Tag Archives: Neanderthal

Science

Neanderthals went extinct because of sex, not war

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Regardless of how they communicated, their encounters led to breeding between both species. How this occurred remains a mystery.

Ancient humans around a campfire.

Was the interbreeding a success?

Whether or not the interbreeding was a success depends on the breeding pair. There is no evidence of Homo sapiens genetics in late Neanderthal genomes from 40-60,000 years ago.

Even though we know that our species interbred with Neanderthals, the genes we have in us today aren’t a result of the interactions that Homo sapiens maintained when they left Africa.

Another interesting finding – the lack of mitochondrial DNA, which is inherited through females point to the evidence that only male Neanderthals and female Homo sapiens could mate.

“We don’t know if the apparent one-way gene flow is because it simply wasn’t happening, that the breeding was taking place but was unsuccessful, or if the Neanderthal genomes we have are unrepresentative. As more Neanderthal genomes are sequenced, we should be able to see whether any nuclear DNA from Homo sapiens was passed on to Neanderthals and demonstrate whether or not this idea is accurate,” added Stringer.

Study Abstract:

Evidence suggests that the Neanderthal and Homo sapiens lineages began diverging about 600,000 years ago, evolving largely separately in Eurasia and Africa after that time. Around 60,000 years ago H. sapiens began a significant emergence from Africa that would lead to a near-global distribution by 10,000 years ago. However, recent research on fossils from Apidima Cave (Greece) suggests that there was an earlier dispersal of our species that reached Europe more than 200,000 years ago, which is consistent with data from ancient DNA suggesting gene flow between the early H. neanderthalensis and H. sapiens lineages during the time span of the later Middle Pleistocene. Additional range expansions of H. sapiens are suggested from western Asian evidence prior to 100,000 years ago, and from China, Sumatra and Australia before the 60,000-year datum. Until recently, there were few other signs of a H. sapiens presence in Europe prior to the Aurignacian expansions that began around 41,000 years ago. However, new data from sites like Zlatý k?? (Czechia), Bacho Kiro Cave (Bulgaria), Grotta del Cavallo (Italy) and Grotte Mandrin (France) indicate that there were pre-Aurignacian dispersals that potentially placed H. sapiens populations alongside the persisting Neanderthals. While some of these populations can be related to later Eurasians, others seem to represent now-extinct lineages of H. sapiens. It is now known from a growing body of genetic data that this co-existence of H. neanderthalensis and H. sapiens was accompanied by bouts of interbreeding between the two species. It is suggested here that a continuing absorption of Neanderthal individuals into H. sapiens groups could have been one of the factors that led to the demise of the Neanderthals.

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Oldest Human DNA Found in the UK Reveals Origins of Early Britons

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Human remains from Kendrick’s Cave, from which DNA was recently extracted.
Image: R. Stevens

Researchers investigating ancient remains found in England and Wales have determined that they contain some of the oldest human DNA ever obtained in the United Kingdom. The DNA indicates Britain was occupied by two unrelated groups, which the scientists believe migrated to the island at the end of the last ice age.

“Finding the two ancestries so close in time in Britain, only a millennium or so apart, is adding to the emerging picture of [Paleolithic] Europe, which is one of a changing and dynamic population,” said Mateja Hajdinjak, a geneticist specializing in ancient DNA at the Francis Crick Institute, in a University College London release. The research is published today in Nature Ecology & Evolution.

The team looked at DNA from the remains of two individuals, found in caves in England and Wales. The English remains date to about 15,000 years ago, while the Welsh remains date to about 13,500 years ago. The older remains were found in Gough’s Cave, Somerset, and the more recent remains were found in Wales’ Kendrick’s Cave.

When these people were alive, Britain was attached to continental Europe by a now-submerged land bridge called Doggerland. As the climate warmed and glaciers thawed, the sea level rose, cutting off the island.

Both remains are from the late Pleistocene, the epoch characterized by Neanderthals and wooly mammoths and ended with the conclusion of the most recent ice age about 12,000 years ago.

Sequencing the DNA and comparing it to previously analyzed DNA from West Eurasia and North Africa revealed the individuals’ histories. The ancestors of the Gough’s Cave individual arrived from northwestern Europe in a migration about 16,000 years ago, while the Kendrick’s Cave individual appeared to have descended from a western hunter-gatherer group that arrived in Britain about 14,000 years ago, with origins in the near East.

Besides sequencing the DNA of two people, the researchers also conducted chemical analyses of other bones and teeth found at the sites. Those who lived near Kendrick’s Cave likely ate marine and freshwater foods, while those in Gough’s Cave survived on terrestrial mammals like aurochs and red deer.

Gough’s Cave is also where the remains of Cheddar Man were found. Cheddar Man was a lactose-intolerant person who died in his mid-20s about 10,000 years ago, whose remains were discovered in 1903.

“We knew from our previous work, including the study of Cheddar Man, that western hunter-gatherers were in Britain by around 10,500 years [before present], but we didn’t know when they first arrived in Britain, and whether this was the only population that was present,” said study co-author Selina Brace, a paleobiologist at Britain’s Natural History Museum, in the same release.

The groups in the two caves also had different cultural practices. Decorated animal bones—and no bones with signs of consumption—indicated that the cave in Wales was used primarily for burial, rather than occupation. Meanwhile, chewed bones and skulls fashioned into cups in Gough’s Cave indicate that its inhabitants were ritualistic cannibals.

