Medical News
By Ruby Prosser Scully
Neanderthals swam so much they had “surfer’s ear” like modern humansDescription:Alberto Guglielmi/Getty
Bony growths found in Neanderthals’ ears suggest that aquatic foraging was a big part of their lifestyle. This adds to evidence that Neanderthals adapted to life in several landscapes, including those near water.
Erik Trinkaus at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, and his colleagues investigated the well-preserved ear remains of 77 ancient humans that lived in western Eurasia in the mid-to-late Pleistocene period.
They looked for dense, bony growths in the ear canals known as external auditory exostoses. These are often found in modern surfers and others who spend time in cold, wet and windy conditions, leading to the condition’s other name, “surfer’s ear”.
Trinkaus and his colleagues were surprised to find that around half of the 23 Neanderthals they studied had signs of these growths, which is at least twice as prevalent as in any of the other groups of ancient humans the team studied. This suggests that Neanderthals foraged in water for food and other resources – something that hasn’t been obvious from other archaeological evidence.
Smarter than we thought
“It all reinforces what is becoming increasingly clear from diverse forms of evidence: that the Neanderthals were capable and flexible, and not the benighted deficients that some persist in calling them,” says Trinkaus.
He and his team also studied the remains of early modern humans from the middle Palaeolithic period, around 130,000 to 80,000 years ago. Only one in four of them had these growths. In humans from the early-to-mid upper Palaeolithic period, around 60,000 to 25,000 years ago, the growths showed up in five out of 24 remains.
Neanderthals lived in an overlapping period, between roughly 180,000 and 40,000 years ago. It is possible they had a greater risk of developing the growths due to genetics, but the different landscapes they lived in and proximity to water may also explain why they had more than other groups, says Trinkaus.
We know from modern surfers that the growths normally cause little or no discomfort, but they can result in partial deafness.
Journal reference: PLoS One, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0220464