> The discovery may help shed light on how prehistoric societies treated children with rare conditions.
I apologize if I mis-summarized that, but this is what I was trying to convey.. Some commenters there said similar things to what I did. The sub heading feels like bait and switch.
I guess "may" is doing a lot here... Like you said, a future hope based on a new ability to identify.
1) environmental such as cold or swamp preserved them
2) burial preservation which would indicate they were children of those with wealth and status
Obviously these remains if they were buried with jewelry were likely the ancient equivalent of nobility.
> Als Pastor Niemöller ins Konzentrationslager kam, schrieben wir 1937, als das Konzentrationslager aufgemacht wurde, da schrieben wir 1933, und die damals in die Konzentrationslager kamen, waren Kommunisten. Wer hat sich darum gekümmert? Wir haben es gewußt, es stand in den Zeitungen. Wer hat die Stimme erhoben, etwa die Bekennende Kirche? Wir haben gedacht: Kommunisten, diese Religionsgegner, diese Christenfeinde - "soll ich meines Bruders Hüter sein?" Dann hat man die Kranken, die sogenannten Unheilbaren beseitigt. - Ich erinnere mich eines Gespräches mit einem Menschen, der Anspruch darauf erhob, ein Christ zu sein. Er meinte: Vielleicht ist es ganz richtig, diese unheibaren Menschen kosten den Staat nur Geld, sie sind sich und den andern nur zur Last. Ist es nicht das Beste für alle Teile, wenn man sie aus der Mitte schafft? -- Dann erst ist es an die Kirche als solche herangekommen. Dann haben wir einen Ton geredet, bis er dann in der Öffentlichkeit wieder verstummt ist. Können wir sagen, wir sind nicht schuld? Die Judenverfolgung, die Art und Weise, wie wir die besetzten Länder behandelten, oder die Dinge in Griechenland, in Polen, in der Tschechoslowakei oder in Holland, die doch in der Zeitung gestanden haben. …
Let's… not get into this? It's not the Oppression Olympics, and this has nothing to do with the article.
https://adscresources.advocatehealth.com/social-sensitivity/....
People with Down's are have individual personalities, just like anyone else.
My daughter has Down's, so we're familiar with several other people with Down's (through support groups, sport groups etc). I can assure you, they are all very different, and this idea that everyone with Down's is happy and smiley all the time needs to die.
However, i speak from experaince having lived with many down syndrome kids for many years. Though they were all manifestly and clearly individuals, there was also a commonality between them. Check out the academic studies in the link I shared which supports this impression.
THe link between selfhood (if I may term it such) and the body is something that has been discussed for centuries, with most of that discussion being mumbo jumbo (eg the four temprements). But there does seem to be some mechanism at work. I know that Crohn's disease and Celiac disease are both associated with certain personalitytypes. That's not to say that there condition defines who they are, rather it informs it.
Off topic, but I hadn't heard much of this. Do you have sources?
I googled. Here's one interesting thing I found: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4814534/
I found claims of correlation with stress and anxiety (seems kind of obvious), and type D personalities (a categorization I've never heard of before, but seemingly includes negativity, hostility, suppressed anger).
It seems hard to me to ascertain whether these are a cause of illness, a reaction to illness, maybe even a vicious-cycle type of reaction that serves to make the illness worse ... Or just correlation. One factor among many. A rut that people fall in. Maybe all of this.
I have no other sources apart from anecdotes from a childhood friend with Celiac. He claimed that it was common knowledge in the Celiac community. I did the same search that you likely did and there seems to be some supporting evidence for such association.
> Or just correlation. One factor among many. A rut that people fall in. Maybe all of this.
I think this likely accounts for much condition-associated personality behavior, but not all.
A few years ago I was diagnosed with Ehlers Danlos. Shortly after I stumbled across this: https://www.ehlers-danlos.com/2017-eds-classification-non-ex...
Of course, the pain of Ehlers will inevitable impact upon personality, that is obvious (fortunately my pain is manageable). But also mentioned is this:
> The underlying mechanisms include genetic risks, problems with the automatic control of body functions, sensitivity to external and internal stimuli, and decreased sense of position. Recent studies have also shown an increase response in emotion processing brain areas which could explain the high emotional reactivity.
'Decreased sense of position' seems so odd and specific and something I clearly recognize in myself.
I know plenty of people who don't identify with their body at all.
The ancient temperamental model assumed that the human body is a mix of Choleric (fire), Sanguine (blood), Phlegmatic (phlegm), and Melancholy. These categories were also assumed to be temperamental architypes whereby (for example) an excess of blood leads to an angry (Choleric) personality.
Of course this is bollocks, but nonetheless demonstrates my point. The idea that 'who we are' is something that is defined only by our brain is wrong. Brain/body traffic seems to be two-way: physical trauma to the body can impact the brain, the nervous system of the digestive tract can impact our moods, lack of vitamin D can negatively impact our emotional outlook, male infant circumcision can alter adult socio-affective processing etc etc.
Note the heavy sampling bias here. Someone who is struggling to cope and secretly hates their "burden" probably won't want to comment.
The comments on NYT for this article are good. I had a hunch people who had experience caring for such children would show up in the comments, and probably be moving.