Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck
Researchers from Canada and Russia have discovered the oldest ever confirmed set of human twin remains, as well as one of the first documented cases of death during childbirth, according to research published earlier this month in the journal Antiquity.
According to Discovery News, the body of a young woman was found in an early Neolithic hunter-gatherer burial ground in southeast Siberia in 1997. At the time, her remains were photographed and labeled. However, they were not further investigated by anthropologists.
Now, however, University of Saskatchewan bioarchaeologist Angela Lieverse and colleagues from the University of Alberta and Irkutsk University in Russia have examined the skeleton and found remains of twin fetuses nestled between her pelvis and upper legs. The twins, believed to be 36 to 40 weeks old, likely suffocated during childbirth, the researchers explained.
Radiocarbon dating on samples of bones from both the mother and the twins confirmed that the remains are approximately 7,700 years old. While death from childbirth was common during the prehistoric and pre-modern eras, it has rarely been documented, likely because the infant remains were too fragile to survive or the women and children were not buried together.
“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 explained to Discovery News, adding that twins “are basically invisible from the archaeological record.”
The bioarchaeologist went on to note that there is only one other case of confirmed human twins in the historical record: 400-year-old remains of twins, fetuses that were near the 24 week gestation point, that had been excavated from a burial site in South Dakota. However, the death of those twins and their mother appeared not to be the result of premature childbirth.
The delivery hypothesized
Lieverse estimates that the Siberian woman would have been in her early twenties when she went into labor, and most likely did not know that she was carrying twins. The location of the fetal remains suggest that the first baby was breech (coming out feet first instead of head first), and that the presence of the twin was most likely the cause of this dangerous scenario.
As the first child was partially delivered, labor became obstructed at some point due to head entrapment, interlocked twins, or some other type of condition. With the other members of her community unable to do anything to help, the woman ultimately would have either died due to an infection, bleeding or exhaustion. Her twins would have died alongside her.
“Inside the tragedy is a compelling story and very personal window into life and death almost 8,000 years ago. It’s a remarkable find,” Lieverse said in a statement, according to the Toronto Sun. “Obstructed labor accounted for as many as 70 percent of maternal deaths, even in the late 20th century. Without the skills, experience and technology of modern medical practitioners, it would have been a virtual death sentence for all three individuals.”
—–
Follow redOrbit on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Instagram and Pinterest.
Comments