Announcement

Collapse

Archeology 201 Guidelines

If Indiana Jones happened to be a member of Tweb, this is where he'd hang out.

Welcome to the Archeology forum. Were you out doing some gardening and dug up a relic from the distant past? would you like to know more about Ancient Egypt? Did you think Memphis was actually a city in Tennessee?

Well, for the answers to those and other burning questions you've found the right digs.

Our forum rules apply here too, if you haven't read them now is the time.

Forum Rules: Here
See more
See less

Did early humans hibernate?

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Did early humans hibernate?

    The following is slightly "old news" [the article is from December 2020] but for anyone who has regularly got up to go to work in freezing weather and when it is still dark, this has so much appeal!

    https://www.sciencealert.com/early-h...h-long-winters

    While many of us might long to just sleep through this entire winter, humans - unlike a lot of other mammals - don't have the capacity to hibernate.

    But a newly published study has investigated if early humans had this ability at some point. The results – although preliminary – surprisingly suggest that they did, even if they weren't great at it.

    When a bear wakes up from its extended torpor (a type of energy-conserving sleep state often used synonymously with hibernation), sleepy and ready for a feed, their bones and muscles will be relatively the same as they were before, spared from the body's self-feeding frenzy over the winter.

    Bears have specialised metabolic processes to protect them from this extended slumber, but sometimes this process doesn't quite go to plan. For example, animals can end up with a host of diseases post-hibernation if they don't get enough food reserves before they go down for the winter.

    We have to emphasise that hibernations are not always healthy," paleoanthropologists Antonis Bartsiokas and Juan-Luis Arsuaga write in their new paper.

    "Hibernators may suffer from rickets, hyperparathyroidism, and osteitis fibrosa if they do not possess sufficient fat reserves. These diseases are all expressions of renal osteodystrophy consistent with chronic kidney disease."

    The researchers believe this may have been the fate of some human ancestors whose remains were discovered in a Spanish cave called Sima de los Huesos – the chasm of bones. This deep shaft in the Cave Mayor of Sierra de Atapuerca is home to an incredible number of fossils, with archaeologists having discovered thousands of hominin skeletal remains that are around 430,000 years old.

    This is long before Homo sapiens walked the Earth, and although there's some debate about which human ancestor the fossils are from, at least some are H. heidelbergensis.

    Working out if human ancestors once possessed a form of a hibernation-like state thousands of years after the fact sounds like an impossible task, but the team thinks they have found some tell-tale marks on the fossils.

    "The evidence of annual healing caused by non-tolerated hibernation in adolescent individuals [points] to the presence of annually intermittent puberty in this population," the researchers write, explaining that other signs of vitamin D deficiency from lack of exposure to sunlight are evident in bone defects like the 'rotten fence post sign'.

    "The hypothesis of hibernation is consistent with the genetic evidence and the fact that the Sima de los Huesos hominins lived during a glacial period."

    The idea is that these ancient hominins might have been trying to sleep through the colder months, and so their bones show the scars of months of sleeping without enough fat stores, a lack of vitamin D, and - in teenagers - weird seasonal growth spurts.

    Before we can claim that human ancestors once did indeed hibernate, we have to remember that this research is very preliminary. Even the researchers themselves admit that this sounds a bit like "science fiction".




    The paper may be accessed here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...3552120300832#!

    "It ain't necessarily so
    The things that you're liable
    To read in the Bible
    It ain't necessarily so
    ."

    Sportin' Life
    Porgy & Bess, DuBose Heyward, George & Ira Gershwin

  • #2
    Interesting. I have heard that people used to sleep more and in two parts in winter.
    If it weren't for the Resurrection of Jesus, we'd all be in DEEP TROUBLE!

    Comment


    • #3
      Saw this a couple months ago and almost started a thread on it but the research is still very tentative and far from conclusive. The New Scientist has a great review of it, but it is now behind a paywall.

      One of the objections is that our ancestors, having no previous history of hibernating what with our being from the tropics and having only migrated into temperate and sub-arctic latitudes in the last 200,000-250,000 years or so. Several critics have argued that is not long enough time to have evolved all the necessary metabolic adaptations in order to hibernate. Then add to that our learning how to clothe ourselves, make fire and construct shelters -- all strategies for surviving cold weather that also make hibernation even less likely to develop.

