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Oldest Twin Remains Found In Siberia
astroengine writes A team of Canadian and Russian researchers investigating an early Neolithic cemetery in Siberia have identified the world's oldest set of human twins, buried with their young mother. The skeleton of the woman was exhumed in 1997 from a hunter-gatherer cemetery in south-eastern Siberia. Found with 15 marmot teeth — decorative accessories which were probably attached to clothing — the remains were photographed and labelled, but were not investigated by anthropologists. Now Angela Lieverse, a bioarchaeologist at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada, and colleagues Andrzej Weber from the University of Alberta, Canada, and Vladimir Bazaliiskii from Irkutsk University, Russia, have examined the skeleton and found remains of twin fetuses nestled between the pelvis and upper legs. The twins, about 36 to 40 weeks old, probably suffocated during their mother's troubled labor nearly 8,000 years ago. "This is not only one of the oldest archaeologically documented cases of death during childbirth, but also the earliest confirmed set of human twins in the world," Lieverse said.
First Dupe!
Table-ized A.I.
shouldn't the oldest "human" things be found in africa ?
Surprised that a site for scientific minded people does not include that caveat.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
The summary didn't make a lot of sense until I realised they meant 36-40 weeks gestational age, not actual age.
'Oliver Twist Remains Found In Siberia'
The summary calls them both. They can't be both.
Does it overturn some previous hypothesis that twin births are a recent phenomenon?
I would expect it to be the other way around.
Other mammals have litters where it is uncommon with only one offspring.
Speculatively the further back we go the closer to other mammals litter sizes we would get.
Now, this find is probably way to close to humans to say when having less offspring started to become more beneficial for survival since other simians have the same trait and a sample size of one is rather pointless too.
With that said, to say that it has no interest to science only tells me that your interest in science is limited to how many nanometers the next production iteration of CPU's will have. (Something that have been in Slashdot articles plenty of times before but that has even less to do with science.)
How does this not relate to science? I found this to be one of the most interesting articles in the past 24 hours.
Would you prefer more articles about anti-vaxxers? More stories about Facebook and LinkedIn? Corporate mergers?
It does seem that the find is more of a statistical fluke, given that twins and death in childbirth are not unknown phenomena. But we may well learn something. Or not. Either way science will happen.
They'll want to open an inquiry for negligent homicide and medical malpractice.
But that's thousands of years before the earliest possible date for Adam amd Eve getting kicked from the Garden of Eden, with God's mandate that in pain shall ye labor.
No, no, no! Something about this just doesn't add up!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Are they dead? Just asking.
God only created the earth approximately 4,000 years ago.
Why does Siberia always get the all of the coolest fossils?
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Saya, Diva, you can live! Somebody spill some blood on them!
What does it say about the state of the world that most posts in response to this story are stupid jokes?
Not much. But what does it say about the state of the majority of people now to be found on Slashdot? I don't come here often any more, having known the site from very early (see ID#) it was painfully obvious the kind of people who come here are of a different mind than me.
However, I thought THIS story could bring some human emotions to the front. All I could feel was deep sadness. My mind was busy imagining the pain, the suffering - the deaths. What those who died and those who were left (the father and the rest of the tribe) went through.