There’s still plenty to decipher about when people arrived in Britain and how those ancient populations interacted, but the new research clues us in on the origins of two early groups.

More: Iron Age Settlement With Large Roundhouses and Roman Trinkets Found in the UK

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Science

First known Neanderthal family found in cave in Russia

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Scientists have uncovered for the first time the remains of a closely related Neanderthal clan, including a family — a father and his daughter — in a Russian cave, offering a rare window into ancient times.

The clan was discovered in one of the largest genetic studies of a Neanderthal population to date, published this week in the journal Nature. Scientists suspect they perished together about 54,000 years ago — perhaps tragically, from starvation or a big storm — in the mountains of southern Siberia. They were living on a rocky cliff top on the outer reaches of Neanderthals’ known range, which extended from the Atlantic regions of Europe to central Asia.

The social organization of Neanderthal populations is not well understood. The latest research suggests that in Siberia at least, Neanderthals lived in groups of 10 to 20 people — similar to present-day mountain gorillas, which are an endangered species.

The study was carried out by a global team of scientists, including Svante Paabo, a Swedish geneticist who won the Nobel Prize for medicine this month for his work mapping our genetic ties to Neanderthals.

Nobel awarded to Swedish scientist who deciphered the Neanderthal genome

Unlike many archaeological sites, which contain fossils built up over long periods, genetic studies on 11 Neanderthals found in the Chagyrskaya Cave — in the Altai Mountains, near the Russian border with Kazakhstan, Mongolia and China — showed many of them were close relatives, suggesting they all lived around the same time.

“Chagyrskaya Cave is basically a moment in time 54,000 years ago when this community lived and died in this cave,” Richard G. Roberts, a scholar at the University of Wollongong in Australia and one of the co-authors of the study, said in an interview.

“Most archaeological sites, things accumulate slowly and tend to get chewed over by hyenas or something else like that,” he said. “You don’t really get sites that full of material. It was packed full of bones, Neanderthal bones, animal bones, artifacts. It’s a moment, literally frozen in time.”

The scientists used DNA extracted from fossils found in Chagyrskaya Cave and from two other Neanderthals found in a nearby cave to map out the relationships between the individuals and to search for clues on how they lived.

Chagyrskaya Cave is perched high on a hillside, overlooking a flood plain where herds of bison and other animals once probably grazed, Roberts said. The researchers found stone tools and bison bones buried in the cave alongside the remains.

Genetic data obtained from teeth and bone fragments showed that the individuals included a father and his daughter, along with a pair of second-degree relatives, possibly an aunt or an uncle, a niece or nephew, Roberts said. The father’s mitochondrial DNA — a set of genes passed from mothers to their children — was also similar to two of the other males in the cave, he said, indicating they probably had a common maternal ancestor.

“They’re so closely related, it’s like a clan really living in this cave,” he said. “The thought that they could go on for generations upon generations seems unlikely. I think probably they all died very closely in time. Maybe it was just a horrendous storm. They are in Siberia, after all.”

The study also revealed that the genetic diversity of Y chromosomes (which are passed down only through the male line) was a lot lower than that of the mitochondrial DNA in the individuals, which the authors said suggests that Neanderthal females were more likely to migrate than males. That pattern is also seen in many human societies, where women marry and move away with their husband’s family before they have children.

Previous work by Paabo, the Swedish geneticist, has shown that Neanderthals mixed with prehistoric humans after they migrated out of Africa, and the vestiges of those interactions live on in the genomes of many present-day people. During the pandemic, he found that a genetic risk factor associated with severe cases of covid-19 was passed down from Neanderthals, carried by about half of people in South Asia and about 1 in 6 in Europe.

The authors say the sample size of the latest study is small and may not be representative of the social lives of the entire Neanderthal population.

“If we could just reproduce [the study] in a couple of other places, then we’d really have a grasp on how Neanderthals ran their lives, maybe some indication as to why they went extinct and we didn’t,” said Roberts, the Australian scholar. “We’re so similar. So why are we the only ones left around on the planet?”

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Science

Ancient DNA gives rare snapshot of Neanderthal family ties

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NEW YORK (AP) — A new study suggests Neanderthals formed small, tightknit communities where females may have traveled to move in with their mates.

The research used genetic sleuthing to offer a rare snapshot of Neanderthal family dynamics — including a father and his teenage daughter who lived together in Siberia more than 50,000 years ago.

Researchers were able to pull DNA out of tiny bone fragments found in two Russian caves. In their study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, they used the genetic data to map out relationships between 13 different Neanderthals and get clues to how they lived.

“When I work on a bone or two, it’s very easy to forget that these are actually people with their own lives and stories,” said study author Bence Viola, an anthropologist at the University of Toronto. “Figuring out how they’re related to each other really makes them much more human.”

Our ancient cousins, the Neanderthals, lived across Europe and Asia for hundreds of thousands of years. They died out around 40,000 years ago, shortly after our species, the Homo sapiens, arrived in Europe from Africa.

Scientists have only recently been able to dig around in these early humans’ DNA. New Nobel laureate Svante Paabo — who is an author on this latest study — published the first draft of a Neanderthal genome a little over a decade ago.

