50,000 years ago, a family of Neanderthals lived in a Siberian cave, whose women moved more than men: a genetic study published today outlines the “social organization” of their distant, now-extinct human relatives.

OUR genome sequencing Neanderthal by the Swede Svante Paabo, recently awarded Nobel Prize in Medicinemade it possible to trace the history of these hominids, who inhabited western Eurasia 430,000–40,000 years ago.

Thanks to archaeological research work today we know that some Neanderthals buried their dead, made tools and even ornaments – nothing to do with the image of unsophisticated primitive people that accompanied them for years. But we know little about the social structure of their groups. Genetic sequencing of an entire group, the largest ever done for these hominids, paints a small picture.

The action takes place in the south of Siberia, in Russia, in a region very fertile for the study of ancient DNA, as the cold helps to preserve the fragile and precious traces of the distant past. There, in the cave of the same name, the genome of the Denisovan man, another species of extinct anthropoid, was discovered, as recalled by the Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology. Max Planck in Leipzig, whose work was published in the scientific journal Nature.

At a distance of 100 kilometers from there are the caves of Sagirskaya and Okladnikova, where Neanderthals lived about 54,000 years ago. Many remains have already been found there, in the same layer of sediment, suggesting that the “dwellers” of the caves lived around the same time.

Father and daughter, aunt and nephew

In order for scientists to test this, the DNA had to “speak”, which was an extremely delicate task, since there were no complete skeletons, but only individual teeth and scattered fragments of bones.

“Originally, we needed to establish how many individuals there were,” paleogeneticist Stephane Peiren, one of the study’s lead authors, told AFP. His team used new methods to isolate and “capture” ancient human DNA, which is often contaminated with microbes.

Verdict: The remains belonged to 13 Neanderthals, 7 men and 6 women. Of these, 5 children and teenagers. All 11 were found in the Sagir cave. In the mitochondrial DNA that is passed down from the mother, the researchers found the same genetic variation.

The genes also revealed their close family ties: a father and his teenage daughter, a little boy, and an adult woman who may have been his cousin, aunt, or grandmother. Evidence that these people belonged to the same family and lived at the same time.

Through genetics, “we are building a concrete picture of what the Neanderthal community might have been like. They seem much more human to me,” said Benjamin Peter, who led the study with Svante Paabo.

The group in question, genetically belonging to the Neanderthals of Western Europe, did not mix with other species – Homo sapiens or Denisovans – as happened with other groups of Neanderthals at other times.

“patriarchal” society.

The genetic diversity of the members of the group was small, indicating their close blood relationship and the fact that they lived in small groups of 10-20 individuals – significantly smaller than those of Homo sapiens.

According to Stefan Peyren, the groups were not completely isolated from each other. Characteristically, the women tended to move from community to community to breed, while the men remained in their original tribe. This “patrilocal” function of the group, which is also true for Sapiens, is indicated by the lower genetic diversity of the Y chromosomes, which are passed from father to child, as opposed to mitochondrial DNA, which comes exclusively from the mother.

Paleoanthropologist Antoine Balzo, who was not involved in this study, recalled that this kind of social organization was also found in the study of fossils in the cave of El Cidron in Spain, but the genetic material in this case was not so complete.

^{Source: APE-MEB, AFP.}