Neanderthal Mommies Breastfed Babies for More Than a Year

Neanderthal women breastfed their babies for more than a year, according to a latest research.

Researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York studied a fossilized tooth of a Neanderthal child, who lived in a cave in Belgium nearly 100,000 years ago. The researchers examined the levels of barium, a chemical element, in the child's tooth. This particular study was based on single specimen of the Neanderthal tooth.

Their research found that the child was breastfed exclusively for seven months and later was fed solid food combined along with breastfeeding. The mother stopped breastfeeding when the baby was 14 months old.

According to the study, modern humans usually breastfeed their children for a year while some continue up to 2.6 years. They further wrote that the Neanderthal's practice of early weaning might have allowed shorter periods between pregnancies that can affect "population growth, evolution and success."

"Weaning is critical to developmental and reproductive rates; early weaning can have detrimental health effects but enables shorter inter-birth intervals," according to the study, which was led by Manish Arora, a senior lecturer in dentistry at the University of Sydney.

"It was the intersection of several disciplines, including analytical chemistry, dentistry and evolutionary biology that made this discovery possible," Dr Arora said.

But the authors mentioned that the findings do not represent the entire Neanderthal in general because the weaning was early and abrupt.

According to some reports the lifespan of Neanderthals, who became extinct some 30,000 years ago, was almost the same as that of humans.

The study was published in the journal Nature on Wednesday.