Since then, scientists have sequenced 18 Neanderthal genomes, said lead author Laurits Skov, a geneticist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. But it’s rare to find bones from multiple Neanderthals from the same time and place, he said — which is why these cave discoveries were so special.

“If there was ever a chance to find a Neanderthal community, this would be it,” Skov said.

The caves, located in remote foothills above a river valley, have been a rich source of materials from stone tools to fossil fragments, Viola said. With their prime view of migrating herds in the valley below, researchers think the caves might have served as a short-term hunting stop for Neanderthals.

Archaeologists excavating the caves have found remains from at least a dozen different Neanderthals, Viola said. These remains usually come in small bits and pieces — “a finger bone here, a tooth there” — but they’re enough for scientists to extract valuable DNA details.

The researchers were able to identify a couple of relatives among the group. Along with the father and daughter, there was a pair of other relatives — maybe a boy and his aunt, or a couple of cousins.

Overall, the analysis found that everyone in the group had a lot of DNA in common. That suggests that at least in this area, Neanderthals lived in very small communities of 10 to 20 individuals, the authors concluded.

But not everyone in these groups stayed put, according to the study.

Researchers looked at other genetic clues from mitochondrial DNA, which is passed down on the mother’s side, and the Y chromosome, which is passed down on the father’s side.

The female side showed more genetic differences than the male side — which means females may have moved around more, Skov said. It’s possible that when a female Neanderthal found a mate, she would leave home to live with his family.

University of Wisconsin anthropologist John Hawks, who was not involved in the study, said the research was an exciting application of ancient DNA evidence, even as many questions remain about Neanderthal social structures and lifestyles.

Figuring out how early humans lived is like “putting together a puzzle where we have many, many missing pieces,” Hawks said. But this study means “somebody’s dumped a bunch more pieces on the table.”

———

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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Health

Neanderthal DNA May Provide Clues About the Genetic Risks for Brain Disorders and Addiction

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Summary: Traits with the strongest Neanderthal DNA contribution were sleep patterns, smoking habits, and alcohol consumption.

Source: Estonian Research Council

It has been known for a long time that human brain disorders such as neurological or psychiatric diseases run in families, suggesting some heritability. In line with this hypothesis, genetic risk factors for developing these illnesses have been identified.

However, fundamental questions about the evolutionary drivers have remained elusive. In other words, why are genetic variants that increase the risk for diseases not eliminated in the course of evolution?

To answer these questions has been notoriously difficult. However, new discoveries about events in the deep human past have handed scientists new tools to start to unravel these mysteries: when modern humans moved out of Africa >60,000 years ago, they met and mixed with other archaic humans such as Neandertals.

Around 40% of the Neandertal genome can still be found in present-day non-Africans, and each individual still carries ~2% of Neandertal DNA. Some of the archaic genetic variants may have conferred benefits at some point in our evolutionary past.

Today, scientists can use this information to learn more about the impact of these genetic variants on human behaviour and the risk of developing diseases.

Using this approach, a new study from an international team led by researchers from the University of Tartu, Charité Berlin and the Amsterdam UMC analysed Neandertal DNA associations with a large variety of more than a hundred brain disorders and traits such as sleep, smoking or alcohol use in the UK Biobank with the aim to narrow down the specific contribution of Neandertal DNA to variation in behavioural features in people today.

The study found that while Neandertal DNA showed over-proportional numbers of associations with several traits that are associated with central nervous system diseases, the diseases themselves did not show any significant numbers of Neandertal DNA associations.

Among the traits with the strongest Neandertal DNA contribution were smoking habits, alcohol consumption and sleeping patterns. Using data from other cohorts such as the Estonian Biobank, the Netherlands Study of Depression and Anxiety, FinnGen, Biobank Japan and deCode, several of these results could be replicated.

Of specific note were two independent top-risk Neandertal variants for a positive smoking status that were found in the UK Biobank and Biobank Japan respectively.

“Our results suggest that Neandertals carried multiple variants that substantially increase the smoking risk in people today. It remains unclear what phenotypic effects these variants had in Neandertals.

“However, these results provide interesting candidates for further functional testing and will potentially help us in the future to better understand Neandertal-specific biology,” said Michael Dannemann, associate professor of evolutionary genomics at the University of Tartu and the lead author of this study.

“The significant associations of Neandertal DNA with alcohol and smoking habits might help us to unravel the evolutionary origin of addictive and reward-seeking behaviour,” added Stefan M Gold, professor of neuropsychiatry at Charité, Berlin, who co-led this study.

Around 40% of the Neandertal genome can still be found in present-day non-Africans, and each individual still carries ~2% of Neandertal DNA. Image is in the public domain

“It is important to note that sleep problems, alcohol and nicotine use have consistently been identified as common risk factors for a range of neurological and psychiatric disorders. On the other hand, there are some intriguing findings from anthropology that have suggested some social benefits of higher tolerance to these substances in hunter-gatherers.

“Thus, our findings support the hypothesis that it is not brain diseases themselves that have evolutionary explanations but that natural selection shapes traits that make us vulnerable to them in the modern context.”

“Neandertals populated parts of Eurasia already more than 100,000 years before modern humans went out of Africa to populate the rest of the world. The high frequency of some of the variants that are associated with varying sleeping patterns might suggest that these have been advantageous outside of Africa – an environment that is defined, for example, by different levels of seasonality and UV light exposures than the environment that modern humans evolved in,” added Dannemann.

