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About 10 years ago, a theory was proposed that Neanderthals interbred with humans. homo sapiens Outside Africa, the worlds of anthropology, archaeology, and genetics were shaken. Some scientists looked down on these extinct human cousins, but soon learned that they may share 4 percent of their own DNA with Neanderthals. The question of when and where this interbreeding occurred is still debated. Now, some new analyzes are further filling out the timeline of Neanderthal and modern human interaction, and the two may have been intermixed for quite some time.
[Related: Neanderthals were likely creating art 57,000 years ago.]
New genetic analysis of bone fragments from an archaeological site in central Germany shows that modern humans arrived in northern Europe 45,000 years ago. This means that their arrival coincided with the Neanderthals, who lived there for thousands of years before becoming extinct. The evidence also strengthens suspicions that the migration of modern humans into Europe and Asia about 50,000 years ago drove Neanderthals to extinction. The findings are described in his three new papers published January 31 in the journal Nature and Natural ecology and evolution.
Neanderthals lived in northern Europe for more than 500,000 years before modern humans began arriving. A multidisciplinary team of researchers studied bone fragments and stone tool blades taken from an archaeological site near Ranis, Germany. The area was first explored in the 1930s, but teams from institutions in Austria, China, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and the US This area has been re-excavated.
The site is best known for its finely exfoliated leaf-shaped stone tool blades called leaf points. The leaf tips discovered there date from the last years of the Middle Paleolithic, between 300,000 years ago and 30,000 years ago, or the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic, which begins about 50,000 years ago. and the age has been specified. These tools are among the earliest known remains of a Stone Age culture of modern humans in north-central and northwestern Europe.
The tips of the leaves resemble stone tools found at several sites in England, Poland, Moravia, and other parts of Germany. Archaeologists believe that they were all produced by the same culture, known as the Rinkombi-Lanisia-Yelsmanovikian (LRJ) culture.
Previous dating of the Ranis site estimated it to be more than 40,000 years old.However, there were no recognizable bones to show who made the tools found there, so Neanderthals or homo sapiens I made them.To find out if you are a Neanderthal homo sapiens Creating tools requires some DNA.
DNA evidence
During the re-excavation, the team was able to reach some rocks that were inaccessible to 20th century scientists in search of bones and other tools from the LRJ culture.
“After removing that rock by hand, we finally discovered the LRJ layer and also discovered human fossils. This was a big surprise as no hominin fossils were known from the LRJ until now, and we found it at the site. Their hard work has paid off,” Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology said in a statement.
[Related: Neanderthals may have been early risers.]
These human remains meant that genetic analysis could be performed to find out who made the stone tools. The DNA extracted from ancient bones was highly fragmented. Study co-author Elena Zavala, a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, isolated and sequenced the basic DNA and all the mitochondrial DNA inherited from her mother.
“We have confirmed that the bone fragments are: homo sapiens. Interestingly, some of the fragments shared the same mitochondrial DNA sequence, even fragments from different excavations,” Zabala said in a statement. “This indicates that these fragments belong to the same person or his maternal relatives, and connects these new discoveries with discoveries from decades ago.”
These bone fragments were initially identified as human through analysis of bone proteins by study co-author Dorothea Myropotamitaki, a PhD student at the Collège de France. The research team compared Ranis’ mitochondrial DNA sequence to other mitochondrial DNA sequences taken from human bones at other Paleolithic sites in Europe.
They used this data to construct early family trees. homo sapiens All over Europe. They found that all but 13 fragments from Ranis Cave were similar to each other. The mitochondrial DNA was also similar to that of a 43,000-year-old female skull found in a cave in the Czech Republic. The only person in the sample that stood out was someone from Italy.
“That raises some questions: Was this a single group? What is the connection here?” Zavala said. “But when it comes to mitochondrial DNA, that’s just one side of history. It’s only the maternal side. We need nuclear DNA to investigate this.”
What DNA has revealed is that homo sapiens Neanderthals were not the only ones present, at least in this part of Germany.
Insights into human diet
Cave excavations also uncovered traces of DNA from multiple mammals. Evidence of horses, cave bears, woolly rhinos, and reindeer indicates that the region had a cold climate similar to the tundra of modern-day Siberia and northern Scandinavia.
It also shows that the human diet at the time was based on these large land animals.
[Related: Neanderthals caught and cooked crabs 90,000 years ago.]
“Zooarchaeological analysis shows that Ranis Cave was intermittently used by Denning hyenas, hibernating cave bears, and small groups of humans,” said study co-author, University of Kent and Max・Jeff Smith, a zooarchaeologist at the Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, said: said in a statement. “These hominins only used the caves for a short period of time, but they consumed meat from a variety of animals. Although the bones were finely ground, they were very well preserved and have been studied in archaeology, proteomics, and genetics. We were able to apply the latest cutting-edge methods in science.”
Also, the previous group homo sapiens Dispersing across Eurasia may allow them to adapt to severe changes in climatic conditions.
“This is a fascinating and surprising result, as until recently it was thought that resilience to cold climate conditions did not emerge until several thousand years later,” said study co-author Sara, a paleoclimatologist at the University of La Laguna in Spain. Pederzani said in the paper. statement.
Review of timeline
Radiocarbon dating of human and animal bones taken from different layers of the site was used to construct a chronology of the cave. Many of the bones have signs of human modification on their surfaces, linking their age to the presence of humans from his LRJ culture in the region.
“We found very good agreement between the radiocarbon dates of Homo sapiens bones from both excavated collections and the radiocarbon dates of modified animal bones from the LRJ layer of the new excavation, and “We found a very strong link between the remains of LRJ and LRJ,” said the study co-authors. Helen Furus, a postdoctoral fellow at the Francis Crick Institute, said in a statement. “Evidence suggests that Homo sapiens inhabited this site sporadically for 47,500 years.”
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