DNA study reveals unprecedented snap-shot of Neanderthal family

The largest genetic study of Neanderthals ever has given us unique insight into a Neanderthal family that included a father and his teenage daughter. Both lived in a cave in Siberia 54,00 years ago. The new study has been published in the journal Nature. The study has used DNA sequencing to look at social life of Neanderthal community. The study found that women were more likely to stray from the cave than men.

Previous archaeological excavations have shown that Neanderthals were more sophisticated than once thought, burying their dead and making elaborate tools and ornaments.

However little is known about their family structure or how their society was organised.

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The sequencing of the first Neanderthal genome in 2010, which won Swedish paleogeneticist Svante Paabo the medicine Nobel prize earlier this month, offered a new way to discover more about our long extinct forerunners.

An international team of researchers put focus on multiple Neanderthal remains found in the Chagyrskaya and Okladnikov caves in southern Siberia.
The scattered fragments of bones were mostly in a single layer in the earth, suggesting the Neanderthals lived around the same time.

"First we had to identify how many individuals we had," Stephane Peyregne, an evolutionary geneticist at Germany's Max Planck Institute and one of the study's co-authors, told AFP.

The team used new techniques to extract and isolate the ancient DNA from the remains.

By DNA sequencing, the researchers established that there were 13 Neanderthals, seven males and six females. It was found that five members of the group were children or early adolescents.

"Our study provides a concrete picture of what a Neandertal community may have looked like," Max Planck's Benjamin Peter, who supervised the research along with Paabo, said in a statement.

"It makes Neandertals seem much more human to me," he added.

(With inputs from agencies)

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