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upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for takyon

The skulls of ancient pearl divers come with abnormal ear canal bone growths

Surfers, divers, and others who spend time in cold water sometimes suffer from a condition called "surfer's ear," in which a small bony bump forms in the temporal bone, blocking part of the ear canal. Archaeologists recently found the same bony growths in the skulls of people who lived in pre-Columbian Panama up to 2,400 years ago. They suspect the skulls are the remains of expert pearl divers who spent their lives freediving for valuable items on the ocean floor.

The skulls were part of a large collection examined by archaeologists Nicole Smith-Guzman and Richard Cooke of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. They found the telltale bumps on the temporal bones of eight skulls with intact ear canals—seven men and one woman. Among the skulls that still had intact ear canals on both sides, 12.2 percent of the men and 3.3 percent of the women had surfer's ear on at least one side. Most had mild or moderate cases, but one man had enough growth to block more than two-thirds of his ear canal, which may have been enough to cause noticeable hearing loss.

The relatively low frequency of the growths suggests a select group of mostly men who, for some reason, regularly ended up with cold water in their ear canals.

Panama is a tropical spot, but the water in Gulf of Panama, on the country's central Pacific coast, can get pretty chilly. That's because from January to April trade winds from the north blow most of the warm surface water out to sea, and colder water wells up from the depths to replace it. At an average surface temperature of 19C (66.2F), the Gulf is cold enough to present a risk of surfer's ear.

American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 2018. DOI: 10.1002/ajpa.23757;(About DOIs).

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