Neanderthal family life revealed by ancient DNA from Siberian cave
DNA from 11 individuals who lived in Chagyrskaya cave around 51,000 years ago suggests women moved between groups and also shows a high level of inbreeding
HUMANS 19 October 2022
By Michael Le Page
Chagyrskaya cave in Siberia
Skov et al.
Ancient DNA from a group of Neanderthals who lived together has given us an unprecedented glimpse of the social structure of these extinct human relatives. Among other things, it suggests that their women moved between groups while the men stayed put.
Researchers have previously tried to work out what the social structure of Neanderthal groups was like from evidence such as the layout of caves and footprints, says team member Benjamin Peter at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, but the DNA provides direct evidence. “It’s the first time we’ve been able to do something like this using genetics,” says Peter.
He and his colleagues managed to extract DNA from 15 out of 17 pieces of bone or teeth recovered from the Chagyrskaya cave in the Altai mountains in Siberia, Russia. The DNA showed that some pieces came from the same individuals, so the findings represent 11 individuals in total, including several teenagers and children.
Dating of sediments and bison bones at the site suggests the Neanderthals lived in the cave between 51,000 and 59,000 years ago, while the DNA shows that many of the individuals were related. “We can say that they very likely lived at the same time,” says Peter.
More:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2342731-neanderthal-family-life-revealed-by-ancient-dna-from-siberian-cave/
= new reply since forum marked as read
'It brings them alive in some ways and allows me to think about them in a much more complex way'
Author of the article:Joseph Brean
Publishing date:Oct 19, 2022 • 1 day ago • 3 minute read
Chagyrskaya Cave, in the Altai Mountains of Siberia, was once a Neanderthal hunting camp. DNA evidence from a dozen individuals, including a father and his daughter, has illuminated their social behaviours. PHOTO BY BENCE VIOLA
Inspecting the tooth unearthed at a cave in the Altai mountains of Siberia, Bence Viola, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Toronto, considered what conclusions he could draw.
It was a “milk tooth,” he said in an interview, a barely worn girl’s premolar that would have fallen out naturally, so this person did not necessarily die here, not like the man whose vertebra and ulna were also found nearby in the same cave.
In all he and colleagues found DNA evidence, in bone fragments and teeth, from more than a dozen individuals.
Research published Wednesday shows that the girl with the tooth and the man with the spine were so closely related they were either parent and child or siblings, but also they had different mitochondrial DNA, which comes from the mother, so they were likely father and daughter.
More:
https://theprovince.com/news/neanderthal-life
