Spain’s Oldest Known Neanderthals Include Oldest Known Murder Victim

Summary: Sima de los Huesos in the Atapuerca Mountains, UNESCO World Heritage Site in Spain, has the oldest known murder victim and oldest known Neanderthals.

Sima de los Hesos, Spain, has the oldest known Neanderthal skeletons: Archaeology Magazine @archaeologymag via Twitter March 15, 2016

Twenty-eight skeletons in Sima de los Huesos, Spain, are the oldest known Neanderthals, according to a study published online March 14, 2016, in Nature, and include the oldest known murder victim.

Fourteen researchers in Canada, England, Germany and Spain base their findings upon deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) recovered from a shoulder blade, a thigh bone and a tooth. They calculate 430,000-year-old burials in Cueva Mayor’s (Main Cave) Sima de los Huesos (Pit of Bones) in the Atapuerca Mountains, UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2000. They do not know why the specimens are 100 feet (30.48 meters) underground, at the bottom of the 42-foot (12.80-meter) cave shaft that preserves bear remains. They explain: “[T]he Sima de los Huesos hominins were related to Neanderthals rather than to Denisovans, indicating that the population divergence … predates 430,000 years ago.”

The mitochondria, structures within cells for converting energy from food into usable forms, furnish small amounts of DNA that are known as mitochondrial DNA or mtDNA.

Mitochondrial DNA gets 37 of the estimated 20,000 to 25,000 total genes in the human genome and will be inherited by children only from the mother. It has a role in interpretations published online Dec. 4, 2013, also in Nature, by 11 researchers with academic affiliations in China, Germany and Spain. Matthias Meyer of Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, is lead author with eight researchers from the study of the oldest known Neanderthals.

Juan-Luis Arsuaga, José María Bermúdez de Castro, Ana Gracia and Ignacio Martínez in Spain join forces with Ayinuer Aximu-Petri, Birgit Nickel and Svante Pääbo from Germany.

The researchers know from 2014 that one hominin’s “almost complete mitochondrial genome sequence … is closely related to the lineage leading to mitochondrial genomes of Denisovans.”

The oldest known Neanderthals, as described in 2014 and 2016, look like 600,000- to 200,000-year-old Homo heidelbergensis even though prominent brow ridges “display distinct Neanderthal-derived traits.” Scientists mention Denisovans as extinct humans known from a 30,000-year-old finger bone and molar in Denisova Cave in the Siberian Federal District of the Russian Federation. They note that ancestral interbreeding explains Denisovan DNA making up 4 to 6 percent of modern Bougainville Islander and New Guinean genomes in the Melanesian archipelago.

DNA from Neanderthals, closest extinct relatives of modern humans and descendants of common shared ancestry with Denisovans, occupies 1 to 4 percent of modern Eurasian genomes.

Nuclear DNA, from maternal and paternal genetic inputs to cell nuclei, proves for the researchers that “the Sima de los Huesos hominins were related to Neanderthals.”

Mitochondrial DNA qualifies as confirmation of genetic shares whose mitochondrial DNA lineages get eliminated, by chance or by subsequent interbreeding with African emigrants, 250,000 years ago.

The study reveals the Neanderthal species diverging from shared ancestry with humans further back than previously thought, to as much as 550,000 to 765,000 years ago. Maria Martinón-Torres of University College London in England suggests replacing, as possible shared ancestor, Homo heidelbergensis by Homo antecessor, with 900,000-year-old remains in the Atapuerca Mountains.

Plots thicken in northern Spain, where the oldest known Neanderthals include the oldest known homicide, Cranium 17, “whose multiple blows implies [sic] an intention to kill.”

well-preserved upper and lower limb bones of oldest known Neanderthals, dated to 430,000 years ago and found in Sima de los Huesos, Atapuerca, Spain: José Miguel Carretero Díaz et al., CC BY 2.0, via EurekAlert!

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

Sima de los Hesos, Spain, has the oldest known Neanderthal skeletons: Archaeology Magazine @archaeologymag via Twitter March 15, 2016, @ https://twitter.com/archaeologymag/status/709840367735037952

bones of adults found in Sima de los Huesos, Atapuerca, Spain: José Miguel Carretero Díaz et al., CC BY 2.0, via EurekAlert! @ http://www.eurekalert.org/multimedia/pub/44336.php?from=214007

For further information:

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Meyer, Matthias; Fu, Qiaomei; Aximu-Petri, Ayinuer; Glocke, Isabelle; Nickel, Birgit; Arsuaga, Juan-Luis; Martínez, Ignacio; Gracia, Ana; Bermúdez de Castro, José María; Carbonell, Eudald; and Pääbo, Svante. 4 Dec. 2013. “A Mitochondrial Genome Sequence of a Hominin from Sima de los Huesos.” Nature / Letter.
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