      The researchers looked at why people today who live harsh and cold conditions, like the Inuits, don't hibernate and their explanation is a difference in diet. They claim that the Inuit's diet that is heavy in fatty fish and reindeer fat (whereas those living in northern Spain at the time had nothing like it and food was scarcer in general) provide them with food during winter and so there would be far less need to hibernate.

      The Guardian contains two other issues:

      "It is a very interesting argument and it will certainly stimulate debate," said forensic anthropologist Patrick Randolph-Quinney of Northumbria University in Newcastle. "However, there are other explanations for the variations seen in the bones found in Sima and these have to be addressed fully before we can come to any realistic conclusions. That has not been done yet, I believe."

      Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London pointed out that large mammals such as bears do not actually hibernate, because their large bodies cannot lower their core temperature enough. Instead they enter a less deep sleep known as torpor. In such a condition, the energy demands of the human-sized brains of the Sima people would have remained very large, creating an additional survival problem for them during torpor.


      The alternative explanations for the various things about the bones that suggest hibernation was touched on by several articles and reviews that I saw previously but am not able to track down at the moment.

      In any case, here is the abstract for the original paper Hibernation in hominins from Atapuerca, Spain half a million years ago:

      Abstract

      Both animal hibernation and human renal osteodystrophy are characterized by high levels of serum parathyroid hormone. To test the hypothesis of hibernation in an extinct human species, we examined the hominin skeletal collection from Sima de los Huesos, Cave Mayor, Atapuerca, Spain, for evidence of hyperparathyroidism after a thorough review of the literature. We studied the morphology of the fossilized bones by using macrophotography, microscopy, histology and CT scanning. We found trabecular tunneling and osteitis fibrosa, subperiosteal resorption, ‘rotten fence post’ signs, brown tumours, subperiosteal new bone, chondrocalcinosis, rachitic osteoplaques and empty gaps between them, craniotabes, and beading of ribs mostly in the adolescent population of these hominins. Since many of the above lesions are pathognomonic, these extinct hominins suffered annually from renal rickets, secondary hyperparathyroidism, and renal osteodystrophy associated with Chronic Kidney Disease - Mineral and Bone Disorder (CKD-MBD). We suggest these diseases were caused by poorly tolerated hibernation in dark cavernous hibernacula. This is particularly evidenced by the rachitic osteoplaques and the gaps between them in some of the adolescent individuals along with the evidence of healing mainly in the adults. The sublayers in the rachitic osteoplaques indicate bouts of arousal from hibernation. The strong projection of the external lip of the femoral trochlea, the rachitic osteoplaques with the empty gaps between them, the “rotten fence post" sign, and the evidence of annual healing also point to the presence of annually intermittent puberty in this extinct human species. The hypothesis of hibernation is consistent with the genetic evidence and the fact that the SH hominins lived during an extreme glaciation. Alternative hypotheses are examined. The present work will provide a new insight into the physiological mechanism of early human metabolism which could help in determining the life histories and physiologies of extinct human species.






      The fact that several science magazines didn't report on it and I can't find anything on paleoanthropologist John Hawks' blog (a great source for anything to do with this sort of stuff), makes me think that this might not be getting much traction. That means the researchers will need to provide a good deal more evidence or this will simply become another fad like the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis of several decades back




      I'm always still in trouble again

      "You're by far the worst poster on TWeb" and "TWeb's biggest liar" --starlight (the guy who says Stalin was a right-winger)
      "Overall I would rate the withdrawal from Afghanistan as by far the best thing Biden's done" --Starlight
      "Of course, human life begins at fertilization that’s not the argument." --Tassman

      Comment


      • #4
        Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
        Saw this a couple months ago and almost started a thread on it but the research is still very tentative and far from conclusive.
        Yes I realise that. Hence my light-hearted opening comment.

        Having lived in northern Europe for nearly all of my life I have plenty of years' experience of having to get up to go to work on dark and very cold mornings when the prospect of staying in a comfortable warm bed and hibernating was infinitely more attractive.

        "It ain't necessarily so
        The things that you're liable
        To read in the Bible
        It ain't necessarily so
        ."

        Sportin' Life
        Porgy & Bess, DuBose Heyward, George & Ira Gershwin

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by Hypatia_Alexandria View Post
          Yes I realise that. Hence my light-hearted opening comment.
          After overseeing services at my Church on Sunday Morning, I often 'attend services' at St Mattress Cathedral.

          The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.

