doubt the
| Neanderthals' knew what Downs was, or what its prognosis was.
| They might have thought the kid would grow out of it. When it did
| not, perhaps then they abandoned the kid.
|
| Of course, this is speculation, too.
|
| The trouble with archaeology is the evidence is very scanty, and
| so any conclusions are dominated by speculation.
| elmomle wrote:
| The whole hinting at compassion thing is a bit of a leap. What we
| know is that a child with Down's syndrome was sustained by this
| Neanderthal society until the age of six. The rest, so far, seems
| like speculation.
| Ancapistani wrote:
| https://archive.is/V0yqO
| Ancapistani wrote:
| I'm unsure of the correct terminology here, so let me start by
| saying that I mean no offense whatsoever.
|
| I wish there was a bit more information around the severity of
| the disorder in this person. Here's what I saw from the article:
|
| > The pathology which this individual suffered resulted in highly
| disabling symptoms, including, at the very least, complete
| deafness, severe vertigo attacks and an inability to maintain
| balance
|
| In my own experience, people with Downs can have a wide range of
| life experiences. I have a couple of cousins with the diagnoses.
| While one seems almost infantile and requires constant
| supervision and care, the other is in her 30s, has an
| undergraduate degree, and lives on her own. She's one of the
| sweetest, happiest, and most caring people I know - in fact, I'd
| say the biggest risk to her living independently as an adult is
| that she doesn't seem to recognize when people are acting in bad
| faith or taking advantage of her.
|
| All of that is to say that if a person 250k years ago were able
| to function at a basic level, they wouldn't necessarily need to
| be able to completely provide for themselves on their own. In a
| community of any size, someone like my cousin would be a huge
| help with caring for children and in some domestic tasks. What's
| more they would likely _enjoy_ it.
|
| This reminds of the thought exercises I've seen around the
| Internet over the past few years about autism in historical
| contexts. The idea that midieval monestaries were essentially
| self-organizing communities of people with various degrees of
| autism initially amused me, but the more I thought about it the
| more sense it made - to the point that now when I read about
| people entering monastic life in that period and having
| difficulty adjusting to it, I also imagine the other monks just
| not understanding their struggle.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| I know a lady with Downs who was born into a wacky Christian
| family. She's at the end of the spectrum where she just seems a
| bit odd if you don't know what to look for. The wacky Christian
| family is important because since she had downs she wasn't
| expected to breed. And that meant she went to college, got a
| degree in music. Developed a career in music. Eventually
| married a divorced Jewish guy with two kids. That would have
| been completely unacceptable if she didn't have Downs.
|
| She's way way way happier than her sisters.
| overstay8930 wrote:
| Not very much compassion if they let them die at 6 which would be
| expected when their clan realized they couldn't hold their own
| and left them to die.
|
| Sounds more like these academics are putting their own feelings
| into their research than anything. Do you honestly believe
| neanderthals even knew what Down's syndrome was? They probably
| just saw all of the other 6 year olds taking care of themselves
| and this one was just slowing them down, if anything this just
| confirms they take care of all children until a certain point.
| kromem wrote:
| Around 1800 CE in the United States roughly 30-50% of children
| didn't make it past 5.
|
| But yeah, sure, a Neanderthal child dying at 6 years old was
| the result of neglect and not that there was extremely high
| child mortality prior to the very recent modern era.
| softbuilder wrote:
| Something the article doesn't discuss is that many children born
| with Down Syndrome have heart defects, such AV canal[1] or
| Tetralogy of Fallot[2]. The prognosis without surgical
| intervention is poor. We were told our son with DS and ToF would
| likely have not made it to 6 without his surgery.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrioventricular_septal_defect
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetralogy_of_Fallot
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| How much more difficult is a child with downs sysndrom to support
| in comparison with a regular child, in a prehistoric context? I
| assume they eat similarly. hard to imagine them being more
| difficult that an infant, or a number of infants.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-07-05 23:01 UTC)