About this genetics and evolutionary neuroscience research news

Author: Carlos Kuiv
Source: Estonian Research Council
Contact: Carlos Kuiv – Estonian Research Council
Image: The image is in the public domain

See also

Original Research: Open access.
“Neandertal introgression partitions the genetic landscape of neuropsychiatric disorders and associated behavioral phenotypes” by Michael Dannemann et al. Translational Psychiatry

Abstract

Neandertal introgression partitions the genetic landscape of neuropsychiatric disorders and associated behavioral phenotypes

Despite advances in identifying the genetic basis of psychiatric and neurological disorders, fundamental questions about their evolutionary origins remain elusive.

Here, introgressed variants from archaic humans such as Neandertals can serve as an intriguing research paradigm.

We compared the number of associations for Neandertal variants to the number of associations of frequency-matched non-archaic variants with regard to human CNS disorders (neurological and psychiatric), nervous system drug prescriptions (as a proxy for disease), and related, non-disease phenotypes in the UK biobank (UKBB).

While no enrichment for Neandertal genetic variants were observed in the UKBB for psychiatric or neurological disease categories, we found significant associations with certain behavioral phenotypes including pain, chronotype/sleep, smoking and alcohol consumption.

In some instances, the enrichment signal was driven by Neandertal variants that represented the strongest association genome-wide. SNPs within a Neandertal haplotype that was associated with smoking in the UKBB could be replicated in four independent genomics datasets.

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Differences in human and Neanderthal brains revealed

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Now, an intriguing study released September 8 has revealed a potential difference that may have given modern humans, or Homo sapiens, a cognitive advantage over the Neanderthals, the Stone Age hominins who lived in Europe and parts of Asia before going extinct about 40,000 years ago.

Scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden, Germany, said they have identified a genetic mutation that triggered the faster creation of neurons in the Homo sapiens brain. The Neanderthal variant of the gene in question, known as TKTL1, differs from the modern human variant by one amino acid.

“We’ve identified a gene that contributes to making us human,” said study author Wieland Huttner, professor and director emeritus at the institute.

When the two versions of the gene were inserted into mice embryos, the research team found that the modern human variant of the gene resulted in an increase in a specific type of… cell that creates neurons in the neocortex region of the brain. The scientists also tested the two gene variants in ferret embryos and lab-grown brain tissue made from human stem cells, called organoids, with similar results.

The team reasoned that this ability to produce more neurons likely gave Homo sapiens a cognitive edge unrelated to overall brain size, suggesting that modern humans have “more neocortex to work with than the ancient Neanderthal did,” according to the study published in the journal Science.

“This shows us that even though we do not know how many neurons the Neanderthal brain had, we can assume that modern humans have more neurons in the frontal lobe of the brain, where TKTL1 activity is highest, than Neanderthals,” Huttner explained.

“There has been a discussion whether or not the frontal lobe of Neanderthals was as large as that of modern humans,” he added.

“But we don’t need to care because (from this research) we know that modern humans must have had more neurons in the frontal lobe … and we think that that is an advantage for cognitive abilities.”

‘Premature’ finding

Alysson Muotri, professor and director of the Stem Cell Program and Archealization Center at the University of California San Diego, said while the animal experiments revealed “quite a dramatic difference” in neuron production, the difference was more subtle in the organoids. He was not involved in the research.

“This was only done in one cell line, and since we have huge variability with this protocol of brain organoids, it would be ideal to repeat the experiments with a second cell line,” he said via email.

It was also possible the archaic version of the TKTL1 gene was not unique to Neanderthals, Muotri noted. Most genomic databases have focused on Western Europeans, and it’s possible human populations in other parts of the world might share the Neanderthal version of that gene.

“I think it is quite premature to suggest differences between Neanderthal and modern human cognition,” he said.

Archaeological finds in recent years have suggested that Neanderthals were more sophisticated than pop culture depictions of brutish cavemen might suggest. Our ancient relatives knew how to survive in cold and warm climates and used complex tools. They also made yarn, swam and created art.

Study coauthor and geneticist Svante Pääbo, director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, pioneered efforts to extract, sequence and analyze ancient DNA from Neanderthal bones.

His work led to the discovery in 2010 that early humans interbred with Neanderthals. Scientists have subsequently compared the Neanderthal genome with the genetic records of living humans today to see how our genes overlap and differ: TKTL1 is just one of dozens of identified genetic differences, while some shared genes may have implications for human health.

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Science

Randy NEANDERTHAL may be to blame for the gene that caused up to a million people to die from Covid

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A single amorous Neanderthal may be to blame for transmitting a genetic quirk to up to a million people who died from Covid. 

To date, worldwide, around 6.3 million people have died from the coronavirus which caused the pandemic.

A huge number have lost their lives because they have a relatively common genetic quirk which makes the lungs more susceptible to infection.

Now the expert whose research identified the effect of the genetic difference on the lungs has said it came from just one single ‘romantic liaison’ between a Neanderthal and a member of our own human species.

Had this one sexual act not happened 60,000 years ago, many lives would have been saved from the deadly virus. 

