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The reasons for the extinction of the Neanderthals remain a mystery, but a study of the “Thorin” specimen discovered in France opens a new path. Their lineage spent 50,000 years “without any genetic exchange with classical European Neanderthals.”
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Martin Messner / AFP
The causes of the Neanderthal extinction remain a mystery, but one that is Study of a sample from the Rhone ValleyWhose lineage has spent 50,000 years without exchanging genes with other groups, opens a new path to genetic isolation.
Neanderthal Inhabited Eurasia until about 40,000 BC.coexisting with our ancestor Homo sapiens, before they disappeared.
“This is the last moment in which different human sciences exist on Earth, and it is a very strategic and mysterious moment because we do not understand how an entire humanity, which existed from Spain to Siberia, could suddenly disappear,” he told AFP. Presse (AFP) Ludovic Slimac, a researcher at the National Center for Scientific Research at the University of Toulouse Paul Sabatier and co-author of the study published Wednesday in the journal Cell Genomics Journal.
The sample is called “Thorin” – In honor of Tolkien's character – was Found in 2015 in Mandarin Cave (Drôme)in France, which alternately housed populations of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens.
Rare find. This is it. The first Neanderthal was discovered in France since 1978.In all of Eurasia, there are only about forty.
“Once the body was out of the ground, I sent a small piece of bone, a piece of a molar, to Copenhagen, to the teams we work with in genetics. We have been trying to get DNA from the mandarin for ten years, whether it was an animal or a human, and we have never succeeded because once you remove the bones from the ground, the DNA degrades very quickly,” explained Slemak.
When the results were known, doubts arose among scientists. According to archaeological analyses, “this body had Between 40,000 and 45,000 years agoBut to geneticists it was 105,000 years old. One of the two teams must have failed, he stressed.
It was necessary Seven years of investigation To decide. Isotopic analyses have shown that Thorin lived in Very cold climate, consistent with an ice age. Only late Neanderthals lived there.
But its genome is actually very old. “This is a Remains of the first Neanderthal inhabitants of Europe“It’s a very interesting finding,” population geneticist and lead author Martin Sikora, of the University of Copenhagen, highlighted in a statement accompanying the study.
“The lineage leading to Thorin split from other late Neanderthal lineages about 105,000 years ago,” he noted.
And then this lineage passed 50,000 years “without any genetic exchange with classical European Neanderthals”“Including residents who live just a two-week walk away,” Salimak explained.
An unimaginable isolation among his cousin Homo sapiens, especially since the Rhone Valley was at that time, One of the main migration corridors Between Northern Europe and the Mediterranean Sea.
Archaeology has long told us that Neanderthals lived there. Very small areas, just a few tens of kilometers away. “In a certain place,” the archaeologist recalls, recalling the well-known problems of consanguinity, considering the elements of the latest study “an important key to understanding” the extinction of Neanderthals.
He stressed that in Homo sapiens, “we will have infinitely wider circles, areas covering tens of thousands of square kilometers, the spread of objects, shells, social communication, and the construction of highly organized social networks.”
When you are isolated for a long time“Your genetic diversity is limited, which means you have less ability to adapt to climate change and pathogens, and you are also socially limited, because you don’t share and evolve as a population,” said Tharsikha Vimala, a population geneticist at the University of Copenhagen and co-author of the study.
“Coffee trailblazer. Social media ninja. Unapologetic web guru. Friendly music fan. Alcohol fanatic.”