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Neanderthals in Northwestern Europe Lived in Connected Communities — Challenging Ideas About Their Extinction
DNA from 27 remains suggests late Neanderthals formed a connected regional population and passed genes to early modern humans, researchers said.
- A study published in Nature reports that late Neanderthals in Western Europe were genetically healthy and lived in large, well-connected groups, challenging the hypothesis that inbreeding caused their extinction around 40,000 years ago.
- Previous research relied on samples from Siberia, where harsh conditions likely isolated populations, leading experts to assume Neanderthals suffered from genetic deterioration throughout their range.
- Evolutionary anthropologist Alba Bossoms Mesa and her team sequenced 27 Neanderthal genomes from 10 sites across Belgium and France, finding no genetic hallmarks of inbreeding seen in eastern populations.
- Senior author Benjamin Peter of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology said results indicate late Neanderthals belonged to a connected regional population, not small isolated groups with frequent close-relative mating.
- While the findings challenge theories of steady genetic deterioration, scientists note that Neanderthal extinction remains a mystery, with different regions likely experiencing varying demographic decline or interaction with early modern humans.
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Genetic diversity of late Neanderthals in northwestern Europe
Archaeological, osteological and genetic evidence suggests that Neanderthals lived in small groups1,2; however, less is known about whether these groups were part of isolated communities or belonged to larger, well-connected populations3. The dense concentration of broadly contemporaneous Neanderthal sites in the Meuse Basin, Belgium4, provides a rare opportunity to study regional populations at high resolution. Here we generated genetic data fr…
·United Kingdom
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A research published in 'Nature' shows that Neanderthals in northwestern Europe presented greater genetic variability than was thought, leading authors to question whether this was one of the causes of their extinction. Read
·Madrid, Spain
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Total News Sources11
Leaning Left3Leaning Right1Center5Last UpdatedBias Distribution56% Center
Bias Distribution
- 56% of the sources are Center
56% Center
L 33%
C 56%
11%
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