Neanderthals were a species that lived alongside humans tens of thousands of years ago and were very similar in appearance and size but were generally stockier and more muscular (Pictured: A replica of a male Neanderthal head in London’s Natural History Museum)

WHO WERE NEANDERTHALS? 

Neanderthals were a close human ancestor that mysteriously died out around 40,000 years ago.

The species lived in Africa with early humans for millennia before moving across to Europe around 300,000 years ago.

They were later joined by humans, who entered Eurasia around 48,000 years ago.  

These were the original ‘cavemen’, historically thought to be dim-witted and brutish.

But in recent years, evidence points to a more sophisticated and multi-talented kind of ‘caveman’.

It now seems likely that Neanderthals buried their dead, painted and even interbred with humans.     

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Professor James Davies, associate professor of genomics at Oxford University’s Radcliffe Department of Medicine, told Cheltenham Science Festival: ‘If you stop and think about it, this comes from a single interspecies relationship and a single child.

‘And if the dinner date between the human and the Neanderthal had gone wrong, we would have had a much better time in Covid, and had hundreds of thousands fewer deaths.’

Asked for a rough estimate of exactly how many people may have died from Covid as a result of the 60,000-year-old sex act, he said: ‘It’s in the hundreds of thousands to a million.’

The role of the Neanderthals in making humans more susceptible to Covid was first revealed in 2020.

But the one-off ‘romantic liaison’ behind it was revealed by careful analysis of ‘letters’ in our genetic code.

DNA is made up of thousand of combinations of the letters A, C, G and T, which represent four different chemicals.

But people with the high-risk genetic quirk for Covid have exactly the same 28 differences in the letters of their genetic code.

That makes it almost certain they are all descended from the same two people, rather than the product of lots of Neanderthals having sex with many Homo sapiens. 

DNA is made up of four building blocks called nucleotides – adenine (A), thymine (T), guanine (G), and cytosine (C)

NEANDERTHAL GENES LINKED TO SEVERE SYMPTOMS OF COVID

It’s already thought that Neanderthal genes are a cause of more severe symptoms of Covid. 

A genetic variation is present in modern-day humans because our ancestors had sex with Neanderthals about 60,000 years ago. 

People who have the variation, found on chromosome three, are up to three times more likely to need ventilation if they catch the virus. 

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Professor Davies told the science festival: ‘We think it’s a single romantic liaison, and the reason we know that is that it’s inherited as this block with 28 single-letter changes, and you can track that all the way back and it has to be a single event.’

Simon Underdown, professor of biological anthropology at Oxford Brookes University, who also addressed the festival audience, said: ‘I want you to keep in mind, when we start thinking about the time when Neanderthals and Homo sapiens bumped into each other and went on that dinner date, just how far back in time this was, and 60,000-odd years later, we are seeing the impact of that encounter in the world today in more severe forms of Covid.’

He added: ‘The average Neanderthal group size is estimated to be about 20 to 25 individuals, so these are tiny, tiny little groups dotted across a continental scale.’

He described the chances of Neanderthals bumping into each other, let alone Homo sapiens, as ‘unlikely’, making the sexual encounter that introduced the Covid-related gene into modern humans remarkable.

Once the Neanderthals and Homo sapiens met, they are unlikely to have realised they were different species, so happily interbred.

The genetic variation which some people now have, and came from the Neanderthals, is linked to a gene called LZTFL1 and is believed to act on lung cells.

These cells develop more of an important protein on their surface, which the coronavirus is able to latch on to and spread through the lungs, causing more damage which can be deadly.

The genetic quirk is more common in people of south Asian origin, and could partially explain the high death toll in India during the pandemic.

Professor Davies said: ‘If you stop and think about it, this comes from a single interspecies relationship and a single child.

‘And if the dinner date between the human and the Neanderthal had gone wrong, we would have had a much better time in Covid, and had hundred of thousand fewer deaths.’

However Neanderthal genes have also been suggested to help humans by making us more intelligent, helping us quickly adapt to new diets and boosting the immune system to help fight off harmful viruses and bacteria.

GENES, GENOMES AND DNA: A PRIMER  

Gene: a short section of DNA

Chromosome: a package of genes and other bits of DNA and proteins

Genome: an organism’s complete set of DNA

DNA: Deoxyribonucleic acid – a long molecule that contains unique genetic code 

Your genome is the instructions for making and maintaining you. It is written in a chemical code called DNA. All living things – plants, bacteria, viruses and animals – have a genome.

Your genome is all 3.2 billion letters of your DNA. It contains around 20,000 genes.

Genes are the instructions for making the proteins our bodies are built of – from the keratin in hair and fingernails to the antibody proteins that fight infection. 

Source: Genomics England/Your Genome/Cancer Research

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Science

Fossil discovery of 5 mammoths with Neanderthal tools reveals life in ice age

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The well-preserved mammoth remains belonged to two adults, two juveniles and an infant. Their bones were found alongside a Neanderthal hand axe and small flint scrapers that were used to clean animal hides.

Items at this site are so well preserved that the archaeologists also found the remains of brown bears, steppe bison, seeds, pollen, the delicate wings of beetles and freshwater snail shells. Together, they tell the story of the environment of the site hundreds of thousands of years ago.

It’s a rare look back in time that will help researchers better understand the emergence of Neanderthals and what life was like for our ancient human ancestors and giant creatures like mammoths amid a rapidly changing climate.

