Genetic insights into the social organization of Neanderthals

Article

关键词: HUMAN Y-CHROMOSOME;    GENOME SEQUENCE;    DNA;    HISTORY;    HOMININ;    HETEROPLASMY;    REMAINS;    CAVE;    SIMA;   

DOI  :  10.1038/s41586-022-05283-y

来源: SCIE

【 摘 要 】

Genomic analyses of Neanderthals have previously provided insights into their population history and relationship to modern humans(1-8), but the social organization of Neanderthal communities remains poorly understood. Here we present genetic data for 13 Neanderthals from two Middle Palaeolithic sites in the Altai Mountains of southern Siberia: 11 from Chagyrskaya Cave(9,10) and 2 from Okladnikov Cave(11)-making this one of the largest genetic studies of a Neanderthal population to date. We used hybridization capture to obtain genome-wide nuclear data, as well as mitochondrial and Y-chromosome sequences. Some Chagyrskaya individuals were closely related, including a father-daughter pair and a pair of second-degree relatives, indicating that at least some of the individuals lived at the same time. Up to one-third of these individuals' genomes had long segments of homozygosity, suggesting that the Chagyrskaya Neanderthals were part of a small community. In addition, the Y-chromosome diversity is an order of magnitude lower than the mitochondrial diversity, a pattern that we found is best explained by female migration between communities. Thus, the genetic data presented here provide a detailed documentation of the social organization of an isolated Neanderthal community at the easternmost extent of their known range.

【 授权许可】

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