Neanderthal Mothers Breastfed their Babies for 7 Months

Neanderthals breast-fed their babies for over a year just like humans, according to a study published in the journal Nature.

A new method developed by a team of researchers helps in uncovering the breast-feeding habits of various fossil samples.

This new technique was developed by researchers at the University of Sydney, the University of Technology (UTS), Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and Harvard University, USA. The consumption of maternal milk and the later transition to non-milk foods leaves an imprint on teeth, and this imprint can be uncovered with lasers and microscopes several years after the event.

Researchers tested the technique on a tooth belonging to a Middle Paleolithic Neanderthal that was found in Belgium.

"It was the intersection of several disciplines, including analytical chemistry, dentistry and evolutionary biology that made this discovery possible," senior author of the paper Dr. Manish Arora, from the University's Institute of Dental Research, said in a press statement.

The transition from weaning to solid food is fixed in the tissues present in the tooth and root, and continues to exist even if it is replaced by permanent teeth.  

Based on this, the researchers examined a Neanderthal's first molar tooth. The distribution of an element barium increases with breast-feeding, and lowers when the child is weaned. By measuring the amount of barium and calcium on the teeth growth lines of the Neanderthal, they noticed that breast-feeding was just for seven months, followed by seven months of supplementation.

"Here we show large dietary shifts in early life manifest as compositional variations in dental tissues. Teeth from human children and captive macaques, with prospectively recorded diet histories, demonstrate barium distributions accurately reflect dietary transitions from the introduction of mother's milk through the weaning process. We also document dietary transitions in a Middle Palaeolithic juvenile Neanderthal, which shows a pattern of exclusive breastfeeding for seven months, followed by seven months of supplementation," Dr. Arora was quoted as saying in Daily Mail.