Anthropology

'It brings them alive in some ways and allows me to think about them in a much more complex way'

Author of the article:Joseph Brean
Publishing date:Oct 19, 2022 • 1 day ago • 3 minute read



Chagyrskaya Cave, in the Altai Mountains of Siberia, was once a Neanderthal hunting camp. DNA evidence from a dozen individuals, including a father and his daughter, has illuminated their social behaviours. PHOTO BY BENCE VIOLA


Inspecting the tooth unearthed at a cave in the Altai mountains of Siberia, Bence Viola, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Toronto, considered what conclusions he could draw.

It was a “milk tooth,” he said in an interview, a barely worn girl’s premolar that would have fallen out naturally, so this person did not necessarily die here, not like the man whose vertebra and ulna were also found nearby in the same cave.

In all he and colleagues found DNA evidence, in bone fragments and teeth, from more than a dozen individuals.

Research published Wednesday shows that the girl with the tooth and the man with the spine were so closely related they were either parent and child or siblings, but also they had different mitochondrial DNA, which comes from the mother, so they were likely father and daughter.

More:
https://theprovince.com/news/neanderthal-life