European Neanderthals were on the verge of extinction even before the arrival of modern humans New findings from an international team of researchers show that most Neanderthals in Europe died off around 50,000 years ago. The previously held view of a Europe populated by a stable Neanderthal population for hundreds of thousands of years up until modern humans arrived must therefore be revised. This new perspective on the Neanderthals comes from a study of ancient DNA published February 25 in Molecular Biology and Evolution. The results indicate that most Neanderthals in Europe died off as early as 50,000 years ago. After that, a small group of Neanderthals recolonised central and western Europe, where they survived for another 10,000 years before modern humans entered the picture. The study is the result of an international project led by Swedish and Spanish researchers in Uppsala, Stockholm and Madrid. The results presented in the study are based entirely on severely degraded DNA, and the analyses have therefore required both advanced laboratory and computational methods.
Much Earlier Split for Neanderthals, Humans? In the ranks of prehistoric humans, Neanderthals were our closest relatives. We were so close, in fact, that our species interbred with theirs. Tracing back our lineages, there must have been a last common ancestor of Homo sapiens and Neanderthals sometime in prehistory. (Related: "Geno 2.0 Can Reveal How Neanderthal You Are.") But who was this mystery human? Picking out direct ancestors in the fossil record is tricky. In the last five years, anthropologists have used DNA to reconstruct the evolutionary history of humans. The dates range from more than 800,000 years ago to less than 300,000, with many estimates in the neighborhood of 400,000 years ago. But this may not be so. What's new? In a study published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, George Washington University anthropologist Aida Gómez-Robles and colleagues turned to teeth to test what had been gleaned from genetics. Why is it important? The new study contradicts this idea. What does it mean?
Bunnies implicated in the demise of Neanderthals - 27 February 2013 BLAME it on the bunnies. The debate over what Neanderthals ate, and how it may have led to their demise, has turned to rabbits. Which, it is now claimed, they did not feast on. Signs that our extinct cousins hunted dolphins and seals were presented in 2008 as evidence of their sophistication. Now, John Fa of the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust in Trinity, Jersey, says the remains in caves around Europe became dominated by rabbits rather than large game around the time Neanderthals went extinct (Journal of Human Evolution, doi.org/kkn). It's not clear why they would have had more trouble changing prey, says Fa.
Neanderthals were ancient mariners - life - 29 February 2012 IT LOOKS like Neanderthals may have beaten modern humans to the seas. Growing evidence suggests our extinct cousins criss-crossed the Mediterranean in boats from 100,000 years ago - though not everyone is convinced they weren't just good swimmers. Neanderthals lived around the Mediterranean from 300,000 years ago. Their distinctive "Mousterian" stone tools are found on the Greek mainland and, intriguingly, have also been found on the Greek islands of Lefkada, Kefalonia and Zakynthos. Now, George Ferentinos of the University of Patras in Greece says we can rule out the former. Ferentinos compiled data that showed sea levels were 120 metres lower 100,000 years ago, because water was locked up in Earth's larger ice caps. Ferentinos thinks Neanderthals had a seafaring culture for tens of thousands of years. Strasser agrees Neanderthals were seafaring long before modern humans, in the Mediterranean at least. New Scientist Not just a website! More From New Scientist More from the web
First Love Child of Human, Neanderthal Found The skeletal remains of an individual living in northern Italy 40,000-30,000 years ago are believed to be that of a human/Neanderthal hybrid, according to a paper in PLoS ONE. If further analysis proves the theory correct, the remains belonged to the first known such hybrid, providing direct evidence that humans and Neanderthals interbred. Prior genetic research determined the DNA of people with European and Asian ancestry is 1 to 4 percent Neanderthal. The present study focuses on the individual’s jaw, which was unearthed at a rock-shelter called Riparo di Mezzena in the Monti Lessini region of Italy. Both Neanderthals and modern humans inhabited Europe at the time. PHOTOS: Faces of Our Ancestors Condemi is the CNRS research director at the University of Ai-Marseille. The genetic analysis shows that the individual’s mitochondrial DNA is Neanderthal. NEWS: Neanderthals Lacked Social Skills NEWS: Neanderthals Died Out Earlier Than Thought
Skulls with mix of Neandertal and primitive traits illuminate human evolution -- ScienceDaily Researchers studying a collection of skulls in a Spanish cave identified both Neandertal-derived features and features associated with more primitive humans in these bones. This "mosaic pattern" supports a theory of Neandertal evolution that suggests Neandertals developed their defining features separately, and at different times -- not all at once. Having this new data from the Sima de los Huesos site, as the Spanish cave is called, has allowed scientists to better understand hominin evolution during the Middle Pleistocene, a period in which the path of hominin evolution has been controversial. "The Middle Pleistocene was a long period of about half a million years during which hominin evolution didn't proceed through a slow process of change with just one kind of hominin quietly evolving towards the classic Neandertal," said lead author Juan-Luis Arsuaga, Professor of Paleontology at the Complutense University of Madrid. Arsuaga and his team were delighted to work on this effort.
