17,000-year-old remains of a baby in Italy reveal it died of heart disease

Milan/ Italy: The ice Age baby, who lived 17,000 years ago and discovered in the Grotta delle Mura cave in Monopoli in 1998, died from congenital heart disease, scientists say.

The DNA analysis of the remains shows that it was a male with likely blue eyes, dark skin and curly dark brown to almost black hair.

Discovered by archaeologist Mauro Calattini beneath two rock slabs, the remains had indications of poor development and inbreeding and no other goods were found in the grave.

A paper, published on 20 September in Nature Communications, has given insight into early human population in Southern Europe, according to the report.

University of Florence molecular anthropologist Alessandra Modi said that ‘Genetic analysis highlighted a close relationship between the child's parents, suggesting that they were probably first cousins.’

Modi added that it is ‘a phenomenon rarely found in the Paleolithic, but more common during the Neolithic.’

Stefano Benazzi, Professor of Physical Anthropology at the University of Bologna said the study provided ‘unprecedented insight’ into the child’s growth and living conditions in a key period of settlement in the Italian peninsula.

Benazzi added that it also allowed scientists to ‘gather information about the mother and the hunter-gatherer groups of the time. Our research represents a significant advance, demonstrating the importance of interdisciplinarity to deepen our knowledge of prehistoric populations’.

Stefano Ricci of the University of Siena said that combination of different methodologies helped ‘us to reconstruct with unprecedented precision the life and death of this child’.