Some people have slightly squashed heads thanks to Neanderthal DNA
13 December 2018
By Clare Wilson
People with two Neanderthal genes have heads that are flatter on top and more elongated – like those of Neanderthals themselves.
The effect is too small to be seen with the naked eye, but shows up on brain scans. The modern versions of the genes seem to make certain parts of the brain work more effectively.
Neanderthals were not the direct ancestors of our own species, but our distant cousins. They were already living in Europe by the time our ancestors arrived, about 40,000 years ago, and there seems to have been interbreeding, as most Europeans have some Neanderthal genes lurking in their DNA – between 1 and 2 per cent of the total.
Simon Fisher of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in the Netherlands wondered if these genes would have any effect on head shape, as both Neanderthal skulls – and those of our last common ancestors with Neanderthals – are less ball-shaped than the skulls of people living today. “It’s one of the most distinctive anatomical differences,” says Fisher.
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