Can human hibernate?

Hello everyone! 😉 

I hope you have rested well during the Holidays and you are ready for a new dose of news from the world of archaeology.

Since this is the last post this extraordinary year, I’d like to share with you a discovery straight out of a science fiction movie! 📽

In the Atapuerca Mountains in Spain there is a cave called Sima de los Huesos (which means “Pit of the Bones”). As you can easily guess from the name, it is famous because of human fossils that were found there in the 1970s and 1980s. Archaeologists have determined that the remains are approximately 430,000 years old, which means that they come from the Middle Pleistocene.

skull fragments, Sima de los Huesos / JAVIER TRUEBA, MADRID SCIENTIFIC FILMS

Although the research conducted on remains is very interesting, I’d like to focus on a discovery that is perhaps less archaeological and more biological as it concerns the capacity of the human organism. In December this year two paleoanthropologists, Antonis Bartsiokas and Juan-Luis Arsuaga, announced in a paper published in the journal L’Anthropologie that archaic humans might have had the ability to hibernate !!!

Where does this shocking hypothesis come from? Scientists claim that the lesions noticed in fossilized bones of early humans are the same as those left in the bones of the animals that hibernate. More precisely, the scientists found the signs of vitamin D deficiency which may indicate that the bodies were not getting enough light. What’s more, some scars on the bones may suggest that there were fat-deficient months in lives of archaic humans. In addition, the remains of adolescents are characterized by irregular, seasonal growth. This might mean that puberty was interrupted by periods of hibernation.

A strategy of hibernation would have been the only solution for them to survive having to spend months in a cave due to the frigid conditions ~ Antonis Bartsiokas, Juan-Luis Arsuaga

Sounds like a good science fiction movie, huh? Of course, this is such a new hypothesis that it is far from being officially approved, but the very possibility that people were (are?) able to hibernate is fascinating. What if we hibernate and sleep through the rest of the pandemic? Ah, this would be something! 😆

I hope you found this post interesting and you would like to read more about it:

• Early humans may have survived the harsh winters by hibernating
• Did Neanderthals Spend Their Winters Hibernating?
• Early Humans May Have Hibernated Through Long Winters, Study Hints 

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Dear readers, I wish you that the New Year will be more generous for all of us and will no longer resemble a pseudoscientific movie. Let 2021 be joyful like a comedy! 😄 I wish you a lot of strength, energy and smile!💪⚡😊 

Take care & see you in 2021!