The dig site is also the subject of a new Sir David Attenborough documentary, “Attenborough and the Mammoth Graveyard,” premiering on the BBC Thursday. Attenborough and Ben Garrod, an evolutionary biologist and professor of evolutionary biology and science engagement at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, joined DigVentures at the site for excavations. DigVentures is a team of archaeologists that promotes public participation in digs and research projects.

The research continues as to why the site is home to so many mammoth remains and if they were actively hunted or just scavenged by our Neanderthal ancestors.

Researchers estimate the site was used by Neanderthals between 210,000 and 220,000 years ago when they still lived in Britain before the plummeting temperatures of the impending ice age drove them out 200,000 years ago. Currently, there is no evidence that they lived there between 60,000 and 180,000 years ago.

Remains, including tusks, leg bones, vertebrae and ribs, were also found that belonged to a species of steppe mammoth, which was smaller and less hairy than its woolly mammoth descendants. Some steppe mammoths reached about 13 feet (4 meters) at the shoulder, but the diminutive bones of the one they found show how these creatures shrank in size in response to an increasingly cold climate.

Fossil hunters Sally and Neville Hollingworth first found the hand axe and some mammoth remains at the Swindon quarry in 2017. DigVentures then conducted excavations at the site in 2019 and 2021.

“We were originally hoping to find marine fossils, and finding something so significant instead has been a real thrill,” Sally Hollingworth said in a statement from a release. “Even better than that is seeing it turn into a major archaeological excavation led by DigVentures, and a BBC documentary presented by David Attenborough. We couldn’t be more pleased that something we’ve discovered will be learned from and enjoyed by so many people.”

Some of the bones will be analyzed to see how Neanderthals butchered and processed them.

“Words can’t quite capture the thrill of seeing a mammoth tusk still in the ground, or the feeling of standing in the middle of a site that has the potential to change how we see our closest human relatives and the Ice Age megafauna they shared their world with,” said Lisa Westcott Wilkins, co-founder of DigVentures, in a statement.

“There is still so much more to be uncovered here. The collaboration between scientists, landowners, and enthusiasts has been crucial, and we are already looking at how to continue the investigations and are exploring different ways that members of the public might be able to be part of it.”

DigVentures archaeologists will continue to study the site and plan to launch a project called PalaeoPixels that will invite teenagers to work with some of the material.

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Science

Archaeologists unearth skeletons of five prehistoric elephants after finding Neanderthal axe

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Archaeologists have unearthed the skeletons of five prehistoric mammoths at a site ‘where cave-dwellers dined 215,000 years ago’ after finding a Neanderthal axe in a Cotswolds field.

Experts discovered the remains of five of the animals – two adults, two juveniles and an infant – at a quarry near Swindon.

Digging at the site began after two keen fossil hunters, Sally and Neville Hollingworth, spotted a Neanderthal hand axe at the site.

Experts from DigVentures then went on to find remains belonging to a species of Steppe mammoth, an ancestor of the Woolly mammoth. 

Other discoveries at the site included delicate beetle wings and fragile freshwater snail shells as well as stone tools from the Neanderthal age.  

The site will feature in Attenborough And The Mammoth Graveyard on BBC1 on December 30.

The site will feature in Attenborough And The Mammoth Graveyard (above) on BBC1 on December 30

Experts discovered the remains of five of the animals – two adults, two juveniles and an infant – at a quarry near Swindon. Pictured: Conservation on a mammoth tusk

The illustration represents a reconstruction of the steppe mammoths that preceded the woolly mammoth, based on the genetic knowledge we now have from the Adycha mammoth

Sir David Attenborough will join Professor Ben Garrod and archaeologists from DigVentures to learn why the mammoths were there and how they died.

The discovery of the Neanderthal tools could mean the site was a ‘massive buffet’, according to experts. 

Prof Garrod, of the University of East Anglia, said: ‘This is gold dust. It could be that Neanderthals were camping there, maybe they caused the deaths of these animals, chasing them into the mud and enjoying a massive buffet.’

‘Maybe they found them there already and got a free meal,’ he told the Telegraph.

‘If the lab shows the cut-marks are human-made, our site will be one of the oldest scientifically excavated sites with Neanderthals butchering mammoths in Britain.’

Steppe mammoths lived from approximately 1.8million years ago to about 200,000 years ago.

Lisa Westcott Wilkins, from DigVentures, said: ‘Finding mammoth bones is always extraordinary, but finding ones that are so old and well preserved, and in such close proximity to Neanderthal stone tools is exceptional.

‘Words can’t quite capture the thrill of seeing a mammoth tusk still in the ground, or the feeling of standing in the middle of a site that has the potential to change how we see our closest human relatives and the Ice Age megafauna they shared their world with.’

Digging at the site began after two keen fossil hunters, Sally and Neville Hollingworth, spotted a Neanderthal hand axe at the site

Experts from DigVentures then went on to find remains belonging to a species of Steppe mammoth, an ancestor of the Woolly mammoth

Other discoveries at the site included delicate beetle wings and fragile freshwater snail shells as well as stone tools from the Neanderthal age

Sir David Attenborough will join Professor Ben Garrod and archaeologists from DigVentures to learn why the mammoths were there and how they died

The discovery of the Neanderthal tools could mean the site was a ‘massive buffet’, according to experts

Ms Hollingworth, of Swindon, told the BBC: ‘We were originally hoping to find marine fossils, and finding something so significant instead has been a real thrill.

