Study reveals reality of puberty in Ice Age teens 25,000 years ago

New research shows that Ice Age teens 25,000 years ago went through similar stages of puberty to teens today. In a study published today in the Journal of Human Evolution When it comes to the timing of puberty in Pleistocene adolescents, researchers are filling a gap in knowledge about how early humans grew up.

Evidence of puberty stages has been discovered in the bones of 13 ancient humans aged 10 to 20. Co-led by paleoanthropologist April Nowell of the University of Victoria (UVic), the researchers found specific markers in the bones that allowed them to assess the progression of adolescence.

“By analyzing specific areas of the skeleton, we’ve deduced things like menstruation and voice breaking,” Nowell says.

The technique, developed by lead author Mary Lewis of the University of Reading, assesses the mineralisation of canine teeth and the maturation of bones in the hand, elbow, wrist, neck and pelvis to identify the stage of puberty an individual had reached at the time of death.

“This is the first time my method for estimating puberty stage has been applied to Paleolithic fossils, and it is also the earliest application of another method – peptide analysis – for estimating biological sex,” Lewis says.

Life in prehistoric times was considered “mean, brutish, and short,” as Thomas Hobbes described it. But this new study shows that these teens were actually quite healthy. Most of the individuals in the study sample entered puberty at age 13.5, reaching adulthood between the ages of 17 and 22. This suggests that these Ice Age teens began puberty at a similar time to teens in wealthy, modern countries.

“It’s sometimes hard to connect to the distant past, but we’ve all been through puberty, just in different ways,” Nowell says. “Our research helps humanize these teens in a way that simply studying stone tools doesn’t.”

One of the 13 skeletons examined was that of “Romito 2,” an adolescent believed to have been male and the oldest known individual with a form of dwarfism. This new research on puberty assessment provides additional information about Romito 2’s likely physical appearance and social role.

Given that he was midway through puberty, his voice was likely deeper, like that of an adult man, and he may have been a father. However, he could still appear quite youthful with a thin beard. Due to his small stature, his appearance was closer to that of a child, which may have had an impact on how he was perceived by his community.

“The specific information about the physical appearance and developmental stage of these Ice Age adolescents from our puberty study provides a new perspective for interpreting their burials and after-death treatment,” said archaeologist Jennifer French of the University of Liverpool, one of the study’s co-authors.

Researchers from six institutions collaborated internationally to develop this body of knowledge: the University of Victoria (Canada), the University of Reading and the University of Liverpool (United Kingdom), the Museum of Prehistoric Anthropology of Monaco (Monaco), the University of Cagliari (Italy) and the University of Siena (Italy). The collaboration continues with research into the lives of Ice Age adolescents and their social roles.