The Earliest Record of Human Twins
7,700 year old remains have been discovered of a mother who died giving birth to twins.
A skeleton exhumed from a Neolithic hunter-gatherer cemetery in Siberia in 1997 was, at first, thought to be one of the oldest archaeologically documented examples of death during childbirth.
But when Dr. Angela Lieverse, a bio-archaeologist from the University of Saskatchewan, examined the 7,700-year-old remains, she found something else - the presence of an additional set of bones of two full-term babies.
The position of the bones suggest that one baby was breech and in the process of being born. The woman - possibly in her early 20's - died along with both babies during childbirth and likely unaware she was carrying twins. This find is the earliest confirmed set of human twins on record.
Related Links
- Paper in Antiquity
- University of Saskatchewan release
- CBC News story
- Dr. Lieverse previously on Quirks