Handaxe design reveals distinct Neanderthal cultures -- ScienceDaily A study by a postgraduate researcher at the University of Southampton has found that Neanderthals were more culturally complex than previously acknowledged. Two cultural traditions existed among Neanderthals living in what is now northern Europe between 115,000 to 35,000 years ago. Dr Karen Ruebens from the Centre for the Archaeology of Human Origins (CAHO) and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) examined the design of 1,300 stone tools originating from 80 Neanderthal sites in five European countries; France, Germany, Belgium, Britain and the Netherlands. Dr Ruebens' investigations uncovered new evidence that two separate handaxe traditions or designs existed -- one in a region now spanning south-western France and Britain -- the other in Germany and further to the East. In addition, she found an area covering modern day Belgium and the Netherlands that demonstrates a transition between the two. "Making stone tools was not merely an opportunistic task.
Did Volcanoes Wipe Out Neanderthals? Neanderthals may have gone out with a bang. At least three volcanic eruptions 40,000 years ago devastated Neanderthals' homelands. Geographic good luck may have allowed Homo sapiens to move into Neandertals' former haunts. Neandertals didn't get dumped on prehistory's ash heap -- it got dumped on them. At least three volcanic eruptions about 40,000 years ago devastated Neandertals' western Asian and European homelands, spurring a rapid demise of these humanlike hominids, says a team led by archaeologist Liubov Golovanova of the ANO Laboratory of Prehistory in St. Petersburg, Russia. Modern humans survived because they lived in Africa and on the tip of southwestern Asia at that time, safely outside the range of volcanic ash clouds, Golovanova's group proposes in the October Current Anthropology. "For the first time, we have identified evidence that the disappearance of Neandertals in the Caucasus coincides with a volcanic eruption approximately 40,000 years ago," Golovanova says.
Who Didn't Have Sex with Neanderthals? Very few populations of modern humans do NOT carry genetic traces of Neanderthals, say researchers. The only modern humans whose ancestors did not interbreed with Neanderthals are apparently sub-Saharan Africans, researchers say. New findings suggest modern North Africans carry genetic traces from Neanderthals, modern humanity's closest known extinct relatives. Although modern humans are the only surviving members of the human lineage, others once roamed the Earth, including the Neanderthals. PHOTOS: Faces of Our Ancestors The Neanderthal genome revealed that people outside Africa share more genetic mutations with Neanderthalsthan Africans do. To shed light on why Neanderthals appear most closely related to people outside Africa, scientists analyzed North Africans. The researchers focused on 780,000 genetic variants in 125 people representing seven different North African locations. PHOTOS: Humans Vs. The scientists detailed their findings Oct. 17 in the journal PLoS ONE.
Neanderthals speech similar to humans - per DNA evidence Neanderthals might have spoken just like humans do now, new genetic findings suggest. Neanderthals are humanity's closest extinct relatives. Since their discovery more than 150 years ago, researchers have found out they could make tools just like our ancestors could, but whether Neanderthals also had advanced language, rather than mere grunts and groans, has remained hotly debated. To learn more, scientists investigated DNA from Neanderthal bones collected from a cave in northern Spain, concentrating on a gene, FOXP2, which is to date the only one known to play a role in speech and language. Genes similar to FOXP2 are found throughout the genomes of the animal kingdom, from fish to alligators to songbirds. Past research suggests the gene's modern human variant evolved fewer than 200,000 years ago. "It is possible that Neanderthals spoke just like we do," paleogeneticist Johannes Krause of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, told LiveScience.