Differences in childhood stress between Neanderthals and early modern humans as reflected by dental enamel growth disruptions
Scientific Reports volume 14, Article number: 11293 (2024 ) Cite this article
Neanderthals’ lives were historically portrayed as highly stressful, shaped by constant pressures to survive in harsh ecological conditions, thus potentially contributing to their extinction. Recent work has challenged this interpretation, leaving the issue of stress among Paleolithic populations highly contested and warranting in-depth examination. Here, we analyze the frequency of dental enamel hypoplasia, a growth disruption indicator of early life stress, in the largest sample of Neanderthal and Upper Paleolithic dentitions investigated to date for these features. To track potential species-specific patterns in the ontogenetic distribution of childhood stress, we present the first comprehensive Bayesian modelling of the likelihood of occurrence of individual and matched enamel growth disruptions throughout ontogeny. Our findings support similar overall stress levels in both groups but reveal species-specific patterns in its ontogenetic distribution. While Neanderthal children faced increasing likelihoods of growth disruptions starting with the weaning process and culminating in intensity post-weaning, growth disruptions in Upper Paleolithic children were found to be limited around the period of weaning and substantially dropping after its expected completion. These results might, at least in part, reflect differences in childcare or other behavioral strategies between the two taxa, including those that were advantageous for modern humans’ long-term survival.
Neanderthals have been traditionally portrayed as having led exceptionally stressful lives including the pressure to survive in the harsh and widely fluctuating ecological conditions of Pleistocene Eurasia, which was thought to have contributed to their extinction1. Even though Upper Paleolithic modern humans (UPMH) also faced similar environmental conditions, particularly leading up to and during the Last Glacial Maximum2, they are commonly believed to have been better able to mitigate such pressures through their behavioral repertoire. This included strategies such as greater flexibility and efficiency in resource exploitation and more complex social organization and networks. Their behavioral repertoire was thought to have provided UPMH with a competitive advantage over Neanderthals, allowing them to persist while Neanderthals perished3,4,5,6,7. Some recent studies, however, are casting doubt on this view, arguing instead that Neanderthals and UPMH led similarly stressful lives8,9,10.
