The research conducted by the Nobel Prize Paabo allowed to reconstruct the links between 13 individuals
54,000 years ago in southern Siberia , there lived a father with his teenage daughter and two relatives, probably an aunt and a cousin, in a group of 13 individuals. This is the first portrait of a Neanderthal family obtained thanks to the DNA analysis and the technique developed by the winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine Svante Paabo .
Paabo is one of the authors of the discovery published in the journal Nature and coordinated by his laboratory at the German Institute of Evolutionary Genetics in Leipzig, to which the University of Bologna also contributed . The reconstruction of the family tree was possible thanks to the most important genetic sequencing work which, until now, had only been possible on 18 individuals.
A step forward was possible thanks to the remains discovered in southern Siberia, in the Altai Mountains , in two caves called Chagyrskaya and Okladnikov , where a research group coordinated by Laurits Skov managed to extract genome fragments of 13 Neanderthals : 7 men and 6 women, of which 5 were children or adolescents, who lived between 51,000 and 54,000 years ago. four of these individuals were related to each other: father, daughter, and two second degree relatives, possibly aunt and cousin.
The fact that they lived at the same time is very exciting. This means they probably came from the same social community and, for the first time, we can use genetics to study the social organization of a Neanderthal community.
Laurits Skov
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Genetic data suggests that women moved more from the original group to other communities, while men were more settled.
- The first Neanderthal family portrait from DNA (ansa.it)
