User:LittleHow/development

Childhood
Neanderthal children could have grown faster than modern human children. Modern humans are biologically unique in their unusually slow growth in the period of childhood between infancy and puberty with this being made up in an adolescent growth spurt. The possibility that Neanderthal childhood growth was different was first noted in 1928 by the excavators of the Mousterian rock-shelter of a Neanderthal juvenile. Arthur Keith in 1931 wrote “Apparently Neanderthal children assumed the appearances of maturity at an earlier age than modern children”. The earliness of body maturation can be inferred from the maturity of a juvenile's fossel remains and their age of death provided age of death can be estimated. The age of death of juveniles can be indirectly inferred from their tooth morphology, development and emergence. This has been argued to both support and question the existence of a maturation difference between Neanderthals and modern humans. Since 2007 tooth age can be directed calculated using the noninvasive imaging of growth patterns in tooth enamel by means of x-ray synchrotron microtomography. This research supports the existence of a much quicker physical development in Neanderthals than in modern human children. The x-ray synchrotron microtomography study of early H. sapiens sapiens argues that this difference existed between the two species as far back as 160,000 BP.