Have you ever wondered what it would be like to hibernate? To gorge yourself when winter arrives to spend it, sleepy, in a cozy cave? Apparently our ancestors tried it and the result was not glorious. A new study reveals that the experiment may have already been carried out clumsily by a small group of hominids from northern Spain.
In an ice age marked by harsh winters and a scarcity of resources, the group would have sought refuge in deep, dark caves, hoping to save energy… But things did not go as planned.
According to an article in Popular Mechanics magazine, Spanish and Greek researchers analyzed 500,000-year-old human remains found in the Sima de los Huesos cave, at the prehistoric site of Atapuerca in Spain. The team, led by Greek paleoanthropologist Antonis Bartsiokas of the University of Thrace-Democritus and Juan-Luis Arsuaga of the Complutense University of Madrid, highlighted recurrent bone pathologies associated with a prolonged lack of light and nutrients.
Good idea, bad execution
The skeletons show clear signs of rickets, bone resorption and other pathologies linked to vitamin D and calcium deficiency. But the most intriguing thing for scientists is that these marks appear seasonally, as if our ancestors had tried several times to survive the winter by isolating themselves from the outside world, probably in the depths of the cave.
Their main hypothesis is that these hominids would have opted for a semi-hibernating lifestyle during colder periods, in the hope of saving energy and escaping hostile conditions. But unlike animals capable of true physiological hibernation, these human ancestors were simply not biologically adapted to such a feat.
According to the researchers, this survival strategy would have led to serious metabolic disorders, in particular an early form of kidney bone disease, similar to osteodystrophy. The excavations revealed traces on the bodies of individuals who still bore the stigmata years later.
Far from being linear, human evolution has often been constructed in error: what researchers have brought to light here are the touching and sometimes desperate attempts of our ancestors to survive in an often hostile environment.
