Ancient Human Remains in Spain

Human remains are found in a cave, and unearthed to be analyzed by Tibicena, an archaeology company, in Galdar, on the island of Gran Canaria, Spain March 13, 2023.(photo credit: Tibicena Arqueologia y Patrimonio S.L./Handout via REUTERS)



Ancient human remains that were buried in caves in Spain have been shown to be modified prior to their burial, according to a recent study.

The research, published in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS ONE on Wednesday last week, examines the Cueva de los Marmoles, one of the most important cave contexts from southern Spain.

The significance of this cave is that it "returned a large number of commingled skeletal remains suggesting its funerary use from the Neolithic to the Late Bronze Age," the study said. However, the reason why these buried remains were modified still remains a mystery to researchers.


Researchers in the study also explored the fragmentation patterns that characterized different skeletal regions and took both macroscopic and microscopic analyses of whatever modifications were made to the human remains.

Radiocarbon data
The study concluded that through radiocarbon data, the remains date back several millennia, and also estimates that the minimum amount of people's remains discovered number up to 12 - seven adults and five children. 

The research does acknowledge that caves have been used as burial sites in the Iberian Peninsula for thousands of years, with its practice being originated in the 4th millennium BCE.  READ MORE...

Human Life Span

 

Johanna Quaas, 97, is the world's oldest competitive gymnast. She's pictured here at age 92. (Image credit: ROSLAN RAHMAN / Staff via Getty Images)



Scientists have long debated the greatest possible age of a person, with previous studies placing the limit at up to 150 years. But in the past 25 years, no one has surpassed the record for the world's oldest person, held by Jean Louise Calment, who died at age 122 in 1997.

"This has led people to argue that the maximum life span has been reached," David McCarthy(opens in new tab), an assistant professor of risk management and insurance at the University of Georgia, told Live Science. 

In a new study, McCarthy and his colleagues say they've uncovered evidence that this longevity record will be broken within the next four decades. The team did not propose a maximum age that humans can live to, but rather, they used a mathematical model to project what mortality trends might look like in upcoming years.

However, not everyone agrees with the team's conclusions, experts told Live Science.

In the study, published March 29 in the journal PLOS One(opens in new tab), the scientists analyzed mortality data from hundreds of millions of people in 19 countries who were born between the 1700s and the late 1900s, up to 1969. 

They tweaked an existing mathematical model to explore how the mortality rates among people ages 50 to 100 differed in people with different birth years. They then used this information to predict the ages that people may reach in the future.  READ MORE...

Loneliness in Older Age

The odds of loneliness age 50 and over were 1.24 times higher for people who rarely or never had comfortable friends in childhood compared to those who more often had friends. 

Image is in the public domain

Summary: A combination of personality traits and childhood circumstances account for why some older people experience loneliness more than others. Lonely adults over 50 were 1.24 times more likely to have rarely, or never, had comfortable friendships during childhood, and 1.34 times more likely to have had poor relationships with their mothers as children.

Source: PLOS

Life circumstances during childhood—including having fewer friends and siblings, low-quality relationships with parents, bad health and growing up in a poorer household—are all correlated with a higher rate of loneliness in older age, according to a new study published this week in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Sophie Guthmuller of Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria.

Loneliness has been a growing topic of interest over the last decade, as it has been shown to be linked with ill health and to increase with age. Loneliness is correlated with a higher risk of developing mental conditions, a deterioration in physical health, and is linked to mortality and higher health care utilization.

In the new study, Guthmuller used data from the large cross-national Survey on Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), which collects information from individuals across Europe aged 50 and older on health, socioeconomic status, and social and family networks. Loneliness was measured with the R-UCLA Loneliness Scale.

Guthmuller found that while ill health is the main factor correlated with loneliness in older age, explaining 43.32% of the variance in loneliness, social support in older age also accounts for 27.05% of the variance, personality traits account for 10.42% and life circumstances during childhood account for 7.50%.  READ MORE...