VICTORIA, BRITISH COLUMBIA—According to a statement released by the University of Victoria, Mary Lewis of the University of Reading, April Nowell of the University of Victoria, Jennifer French of the University of Liverpool, and their colleagues looked for evidence of puberty in the remains of 13 Paleolithic individuals who were between the ages of 10 and 20 at the time of death. In particular, the researchers looked at the mineralization of the canine teeth and the maturation of the bones in the hands, elbows, wrists, necks, and pelvis to determine the stage of puberty reached by each individual. “By analyzing specific areas of the skeleton, we inferred things like menstruation and someone’s voice breaking,” Nowell explained. The study suggests that the teens entered puberty by 13.5 years of age, and reached adulthood between 17 and 22 years of age. One of the individuals in the study, known as Romito 2, had a form of dwarfism. It was determined that Romito 2, who is thought to have been male, died mid-way through puberty. The researchers suggest that he would have had a deepened voice, and would have been able to father children, even though he may have had fine facial hair and a youthful appearance. “The specific information about the physical appearance and developmental state of these Ice Age adolescents derived from our puberty study provides a new lens through which to interpret their burials and treatment in death,” French concluded. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Journal of Human Evolution. To read about first-millennium a.d. gold jewelry found in northern Colombia that may have been associated with female puberty, go to "The Pink Standard."
