Neanderthals are distant cousins of humans that lived between 430,000 and 40,000 years ago. They get a bad rap as cave-dwelling thugs with clubs, but Laurits Skov, a paleogenticist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, says that you really need to get that picture out of your head.
That human connection is further bolstered by Skov and his colleagues’ latest findings, which were published [October 19] in the journal Nature. The group looked at genetic material taken from Neanderthal bones and teeth from two caves in central Russia. The caves’ residents are believed to have lived around 55,000 years ago. They extracted the DNA by drilling tiny holes in the ancient remains. It was a delicate operation.
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It’s the first time that Neanderthal relatives have been sequenced side-by-side. Skov says that the DNA of the individuals living in the cave also provides some clues about how the society might have been organized. By looking at mitochondrial DNA, which is only passed along by females, and Y chromosomes, which come from males, Skov and his colleagues were able to determine that the women were more likely to have come from outside the group. In other words, Neanderthal society may have been organized in a way where women moved to be with the family of the men.
