What is known about the first identified Neanderthal family in history

In recent years, more and more clues have been unraveled about Neanderthals, the human species that lived from about 430,000 years ago to about 40,000 years ago.

But the analyzed fossils belonged to isolated individuals and a relationship between them had never been established.

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A team of scientists managed to identify family links of Neanderthals for the first time based on remains found in two caves in Siberia.

The finding, described in an article in the journal Nature, was made by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Leipzig, Germany.

The work was led by Svante Pääbo, who received the Nobel Prize in Medicine this year for his pioneering work on ancient DNA.

Among the 13 individuals whose remains were analyzed, the scientists identified a father and his teenage daughterin addition to other possible relationships.

The study also sheds light on how Neanderthal communities were organized and the role of women.

Where were the fossils found?

The remains of bones and teeth were found in two caves called Chagyrskaya and Okladnikov, in the Altai Mountains of Siberia, and date to about 54,000 years ago.

The caves are located at the easternmost point of the known geographic range of Neanderthals, who inhabited parts of western Eurasia.

Another extinct human lineage, the Denisovans, occupied parts of eastern Eurasia.

Chagyrskaya is one of the caves in Siberia where remains dating back 54,000 years were found.

The geographical distribution of Neanderthals was very wide, from the coasts of Portugal to western Siberia, and from northern Europe to the southern peninsulas. Until now no remains have been found in Africa and it is believed that they did not inhabit that continent.

The caves are located about 100 km from the site where the earliest Denisovan remains were found, but the study found no evidence of interbreeding. Our species had not yet reached this region at that time.

What degrees of kinship were identified

The 13 Neanderthal individuals included five children and adolescents. There were seven men and six women.

The Chagyrskaya cave site yielded the remains of an adult father and his teenage daughter, who is believed to be in her late teens.

There was also a child between the ages of 8 and 12, along with an adult relative who, based on genetic findings, was an aunt, cousin, or grandmother.

Scientists found numerous stone tools and animal bones in the caves.

These objects suggest that the Neanderthals who inhabited these caves lived in small hunter-gatherer communities of 10 to 20 members, feeding on bison, mountain goats, and other animals.

“Our study provides a concrete picture of what a Neanderthal community might have looked like. And that makes them seem much more human to me,” said geneticist Benjamin Peter of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, one of the study’s authors.

“They were people who lived and died in small family groups, probably in a hostile environment. However, they managed to persevere for hundreds of thousands of years.”

What is known about women

The analyzed community shows a low degree of genetic diversity, similar to that which occurs in species in danger of extinction, which reveals the small size of the groups.

The researchers compared the genetic diversity on the Y chromosome, which is inherited from father to son, with the diversity of mitochondrial DNA, inherited from mothers.

The greater mitochondrial genetic diversity indicated that it was the women who migrated to other communitieswhile the men remained in the same place.

"Neanderthals were people who lived and died in small family groups, probably in a hostile environment"said Benjamin Peter, one of the study’s authors.

Extinction

Neanderthals had a stockier build than Homo sapiens and larger eyebrows.

Different studies have shown that they created art, used complex group hunting methods and had symbolic objects.

In Gorham’s cave in Gibraltar, for example, an abstract design made by Neanderthals with crossed lines engraved on the rock was found.

The interactions between Neanderthals and our species are not entirely clear.

Interbreeding is known to have occurred, as evidenced by the fact that non-African modern human populations have residual Neanderthal DNA.

But It is still debated what role Homo sapiens played in the extinction of Neanderthalswhich, like the Denisovans, disappeared relatively soon after our species reached their territory.

Source: Elcomercio