          Comment


          • #6
            Originally posted by Hypatia_Alexandria View Post
            Yes I realise that. Hence my light-hearted opening comment.

            Having lived in northern Europe for nearly all of my life I have plenty of years' experience of having to get up to go to work on dark and very cold mornings when the prospect of staying in a comfortable warm bed and hibernating was infinitely more attractive.
            Same time of the year that getting out of that warm bed and hopping in for a quick shower is put off as long as possible -- only to be followed by not wanting to get out from that hot water.

            I'm always still in trouble again

            "You're by far the worst poster on TWeb" and "TWeb's biggest liar" --starlight (the guy who says Stalin was a right-winger)
            "Overall I would rate the withdrawal from Afghanistan as by far the best thing Biden's done" --Starlight
            "Of course, human life begins at fertilization that’s not the argument." --Tassman

            Comment


            • #7
              Originally posted by Cow Poke View Post

              After overseeing services at my Church on Sunday Morning, I often 'attend services' at St Mattress Cathedral.
              The one where you wind up singing Amazing Gracezzz?

              I'm always still in trouble again

              "You're by far the worst poster on TWeb" and "TWeb's biggest liar" --starlight (the guy who says Stalin was a right-winger)
              "Overall I would rate the withdrawal from Afghanistan as by far the best thing Biden's done" --Starlight
              "Of course, human life begins at fertilization that’s not the argument." --Tassman

              Comment


              • #8
                Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
                The one where you wind up singing Amazing Gracezzz?
                And I've Anchored My Soul in the Haven of Rest
                The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.

                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
                  Same time of the year that getting out of that warm bed and hopping in for a quick shower is put off as long as possible -- only to be followed by not wanting to get out from that hot water.
                  That is so true. And even though the house is not at all cold, it still feels cold when compared with that cozy bed and that hot shower. That is the moment that hibernation [even with the attendant risks] becomes incredibly appealing.
                  "It ain't necessarily so
                  The things that you're liable
                  To read in the Bible
                  It ain't necessarily so
                  ."

                  Sportin' Life
                  Porgy & Bess, DuBose Heyward, George & Ira Gershwin

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Originally posted by Hypatia_Alexandria View Post

                    That is so true. And even though the house is not at all cold, it still feels cold when compared with that cozy bed and that hot shower. That is the moment that hibernation [even with the attendant risks] becomes incredibly appealing.
                    Given that I turn the heat down to 54 (12.2 Celsius) at night it generally is pretty cool getting out of bed, so I switch the space heater on in the bathroom just before turning the water on.

                    I'm always still in trouble again

                    "You're by far the worst poster on TWeb" and "TWeb's biggest liar" --starlight (the guy who says Stalin was a right-winger)
                    "Overall I would rate the withdrawal from Afghanistan as by far the best thing Biden's done" --Starlight
                    "Of course, human life begins at fertilization that’s not the argument." --Tassman

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
                      Given that I turn the heat down to 54 (12.2 Celsius) at night it generally is pretty cool getting out of bed, so I switch the space heater on in the bathroom just before turning the water on.

                      Luckily I no longer have to drag myself out of bed on a cold dark winter's morning but I clearly remember the decades when I did so and how much I loathed it!
                      "It ain't necessarily so
                      The things that you're liable
                      To read in the Bible
                      It ain't necessarily so
                      ."

                      Sportin' Life
                      Porgy & Bess, DuBose Heyward, George & Ira Gershwin

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
                        Given that I turn the heat down to 54 (12.2 Celsius) at night it generally is pretty cool getting out of bed, so I switch the space heater on in the bathroom just before turning the water on.
                        We invested in one of them thar wifi thermostats that is programmed to drop temperature at night, but come on at 5:15 to warm us up before we get out of bed.
                        It has an App for iPhone that lets us turn heat on/of up/down from anywhere in the world -- like if we're out of state and want to check/adjust the temperature at home - both internal and external.
                        The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.

                        Comment

                        Related Threads

                        Collapse

                        Topics Statistics Last Post
                        Started by Hypatia_Alexandria, 03-26-2024, 05:38 AM
                        0 responses
                        9 views
                        0 likes
                        Last Post Hypatia_Alexandria  
                        Started by tabibito, 09-07-2023, 02:41 PM
                        30 responses
                        134 views
                        0 likes
                        Last Post Hypatia_Alexandria  
                        Working...
                        X