WASHINGTON (HRNW) – Bone and tooth remnants from two Siberian caves are helping scientists for the first time decipher the social organization of our cousins the Neanderthals through genetic sleuthing, including on the remains of a father and his teenage daughter.
Researchers on Wednesday described genomic findings from the remains of 13 Neanderthals – 11 from Chagyrskaya cave and two from Okladnikov cave in the Altai Mountains of Russia – in one of the largest genetic studies of a Neanderthal population to date. The Paleolithic remains date to about 54,000 years ago.
Piecing together the relationships among some of these individuals based on the genetic findings enabled the researchers to conclude that these Neanderthal communities were comprised of a small group of close relatives, consisting of perhaps 10 to 20 members, and that it was the women who migrated among communities, with the men staying put.