A Neanderthal child born profoundly disabled lived beyond age 6, a new study concludes. The child had severely deformed inner ear bones that were most likely caused by Down syndrome, Mercedes Conde-Valverde, Valentín Villaverde and colleagues reported Wednesday in Nature journal Science Advances. That in turn supports the increasingly popular hypothesis that Neanderthals, sort of like us, were capable of feeling compassion.
Their care for their sick and crippled has become quite accepted. The questions are why, and for whom. As the authors explain, some suspect Neanderthals would be kind transactionally: helping other adults who could reciprocate the favor, which frankly children can't do well ("Children have a very limited possibility to reciprocate the assistance," as the journal sweetly puts it).
Others think caregiving among Neanderthals was compelled by compassion as part of a suite of prosocial behaviors. But how much could this child have helped anybody in turn? At the least it would have been partially or profoundly deaf, the authors say. It likely also suffered poor balance and equilibrium.
It's speculative but even if the mother loved the child with every cell in her being, the Neanderthal lifestyle was challenging. She plausibly needed the group's help to help hunt and gather and care for it. "This is a known case in Neanderthals of social care for a child with a severe pathology," the authors sum up.
Actually, there are quite a few cases of Neanderthal care for .
