Neandertal birth canal shape and the evolution of human childbirth

29 May 2009

A few months ago five bits of a “well preserved” female pelvis was found that is believed to belong to the group of humans called Neanderthals. They supposedly lived 600,000 to 350,000 years ago and the Neanderthal traits (similar traits to those that live to very old ages) supposedly disappeared 30,000 years ago.

Each color on the image on the left represents the actual remains that were found. The gray areas are just a mirror of the actual pieces that were found on the other side. The image on the right is a drawing of a modern pelvic bone (viewed at a slightly different angle). The way these remains were reconstructed it appears that the birth canal is slightly different than a normal womans today.

When these bone fragments were found it is obvious that they were not found in a perfect 3D environment seeing they have only recovered less than one quarter of the pelvis. From these shards of remains it is necessary to use some artistic license to reconstruct the bones into what you think is the best shape. Anyone who has constructed one of those foam 3D puzzles can identify the challenge of having pieces at the correct angle. So what do you do when you are having trouble fitting the pieces together? You look at the picture.

Since the pelvis that was found was very similar to the pelvis of a modern women did the researchers pull out their Gray's Anatomy to reconstruct the fragments. No. Why? Because that does not further the evolutionary cause. Science Daily said, “The birth mechanism, a series of rotations the baby must undergo to successfully navigate its mother’s birth canal, distinguishes humans not only from great apes but also from lesser apes and monkeys.” This means that if the Neanderthals are less than human they must be more like apes, and if they are more like apes they might give birth differently. Since this is the most intact female pelvis found the desire to have it reach this weeks evolutionary top ten is incredible. Who wants to give their money to a group that spent all their time digging up a normal pelvis.

Childbirth is complex and well timed process where many things can go wrong. The baby may have its feet down instead of up, the head may not make it into the pelvis, the mother may not be able to push hard enough, the baby may be too large to pass through the pelvis, the shoulders may get stuck, etc. For the birth to go right the baby must grow from two cells to two trillion cells, the mother's body has to physically and hormonally be ready, the baby must be the right age, the delivery must go well, and the baby must be able to breathe and survive outside the womb.

You are a self-building, self-feeding, self-sustaining, self-repairing, self-replicating, intelligent machine that is capable of taking one cell from your body, adding it to one cell from another body, adding renewable products (fruits, vegetables, meat) and creating a similar machine that is capable of doing the same. I challenge any naturalist to design a machine that is capable of providing its own energy, fixing itself, and replicating itself with built in error correcting software to allow for thousands of generations of replication without loss of function.

What would this prove if someone was able to design such a machine?

It proves it takes an intelligent creator to design a complicated machine.

http://www.pnas.org/content/106/20/8151

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090528133423.htm