New Scientist
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Trauma sometimes experienced during childbirth has been a problem faced by our ancestors for almost 4 million years. New evidence of pelvic damage in an ancient female skeleton shows we might be able to find signs of such injuries in the fossil record.
Humans are unique among hominids in having a birth canal that is nearly identical in size to the neonatal head. Inevitably, natural variation means some women have a pelvis that proves slightly too small for the job of childbirth. Yet ancient evidence of birth trauma is rare, says Susan Pfeiffer at the University of Toronto in Canada. She has now found an example of stress injury to the pelvis in the skeleton of a 2000-year-old female found in South Africa.
The female’s pelvis was unusually narrow, which appears to have led to injury to the pubic symphysis, a joint running down the midline of the pelvis, during childbirth (International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, DOI: 10.1002/oa.1176). “Resulting deterioration of her joints probably caused a lot of pain, yet she stayed active,” says Pfeiffer. “This suggests that her group had knowledge of pain-numbing substances.” Read more on newscientist.com…