‘Even better than that is seeing it turn into a major archaeological excavation

‘We couldn’t be more pleased that something we’ve discovered will be learned from and enjoyed by so many people.’

Research is ongoing to understand why so many mammoths were found in one place, and whether they were hunted or scavenged by Neanderthals.

Steppe mammoths lived from approximately 1.8million years ago to about 200,000 years ago. Pictured: Mammoth bones from Hollingsworth and DigVentures collections combined

Research is ongoing to understand why so many mammoths were found in one place, and whether they were hunted or scavenged by Neanderthals. Pictured: A mammoth tooth

Duncan Wilson, chief Executive of Historic England, said: ‘This represents one of Britain’s most significant Ice Age discoveries in recent years.

‘The findings have enormous value for understanding the human occupation of Britain, and the delicate environmental evidence recovered will also help us understand it in the context of past climate change.’

DigVentures is a team of archaeologists which also organise archaeological digs that are open to members of the public to join.

Can the woolly mammoth be brought back from extinction?

The woolly mammoth was around the same size as an African Elephant and roamed Eurasia thousands of years ago before its extinction.

Its fur meant It was perfectly adapted to the cold environment during the last ice age. 

Scientists believe their extinction was a result of climate change and being hunted by humans.

Remains of the woolly mammoth have been found on most continents except for Australasia and South America.

And because many mammoth corpses are so well preserved, scientists have been able to extract DNA from the animals. 

One particularly good specimen was a female mammoth in her 50s, nicknamed Buttercup who was a female mammoth that lived around 40,000 years ago.

Experiments in Russia have involved searching for and studying whole cells in the remains of well-preserved ancient animals to see if it is possible to clone them after they’ve become extinct.

The research is highly contested – one objection is that the mammoth’s habitat on Earth isn’t the same anymore. Another is that microbes have changed dramatically over 10,000 years.

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Science

Remains of three Denisovans and one Neanderthal are uncovered in a Siberian cave 

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Remains of three Denisovans and one Neanderthal dating back 200,000 years have been uncovered in a Siberian cave, experts reveal.

The newly-found fossils were uncovered from the famous Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains, southern Siberia, surrounded by archaeological remains such as stone tools and fossilised food waste.  

Neanderthals were a close human ancestor that lived in Europe and Western Asia from about 400,000 to 40,000 years ago.

Less is known about the Denisovans, another population of early humans who lived in Asia at least 80,000 years ago and were distantly related to Neanderthals.

Dating to 200,000 years ago, the new Denisovan bones are some of the oldest human fossils to have ever been genetically sequenced. 

The fact that the remains of both Neanderthals and Denisovans were found together raises questions about whether the two archaic human types lived there.  

Bone fragments taken from the cave that were used for molecular analysis. The analysis revealed three bone fragments as Denisovan and one as Neanderthal

NEANDERTHALS AND DENISOVANS 

Neanderthals were very early (archaic) humans who lived in Europe and Western Asia from about 400,000 years ago until they became extinct about 40,000 years ago. 

Denisovans are another population of early humans who lived in Asia and were distantly related to Neanderthals.

Much less is known about the Denisovans because scientists have uncovered fewer fossils of these ancient people.

The precise way that modern humans, Neanderthals, and Denisovans are related is still under study. 

However, research has shown that modern humans overlapped with Neanderthal and Denisovan populations for a period, and that they had children together (interbred). 

As a result, many people living today have a small amount of genetic material from these distant ancestors. 

Source: National Institutes of Health 

It’s already known that Denisovans diverged from Neanderthals. Both also bred with humans around 50,000 years ago, meaning the DNA of the early hominids survives today.

The new findings are detailed in Nature Ecology and Evolution by an international team, led by researchers from the Universities of Vienna and Tübingen, and the Max Planck Society in Munich, Germany.

In all, five hominin bones were found in the cave, including four that had enough DNA for mitochondrial analysis and identification – three as Denisovan and one as Neanderthal.

‘Finding one new human bone would have been cool, but five? This exceeded my wildest dreams,’ said study author Samantha Brown at the University of Tübingen. 

‘Denisovans are one of our most recent ancestors, and many people today still carry a small percentage of Denisovan DNA,’ Brown told USA Today, but she noted that there is still ‘very little information’ about this group. 

Denisovans are thought to have appeared at the site during an interglacial – a warm period during which the environment and temperatures were similar to today. 

It seems they had a ‘fully-fledged lithic tradition’, making use of raw material found in the alluvium of the nearby Anui River and hunting herbivores, such as bison, roe and red deer, gazelle and saiga antelope, and even woolly rhinoceros.  

Around 130,000 to 150,000 years ago, Neanderthals also appeared at the site, represented by the one newly-discovered Neanderthal fossil.

The remains were discovered at the Denisova Cave (entrance pictured here) in the Altai Mountains, southern Siberia

FILIPINO ETHNIC GROUP HAVE THE MOST DENISOVAN DNA, STUDY FINDS 

Modern-day people in the Philippines have the most Denisovan DNA in the world, a 2021 study found. 

Researchers in Sweden have found that the Philippine Negrito ethnic group known as the Ayta Magbukon have the highest level of Denisovan ancestry today.

