14 DAY TRIAL // Scientists at University College London opened a new debate concerning the Neanderthals. Using high-resolution imaging techniques to investigate the insides of two Neanderthal molars found at La Chaise-de-Vouthon in western France and dated to around 130,000 years ago, they found that Neanderthal children grew at a similar pace with modern children.
The ridges and patterns on the molar, which indicate a child's growth from birth and to the length of childhood till reaching adulthood, were similar in Homo sapiens and Neanderthals. "Our prediction for first permanent molar eruption in this Neanderthal (is) of 6.8 years... This all points to a dental development schedule that was most like that in modern humans," says Christopher Dean, one of the researchers. "At 130,000 years we find no evidence of foreshortened periods of growth or of unusual stress in these Neanderthals that would set them apart from modern humans."
The study opposes to a previous one made in 2004 by Spanish palaeontologists, which found Neanderthals to have become adults by the age of 15, compared to 18-20 years for modern humans, showing the Neanderthals to be "a distinct species" from Homo sapiens.
The Spanish team investigated the front teeth, not the molars, from various Neanderthal fossils aged 130,000-28,000 years. But other experts objected as molars were the established benchmark for monitoring hominid development. Some would have preferred the theory of early development as an explanation for the Neanderthal demise 28,000 years ago.
Other hypotheses point to a Neanderthal destruction by the newly arrived H. sapiens or the two species just interbred (theory not confirmed by DNA analysis); a lack of adaptability to the changing climate, which dropped their traditional food resources.
Their range shrunk and eventually, the last Neanderthals redoubt seems to have been Gibraltar, where they petered out. In this case, early onset to adulthood would have helped this decline, because more adults cause a higher demand for food in a population facing a shrinking habitat. The British scientists argue that only molars dated from the last years of the Neanderthals will provide a scientific proof whether they faced rising demographic pressures.