Posted on 10/20/2025 11:05:24 AM PDT by Red Badger
For years, archaeologists have struggled to answer a surprisingly human question: how do you tell if a skeleton from a thousand years ago was once pregnant?
© Credit: Dr Hugh Willmott, University of Sheffield
Pregnancy has long remained one of the most elusive aspects of human life to trace in the archaeological record, especially when it comes to skeletons. While modern tests rely on the hormone human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), this biomolecule degrades too quickly to survive underground for centuries. Now, a new study led by scientists at the University of Sheffield reveals that bones and teeth from ancient skeletons can preserve reproductive hormones for thousands of years, potentially allowing researchers to detect pregnancy in human remains with far greater certainty, even after a millennium.
The Skeletons Were Talking, We Just Weren’t Listening
Led by Aimée Barlow, the team looked at human remains from four burial sites in England, covering nearly 2,000 years of history, from the 1st century all the way to the 19th. The sample included nine individuals, most of them women, and a few were even buried with fetuses or newborns. That rare setup gave the researchers a chance to directly compare hormonal markers with known pregnancy-related cases.
They started by taking powdered samples from ribs, a neck vertebra, and teeth, including hardened dental plaque. This mineral-rich material is great at trapping tiny compounds. Inside, they looked for traces of reproductive hormones like estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone, still preserved in the bone and enamel.
Estrogen didn’t show up much, it probably doesn’t survive well after all those years underground. But progesterone and testosterone? Those stuck around, and what they revealed was a lot more telling.
A Hormonal Footprint Of Pregnancy And Childbirth
In a number of burials dating from the 5th to the 19th century, researchers found elevated levels of progesterone in women believed to have died during pregnancy or shortly after giving birth. One woman from the 11th to 14th centuries, buried with a full-term fetus, had high levels of progesterone in her vertebra. Another, from the late 1700s or early 1800s, showed similar hormone levels in her rib.
What really caught the researchers’ attention, though, was what they didn’t find: testosterone. In all of the cases linked to pregnancy or birth, testosterone was completely missing, except for a faint trace in just one woman who had been buried with a premature baby. By contrast, women from other graves, not associated with infants, had clear testosterone signals in both their bones and teeth.
When Bones Remember A Mother’s Final Days
If this approach holds up under further testing, it could offer something that archaeology has always struggled with: a way to uncover maternal health, loss, and mortality in deep history. It could also provide clues about how famine, epidemics, or environmental stress influenced pregnancy outcomes. Beyond biology, it may help us understand why some women were laid to rest with children while others were not.
What makes this method especially promising is that it taps into a biological memory system no one expected to be so enduring. Long after organic tissues have faded, some chemical signals remain locked inside the mineral structure of bones and teeth, faint, but still legible.
Early Signs, Future Questions
Published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, the study shows that this new method, often called a pregnancy test for skeletons, could finally give archaeologists a way to spot pregnancies that would’ve gone completely unnoticed before.
But there are still questions. Estrogen was mostly missing, and some progesterone levels showed up in places they weren’t expected, like in male remains or deep inside teeth. That suggests we’re not yet seeing the full picture of how these hormones behave underground. Things like the soil, how long the body’s been buried, or even what part of the skeleton you sample can all make a difference.
To make this test for skeletons truly reliable, the team says we’ll need more comparisons with modern remains, more burial sites from different environments, and probably a few extra chemical markers to back things up.
Did they find any pregnant men?
Teacher: “Give me a sentence about a public servant.”
Student: “The fireman came down the ladder pregnant.”
Teacher: “Do you know what pregnant means?”
Student: “Yes, it means you’re carrying a child.”
I am disappointed in the level of disinterest in science exhibited by comments at a science oriented post by people who are apparently on a science ping list.
My first thought was it will be interesting to see if follow up studies confirm these initial findings. It will also be interesting if this methodology gives results in studies at sites earlier than 2,000 years ago. My second thought, for those of us who have ever read any of the Clan of the Cave Bear series, is how much interesting material might be generated for future life-like stories of earlier periods in human history.
td, I did get a good laugh.
What I want to know is:
Who is having sex with 1000 year old skeletons?................
What this does mean is there is now a new tool in Forensics technology to identify if recently murdered or otherwise deceased victims were pregnant at the time of their demise.
And possibly add more charges to an indictment...........
I think that has already been a thing.
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