Neanderthal children were exclusively breastfed for nine months and fully weaned after the age of two, according to clues found in their teeth.
Our Neanderthal relatives roamed Eurasia for thousands of years before going extinct about 40,000 years ago. To understand more about Neanderthal family life, at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia, and her colleagues studied two 250,000-year-old Neanderthal teeth found in the Rhone Valley in France.
One tooth was a first molar that most likely formed soon after birth. The other tooth, which belonged to a second individual, was a second molar that probably developed around three years of age.
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The first molar showed high levels of barium – a sign of milk ingestion – in tooth layers from before nine months of age. Moderate levels were then seen up to about two-and-a-half years of age, before they sharply dropped off. The second molar had no elevated barium, suggesting that nursing had ceased by the age of three.
Together, the findings suggest that Neanderthal mothers probably started introducing solids to their infants after nine months of exclusive breastfeeding, and then fully weaned them at around two-and-a-half, says Smith.
Modern similarities
This is similar to nursing patterns in modern humans living in hunter-gatherer communities. A study of 113 traditional societies found that on average, infants were introduced to solids after 5 months and .
However, breastfeeding duration among Neanderthals probably varied a lot like in modern humans, says Smith. For example, it may have been shorter during periods of food abundance when infants were less dependent on their mothers’ milk for sustenance, she says.
Smith is now hoping to study Neanderthal teeth dug up at other archaeological sites to see if different environments affected their nursing patterns.
Science Advances
