The discovery may help shed light on how prehistoric societies treated children with rare conditions.
Scientists have diagnosed Down syndrome from DNA in the ancient bones of seven infants, one as old as 5,500 years. Their method, published in the journal Nature Communications, may help researchers learn more about how prehistoric societies treated people with Down syndrome and other rare conditions.
Down syndrome, which occurs in 1 in 700 babies today, is caused by an extra copy of chromosome 21. The extra chromosome makes extra proteins, which can cause a host of changes, including heart defects and learning disabilities.
Scientists have struggled to work out the history of the condition. Today, older mothers are most likely to have a child with the condition. In the past, however, women would have been more likely to die young, which might have made Down syndrome rarer, and the children born with it would have been less likely to survive without the heart surgery and other treatments that extend their lives today.
Archaeologists can identify some rare conditions, such as dwarfism, from bones alone. But Down syndrome — also known as trisomy 21 — is a remarkably variable condition.
It’s kind of staggering to think about how poorly people with Downs were treated just 100 years ago and then contemplate how truly awful it must’ve been in ancient times
Member of my extended family had it. His mother, immediately after he was born, was advised to go for whatever the legal process is for abandoning a child to care instead. She did not take this option, and the doctors told her she was making a big mistake. That would’ve been in the early 60s.
He only lived into his forties but he was a wonderful person, creative and warm and loving, with pretty much his only failure being an overwhelming obsession with the music of Robbie Williams. Came to live with us after his mam was gone and essentially became my big brother.
At his funeral, people literally lined the streets all along the route because there were way too many to fit into the actual venue.
This story doesn’t have much to do with anything but I just like remembering him, so there you go.