The Ayta Magbukon people, who occupy the Philippines’ Bataan Peninsula, have more Denisovan DNA than the Papuan Highlanders, who were previously known as the present-day population with the highest level of Denisovan ancestry. 

Read more: Ayta Magbukon people have most Denisovan DNA in the world

Denisova Cave rose to fame 11 years ago, when genetic sequencing of a fossilised finger bone revealed a new, previously unknown human group – named ‘Denisovans’, in honour of the site.

But identifying further Denisovan remains at the cave has been challenging, as any human remains are fragmented and difficult to spot amongst hundreds of thousands of animal bones also present. 

Over the course of four years, a team led by anthropologist Katerina Douka at the University of Vienna worked to extract and analyse ancient proteins and DNA from nearly 4,000 bone fragments from Denisova Cave.   

The scientists used a biomolecular method known as peptide fingerprinting or ‘ZooMS’ – which uses collagen or other proteins preserved in archaeological artefacts to identify the species from which they derive.  

Such methods are the only means by which scientists could find human remains among the thousands of bones from the site, as more than 95 per cent were too fragmented for standard identification methods. 

The team focused on Denisova Cave’s oldest layers, which date to as early as 200,000 years ago. 

Brown analysed 3,800 bone fragments no larger than 1.5 inches in length that were previously deemed ‘taxonomically unidentifiable’.

However, she finally identified five bones whose collagen matched the peptide profile of humans. 

‘We were stunned to discover new human bone fragments preserving intact biomolecules from such ancient layers,’ said Douka.   

Research at Denisova Cave continues through fieldwork and targeted analyses of bones and sediments with a team of Russian archaeologists camped there for nearly six months each year.  

Excavations in the eastern chamber of Denisova Cave. The cave rose to fame 11 years ago, when genetic sequencing of a fossilised finger bone revealed a new, previously unknown human group – the Denisovans

Denisova Cave remains the only site so far discovered which contains evidence for the periodic presence of all three major hominin groups, Denisovans, Neanderthals and modern humans, in the last 200,000 years.              

Earlier this year, scientists reported that DNA discovered in Denisova Cave suggests early modern humans lived alongside Denisovans and Neanderthals at least 44,000 years ago. 

Last October, another team reported the discovery of Denisovan DNA in the Baishiya Karst Cave in Tibet.  

This discovery marked the first time Denisovan DNA has been recovered from a location that is outside Denisova Cave in Siberia, Russia.  

In August 2020, researchers revealed that DNA from an unknown ancient ancestor of humans that bred with Denisovans is still around today.  

THE DENISOVANS EXPLAINED

Who were they?

The Denisovans are an extinct species of human that appear to have lived in Siberia and even down as far as southeast Asia.

The individuals belonged to a genetically distinct group of humans that were distantly related to Neanderthals but even more distantly related to us. 

Although remains of these mysterious early humans have mostly been discovered at the Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains in Siberia, DNA analysis has shown the ancient people were widespread across Asia. 

Scientists were able to analyse DNA from a tooth and from a finger bone excavated in the Denisova cave in southern Siberia.

The discovery was described as ‘nothing short of sensational.’ 

In 2020, scientists reported Denisovan DNA in the Baishiya Karst Cave in Tibet.

This discovery marked the first time Denisovan DNA had been recovered from a location that is outside Denisova Cave. 

How widespread were they?

Researchers are now beginning to find out just how big a part they played in our history. 

DNA from these early humans has been found in the genomes of modern humans over a wide area of Asia, suggesting they once covered a vast range.

They are thought to have been a sister species of the Neanderthals, who lived in western Asia and Europe at around the same time.

The two species appear to have separated from a common ancestor around 200,000 years ago, while they split from the modern human Homo sapien lineage around 600,000 years ago.

Last year researchers even claimed they could have been the first to reach Australia.

Aboriginal people in Australia contain both Neanderthal DNA, as do most humans, and Denisovan DNA.

This latter genetic trace is present in Aboriginal people at the present day in much greater quantities than any other people around the world.

 How advanced were they?

Bone and ivory beads found in the Denisova Cave were discovered in the same sediment layers as the Denisovan fossils, leading to suggestions they had sophisticated tools and jewellery.

Professor Chris Stringer, an anthropologist at the Natural History Museum in London, said: ‘Layer 11 in the cave contained a Denisovan girl’s fingerbone near the bottom but worked bone and ivory artefacts higher up, suggesting that the Denisovans could have made the kind of tools normally associated with modern humans.

‘However, direct dating work by the Oxford Radiocarbon Unit reported at the ESHE meeting suggests the Denisovan fossil is more than 50,000 years old, while the oldest ‘advanced’ artefacts are about 45,000 years old, a date which matches the appearance of modern humans elsewhere in Siberia.’

Did they breed with other species?

Yes. Today, around 5 per cent of the DNA of some Australasians – particularly people from Papua New Guinea – is Denisovans.

Now, researchers have found two distinct modern human genomes – one from Oceania and another from East Asia – both have distinct Denisovan ancestry.

The genomes are also completely different, suggesting there were at least two separate waves of prehistoric intermingling between 200,000 and 50,000 years ago.

Researchers already knew people living today on islands in the South Pacific have Denisovan ancestry.

But what they did not expect to find was individuals from East Asia carry a uniquely different type.

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