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Nuclear DNA from two early Neandertals reveals 80,000 years of genetic continuity in Europe.

ABSTRACT: Little is known about the population history of Neandertals over the hundreds of thousands of years of their existence. We retrieved nuclear genomic sequences from two Neandertals, one from Hohlenstein-Stadel Cave in Germany and the other from Scladina Cave in Belgium, who lived around 120,000 years ago. Despite the deeply divergent mitochondrial lineage present in the former individual, both Neandertals are genetically closer to later Neandertals from Europe than to a roughly contemporaneous individual from Siberia. That the Hohlenstein-Stadel and Scladina individuals lived around the time of their most recent common ancestor with later Neandertals suggests that all later Neandertals trace at least part of their ancestry back to these early European Neandertals.

SUBMITTER: Peyregne S

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6594762 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Nuclear DNA from two early Neandertals reveals 80,000 years of genetic continuity in Europe.

Peyrégne Stéphane S Slon Viviane V Mafessoni Fabrizio F de Filippo Cesare C Hajdinjak Mateja M Nagel Sarah S Nickel Birgit B Essel Elena E Le Cabec Adeline A Wehrberger Kurt K Conard Nicholas J NJ Kind Claus Joachim CJ Posth Cosimo C Krause Johannes J Abrams Grégory G Bonjean Dominique D Di Modica Kévin K Toussaint Michel M Kelso Janet J Meyer Matthias M Pääbo Svante S Prüfer Kay K

Science advances 20190626 6

Little is known about the population history of Neandertals over the hundreds of thousands of years of their existence. We retrieved nuclear genomic sequences from two Neandertals, one from Hohlenstein-Stadel Cave in Germany and the other from Scladina Cave in Belgium, who lived around 120,000 years ago. Despite the deeply divergent mitochondrial lineage present in the former individual, both Neandertals are genetically closer to later Neandertals from Europe than to a roughly contemporaneous in ...[more]

PMID: 31249872

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Project description:Early modern humans (EMH) are often touted as behaviorally advanced to Neandertals, with more sophisticated technologies, expanded resource exploitation, and more complex clothing production. However, recent analyses have indicated that Neandertals were more nuanced in their behavioral adaptations, with the production of the Châtelperronian technocomplex, the processing and cooking of plant foods, and differences in behavioral adaptations according to habitat. This study adds to this debate by addressing the behavioral strategies of EMH (n = 30) within the context of non-dietary anterior tooth-use behaviors to glean possible differences between them and their Neandertal (n = 45) counterparts. High-resolution casts of permanent anterior teeth were used to collect microwear textures of fossil and comparative bioarchaeological samples using a Sensofar white-light confocal profiler with a 100x objective lens. Labial surfaces were scanned, totaling a work envelope of 204 x 276 μm for each individual. The microwear textures were examined for post-mortem damage and uploaded to SSFA software packages for surface characterization. Statistical analyses were performed to examine differences in central tendencies and distributions of anisotropy and textural fill volume variables among the EMH sample itself by habitat, location, and time interval, and between the EMH and Neandertal samples by habitat and location. Descriptive statistics for the EMH sample were compared to seven bioarchaeological samples (n = 156) that utilized different tooth-use behaviors to better elucidate specific activities that may have been performed by EMH. Results show no significant differences between the means within the EMH sample by habitat, location, or time interval. Furthermore, there are no significant differences found here between EMH and Neandertals. Comparisons to the bioarchaeological samples suggest both fossil groups participated in clamping and grasping activities. These results indicate that EMH and Neandertals were similar in their non-dietary anterior tooth-use behaviors and provide additional evidence for overlapping behavioral strategies employed by these two hominins.

Dataset Information

Nuclear DNA from two early Neandertals reveals 80,000 years of genetic continuity in Europe.

Publications

Nuclear DNA from two early Neandertals reveals 80,000 years of genetic continuity in Europe.

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