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THE EXISTENCE OF PEOPLE WITH DOWN SYNDROME

A Search for Traces

Have people with Down syndrome always existed?
Are there traces of their existence?
How did they live in the past?
In any case, how can you find out?

Science is certain: People with Down syndrome have always been around.
They have always existed.
How can this claim be validated?
Traces of their existence have to be searched for, and found.
Today for example, we have movies and photos as "proof".
What about the past?

Almost 150 years ago (1865) an Englishman, Dr. John Langdon Down, took the first photographs of people with Down syndrome.
What evidence is there from before the invention of cameras?
Texts, drawings, paintings, sculptures and skeletons.

There are a few pieces of art that might show people with Down syndrome.
But if that really is the case, is uncertain.
Scientific proof is missing.

Research teams today are searching for skeletons of people with Down syndrome (Trisomy 21). For example the research team „Homo debilis“ in Bremen, Germany.

When a person has been dead for a long time, today all that remains is their skeleton.
How do you find out if a person had a trisomy 21?
The genetic material of their skeleton has to be analysed.
That confirms if a person had a trisomy 21.
This is done by DNA analysis.
If the results of the analysis of a skeleton's DNA are "positive" we know - this person had a trisomy 21.

Till now a few skeleton findings are known.
We want it to become more!

About 1200 years ago a 9 year old child lived in Breedon on the Hill.
That is a village in Leicestershire, England.
The child's grave was found in 1960.
A scientific team analysed the child's skull and they suspect that the child had Down syndrome.

About 2500 years ago a young woman lived near Tauberbischofsheim, in Germany.
She lived to be about 18 or 20 years old. It's not quite clear.
Her skeleton was found in 2003.
In a field which was once a Celtic burial site.
Did she have Down syndrome, too?

About 7200 years ago an Indo-American girl lived on the Santa Rosa Island in California, USA.
Her grave was found in 1991.
The skeleton has a number: SRI-3.
The scientific team that analysed the skull, suspects that the girl had Down syndrome.

Martin Weser is an Ohrenkuss author.
He writes about skeletons:

„We are always getting older and sometime we will die and that is how it is in life, with getting older.
People are getting bigger everyday the world is so small unbelievable.
People are made of skeletons that become ancient that lie under the earth all people need that to know these days.
We are people."

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