Neanderthal Family Structure Revealed

Author: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Published: 2022/10/19 - Updated: 2023/01/04
Peer Reviewed Publication: Yes
Category Topic: Anthropology and Disability - Academic Publications

Page Content: Synopsis - Introduction - Main

Synopsis: Ancient genomes of thirteen Neandertals provide a rare snapshot of their lifestyle, community, and social organization. To explore the social structure of Neandertals, the researchers turned their attention to southern Siberia, a region that has previously been very fruitful for ancient DNA research - including the discovery of Denisovan hominin remains at Denisova Cave.

Defining Neandertal

Neandertal

Neandertals, Homo neanderthalensis or Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, is an extinct species of archaic humans that lived in Eurasia. Demographic factors like small population size, inbreeding, and random fluctuations are likely causes of Neanderthal disappearance about 40,000 years ago. Others have proposed assimilation into the modern human genome, significant climatic change, disease, or a combination of these factors. A few scientific publications prefer the name Neandertal. Neanderthal, the original spelling, was derived from the German valley where Neanderthal fossils were first discovered. In 1901, however, the German name of the valley was officially changed to Neandertal.

Denisovan

The Denisovans or Denisova hominins are an extinct species or subspecies of archaic humans that ranged across Asia during the Lower and Middle Paleolithic. Denisovans are known from few physical remains; consequently, most of what is known about them comes from DNA evidence. The first identification of a Denisovan individual occurred in 2010, based on mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) extracted from a juvenile female finger bone excavated from the Siberian Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains in 2008. Denisovans apparently interbred with modern humans, with the highest percentages (roughly 5%) occurring in Melanesians, Aboriginal Australians, and Filipino Negritos. This distribution suggests Denisovan populations across Eurasia, the Philippines, New Guinea, and Australia.

Introduction

Genetic Insights into the Social Organization of Neanderthals

The first Neandertal draft genome was published in 2010. Since then, researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology have sequenced a further 18 genomes from 14 different archaeological sites throughout Eurasia. While these genomes have provided insights into the broader strokes of Neandertal history, we still know little of individual Neandertal communities.

Main Content

To explore the social structure of Neandertals, the researchers turned their attention to southern Siberia, a region that has previously been very fruitful for ancient DNA research - including the discovery of Denisovan hominin remains at the famous Denisova Cave. From work done at that site, we know that Neandertals and Denisovans were present in this region over hundreds of thousands of years and that Neandertals and Denisovans have interacted with each other - as the finding of a child with a Denisovan father and a Neandertal mother has shown.

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An artist's impression of a Neandertal father and his daughter - Image Credit: Tom Bjorklund.

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First Neandertal Community

In their new study, the researchers focused on the Neandertal remains in Chagyrskaya and Okladnikov Caves, which are within 100 kilometers of Denisova Cave. Neandertals briefly occupied these sites around 54,000 years ago, and multiple potentially contemporaneous Neandertal remains have been recovered from their deposits. The researchers successfully retrieved DNA from 17 Neandertal remains - the largest number of Neandertal remains ever sequenced in a single study.

Chagyrskaya Cave has been excavated over the last 14 years by researchers from the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, Russian Academy of Sciences. Besides several hundred thousand stone tools and animal bones, they also recovered more than 80 bone and tooth fragments of Neandertals, one of the largest assemblages of these fossil humans in the region and the world.

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Chagyrskaya Cave, Siberia. Chagyrskaya Cave, about 100km from Denisova Cave, is located in the mountains of the northwest part of the Altai region, Russia. The cave faces north and is situated at an elevation of 25m above the river level and consists of two chambers with a total area of c. 130m2 - Image Credit: Bence Viola.

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The Neandertals at Chagyrskaya and Okladnikov hunted ibex, horses, bison, and other animals that migrated through the river valleys that the caves overlook. They collected raw materials for their stone tools dozens of kilometers away, and the occurrence of the same raw material at both Chagyrskaya and Okladnikov Caves also supports the genetic data that the groups inhabiting these localities were closely linked.

Previous studies of a fossil toe from Denisova cave showed that Neandertals inhabited the Altai mountains considerably earlier, around 120,000 years ago. Genetic data shows that the Neandertals from Chagyrskaya and Okladnikov Caves are not descendants of these earlier groups but are closely related to European Neandertals. The archaeological material also supports this: the stone tools from Chagyrskaya Cave are most similar to the so-called Micoquian culture known from Germany and Eastern Europe.

The 17 remains came from 13 Neandertal individuals - 7 men and six women, of which 8 were adults and 5 were children and young adolescents. In their mitochondrial DNA, the researchers found several so-called heteroplasmies that were shared between individuals. Heteroplasmies are a special kind of genetic variant that only persists for a small number of generations.

The Easternmost Neandertals

Among these remains were those of a Neandertal father and his teenage daughter. The researchers also found a pair of second-degree relatives: a young boy and an adult female, perhaps a cousin, aunt, or grandmother. The combination of heteroplasmies and related individuals strongly suggests that the Neandertals in Chagyrskaya Cave must have lived - and died - at around the same time.

"The fact that they were living at the same time is very exciting. This means that they likely came from the same social community. So, for the first time, we can use genetics to study the social organization of a Neandertal community," says Laurits Skov, the first author of this study.

Another striking finding is the extremely low genetic diversity within this Neandertal community, consistent with a group size of 10 to 20 individuals. This is much lower than those recorded for any ancient or present-day human community and is more similar to the group sizes of endangered species on the verge of extinction.

However, Neandertals didn't live in completely isolated communities. By comparing the genetic diversity of the Y-chromosome, which is inherited father-to-son, with the mitochondrial DNA diversity inherited from mothers, the researchers could answer the question: Was it the men or the women who moved between communities? They found that the mitochondrial genetic diversity was much higher than the Y chromosome diversity, which suggests that these Neandertal communities were primarily linked by female migration. Despite the proximity to Denisova Cave, these migrations do not appear to have involved Denisovans - the researchers found no evidence of Denisovan gene flow in the Chagyrskaya Neandertals in the last 20,000 years before these individuals lived.

"Our study provides a concrete picture of what a Neandertal community may have looked like," says Benjamin Peter, the last author of the study. "It makes Neandertals seem much more human to me."

Related Information

Attribution/Source(s): This peer reviewed publication was selected for publishing by the editors of Disabled World (DW) due to its relevance to the disability community. Originally authored by Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and published on 2022/10/19, this content may have been edited for style, clarity, or brevity.