Fossil of Neanderthal child with Down's syndrome hints early humans' compassion | Hacker News Reader

Fossil of Neanderthal child with Down's syndrome hints early humans' compassion

theguardian.com

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

Is it compassion? One of my cousins has downs, and she's something of a favourite because she's easygoing and sensible - exactly the sort of person that, if you were going to live hunter-gatherer style, would be great to have around.

I don't think you need compassion to recognize the value of non-typical people - just a lack of prejudice.

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.

If the group is on the edge of starvation, the group will pick and choose who gets the food. People have done that even in modern times.

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.

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.

Also, Down's syndrome causes all sorts of additional health problems. Maybe they let the kid starve at age 6, or the kid got sick and died anyway.

You think they would have executed a child sooner? What kind of logic are you trying to use here?

Prior to the past century, half of all human cultures didn't hold naming ceremonies immediately at birth. If an infant didn't survive, there were no public funerals or mourning, and the deaths were not always recorded.

Even more recently, the number of a woman's births wasn't recorded, and records of infants who died were frequently "unnamed" and listed without their sex. Names were not required to be ready to submit to a state registration system immediately following birth.

In a world where survival beyond a few months was a required rite of acceptance to "earn" a name, that a child possibly not equipped to live on its own was cared for for six years is indeed a testament indeed to, perhaps, something inhuman.

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.

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.

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.

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.

https://archive.is/V0yqO

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