Thousands of years ago, the lives of two different kinds of people were forever changed by two different events.
During the Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition, anatomically modern humans – Homo sapiens (this is us) – started migrating across Eurasia. Neanderthals, meanwhile, have begun to disappear.
“Exactly how these processes took place has been discussed for a very long time,” Mateja Hajdinjak tell Reverse. Hajdinjak is an associate researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and an expert in ancient genomics.
A study co-authored by Hajdinjak and published in the journal on Wednesday Earth – together with another ancient human study which is also in Earth – finally provides much-needed insight into what happened almost 45,000 to 35,000 years ago.
Together, the individual teams provide evidence of the oldest Homo sapien remains ever found in Europe. Genetic analyzes of these remains show a link between these ancient individuals and modern humans – suggesting that mating between modern humans and Neanderthals was dramatically more common than scientists previously thought.
The background – This is what we know:
- Modern humans appeared in Europe at least 45,000 years ago
- Neanderthals disappeared from Europe about 40,000 years ago
What is not well understood is the extent of interactions between Neanderthals and modern humans, and how exactly these early Europeans form part of the larger story of human expansion outside Africa.
The rarity is to add to the mystery Homo sapien keep dating from this period. Even if a scientist exposes a bone or a tooth that belongs to an old person, it does not necessarily mean that it is a useful specimen. After the death of an organism, DNA breaks down, ‘becomes shorter over time and changes accumulate’, Hajdinjak explains.
After tens of thousands of years of decline, scientists are excited when a sample even has a small amount of DNA left to analyze.
What’s new – Five of the seven ancient people recovered from the Bacho Kiro Cave in Bulgaria are many, very old. Radiocarbon dates conducted by Hajcdinjak and his colleagues suggest that these people existed between 45,930 and 42,580 years ago.
This makes them the “oldest Boer Paleolithic modern people found in Europe”, writes the study team.
The other Earth study, also conducted by researchers at the Max Planck Institute, provides a genome sequence from a skull belonging to a female Homo sapien who lived in the present-day Czech Republic (Czech Republic in the study). In this case, it is the length of the Neanderthal segments in her genome that indicates how old she is: at least 45,000 years.
All these old people are some of the earliest people Homo sapiens in Eurasia after the migration from Africa.
Both studies show how closely the lives of these individuals were intertwined with the fate of the Neanderthals. The DNA of the woman found in the Czech Republic was at least 3 percent Neanderthal maker. Meanwhile, the genomes of three of the ancient people found in the Bacho Kiro Cave indicate that their Neanderthal ancestors had only a few generations in their pedigree.
This suggests that mixing between humans and Neanderthals was more common than previously thought. Previously, evidence of relatively recent Neanderthal descent came down to a 40,000-year-old man found in Romania. His DNA suggested to researchers that “Neanderthals and modern humans mix on more than one occasion and in Europe as well as at a later date,” Hajdinjaksays. Besides this individual, the best evidence of Neanderthal-Homo sapien mating was in the DNA of living people.
‘The most important thing is that all IUP [Initial Upper Paleolithic] The individuals of the Bacho Kiro Cave had Neanderthal ancestors about 5 to 7 generations before they lived, which indicates that the mixture between these first people in Europe and Neanderthal people was common, ‘says Hajdinjak.
The great takeaway – Hajdinjak and colleagues were also able to investigate the relationship between the individuals of the Bacho Kiro cave and the later human population.
By comparing the genomes of these individuals with other ancient and modern humans, it appears that these individuals are more closely related to people who came from East Asians, rather than Western Eurasians. This does not mean that these exact individuals contributed to later populations in East Asia, but it does mean that they are closely related to the people who did it.
Ultimately, the findings build on a fundamental human truth: we move. We move very and we always have. The individuals of the Bacho Kiro Cave contributed to later populations of Asian descent, but it can be assumed that other ancient individuals contributed to the DNA of the subsequent Eurasians and Europeans. These ancient peoples met and mated with other ancient human species and continued to spread, like ripples on a pond.
With each new discovery, we better understand what it means to be human.
“I have always been fascinated by human prehistory where no written reports exist,” says Hajdinjak. “Ancient DNA offers us a valuable window into the past – literally like our own time machine.”
Abstract of Bacho Kiro Cave: Modern humans appeared in Europe at least 45,000 years ago, but the extent of their interaction with Neanderthals, which disappeared about 40,000 years ago, and their relationship to the wider expansion of modern humans outside Africa are poorly understood. Here we present data on the entire genome of three individuals dated between 45,930 and 42,580 years ago from the Bacho Kiro Cave, Bulgaria. These are the earliest modern people of the late Pleistocene that have been found so far in Europe and were found in conjunction with an initial Upper Paleolithic artifact compilation. Unlike two previously studied individuals of similar ages from Romania and Siberia, who did not contribute traceably to later populations, these individuals are more closely related to the contemporary and ancient population in East Asia and the Americas than to the later Western Eurasian. population. This indicates that they were part of a modern human migration to Europe that was not previously known from the genetic record, and provide evidence that there was at least a continuity between the earliest modern humans in Europe and the later humans in Eurasia. In addition, we find that all three individuals had Neanderthal ancestors several generations back in their family history, confirming that the first European modern humans mixed with Neanderthal people and suggested that such mixing might be common.
Antique skull summary: Modern humans expanded into Eurasia more than 40,000 years ago after their spread from Africa. These Eurasians had ~ 2-3% Neanderthal descent in their genomes, originating from mixing with Neanderthals that occurred between 50,000 and 60,000 years ago, probably in the Middle East. In Europe, modern human expansion preceded the disappearance of Neanderthals from the 3,000–5,000 year fossil record. The genetic makeup of the first Europeans who colonized the continent more than 40,000 years ago is still poorly understood, as few specimens have been studied. Here we analyze a genome generated from the skull of a female individual from Zlatý kůň, Czech Republic. We found that she was part of a population that apparently did not genetically contribute to later Europeans or Asians. Her genome contains ~ 3% Neanderthal descent, similar to that of other Upper Paleolithic hunter-gatherers. However, the lengths of the Neanderthal segments are longer than those observed in the currently oldest modern human genome of the ~ 45,000-year-old Ust’-Ishim individual from Siberia, suggesting that this individual from Zlatý kůň one of the earliest Eurasian inhabitants is. after the expansion from Africa.