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07/21/2025 13:20

How fertile have humans been over the past 200 years?

Johannes Seiler Dezernat 8 - Hochschulkommunikation
Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn

    Even centuries ago, hormones controlled reproduction and breastfeeding. After all this time, however, it is very difficult to determine the hormone mix posthumously in ancient human bones. Junior professor Dr. Alice Toso from the University of Bonn wants to attempt the almost impossible: Together with an interdisciplinary team of young researchers, she plans to develop methods for determining sexual hormones levels contributing to the transdisciplinary research areas “Life & Health” and “Present Pasts”. “Pioneering Research - Exploring the Unknown” is the right name for the funding line in which the VW Foundation is supporting the project with over 1.4 million euros over the next four years.

    Birth, growth, reproduction and death - the development and decline of human life is essentially controlled by hormones. These conductors of metabolism react just as much to internal stimuli of the body as to stimuli from the environment. How a person grows and ages is the result of a complex interplay between the body and external stimuli. The respective hormone mix determines life milestones such as reproduction, pregnancy, breastfeeding and menopause. Different human cultures have adapted to this process over several generations by adapting to their environment, according to their stage of development: creating a kind of “niche” for the start of life, breastfeeding, and reproduction.

    Archaeologists can sometimes reconstruct the factors that helped shape such environmental and physiological niches. “Until now, however, it has been difficult to use skeletons to decipher fertility, reproduction or ageing processes, for example,” says junior professor Dr. Alice Toso from the Bonn Center for ArchaeoSciences at the University of Bonn. The hormone status in the form of steroid concentrations in the bones could help here. But how can this be done?

    “Overcoming this obstacle would allow research into individual development in human history,” says Alice Toso, who is also a member of the transdisciplinary research areas “Life & Health” and “Present Pasts” at the University of Bonn. This would make it possible to understand the resilience of people centuries ago and the interactions with their environment at that time. What effects did breastfeeding have on the hormonal cycle and fertility? How fatal were births? When did women go through the menopause? How did the environment and historical context affect reproduction?

    “There are still no satisfactory answers to all these questions,” says Alice Toso. “We don't know exactly how many women died during childbirth, when the menopause occurred and whether the timing has changed over the centuries.” Studies of modern populations suggest that environmental stressors play a major role in human development and reproduction. Was it the same centuries ago?

    In the project funded by the VW Foundation, the researchers want to investigate three main areas: the effects of pregnancies on survival rates, the influence of breastfeeding on fertility and how hormone profiles varied at different life stages. Together with young researchers from various disciplines and the Bonn Center for ArchaeoSciences, Alice Toso wants to attempt the almost impossible: To develop reliable methods for directly determining the steroid hormone concentration in centuries-old human bones.


    Contact for scientific information:

    Jun-Prof. Dr. Alice Toso
    Bonn Center for ArchaeoSciences
    University of Bonn
    E-mail: alice.toso@uni-bonn.de


    More information:

    https://sites.google.com/view/alicetoso/projects/archaeology-of-hormones?authuse...


    Images

    Jun-Prof. Dr. Alice Toso vom Bonn Center for ArchaeoSciences.
    Jun-Prof. Dr. Alice Toso vom Bonn Center for ArchaeoSciences.

    Copyright: Photo: Bernadett Yehdou/University of Bonn

    Jun-Prof. Dr. Alice Toso vom Bonn Center for ArchaeoSciences.
    Jun-Prof. Dr. Alice Toso vom Bonn Center for ArchaeoSciences.

    Copyright: Photo: Bernadett Yehdou/University of Bonn


    Criteria of this press release:
    Journalists, all interested persons
    Biology, History / archaeology
    transregional, national
    Research projects
    English


     

    Jun-Prof. Dr. Alice Toso vom Bonn Center for ArchaeoSciences.


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    Jun-Prof. Dr. Alice Toso vom Bonn Center for ArchaeoSciences.


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