Scientists studying ice age teenagers find stages of puberty haven’t changed much in 40,000 years | Canada Voices

Ice age adolescents did not have TikTok or spend their time sending each other memes – facts so obvious that to point them out is cringe, as the kids today say – but modern teenagers do have some things in common with their Upper Paleolithic counterparts.

By analyzing skeletons of humans who lived 10,000 to 40,000 years ago, April Nowell, an archeologist at the University of Victoria, and international colleagues were able to infer that teens from that period experienced the same stages of puberty, including onset of menstruation and voice cracking, at the same ages as contemporary teenagers.

By shedding light on how early humans matured, the study offers a new perspective on present-day young people, Dr. Nowell says.

“Our work shows that here are these individuals that really fit into their community and contributed to their community, and so there’s a whole other way of thinking about teenagers.”

Researchers examined the skeletons of 13 ancient humans aged 10 to 20 for evidence of puberty stages, looking at the maturation of hand, elbow, wrist, neck and pelvis bones. The technique was developed by lead author Mary Lewis, a professor of archeology at the University of Reading in England. The study was published last month in the Journal of Human Evolution.

“We know how the skeleton relates to puberty stages, so we were able to look for these specific changes and then be able to infer what stage our teenagers were at when they died,” Dr. Nowell explains. “We know, for example, that girls are also experiencing breast development and we know that for the boys, they’re in that superawkward phase when their voices are breaking.”

Although the average life expectancy at the time was around 33 years, most of the ice age subjects in the study hit puberty by 13.5 years old and reached full adulthood between the ages of 17 and 22, the same as people today.

And what did the size of the skeletons’ orbital bones reveal about the powers of ice age eye-rolling?

“You could see the muscle markings were really well developed,” Dr. Nowell says, laughing.

Analyzing the muscle markings of the skeletons also helped reveal a picture of what life was like for teens so long ago.

“We can see that they had really active lives, and it’s clear they were engaged in hunting and gathering and fishing and all these things that would be contributing to the overall security and well-being of their community,” Dr. Nowell says.

For example, muscle markings that show a more developed right arm than left are the kind of skeletal changes seen in people who are active in terms of being fishers or hunters, she explains.

Parents of moody adolescents may find it far-fetched, but the study offers proof that teens can play an active part in helping their families and social groups – maybe even assisting in getting dinner on the table once in a while.

“There’s always this sort of more negative connotation with teenagers today,” Dr. Nowell says, pointing to how they are portrayed in pop culture as brooding about not knowing their place in the world.

That negative connotation is not new, she is quick to point out, citing Dr. Lewis’s studies of medieval times.

“There are court cases where the teens are in trouble for congregating on the street corners, or they’re sitting on tombstones, drinking and wearing velvet and lace, which apparently they shouldn’t be,” Dr. Nowell says.