On October 19th, scientists from Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology published a study in Nature magazine revealing that the remains of a Neanderthal family had been found. A group of 13 people were found in the Chagyrskaya and Okladnikov caves in Siberia.

The Neanderthal is a human species that no longer exists, but that was part of our evolution process. Just as there are several bird species, for a long time there were at least 21 human species. Some lived together in the same period, others did not even meet. The first Neanderthals appeared 350,000 years ago and became extinct 30,000 years ago.

The family that has been found lived 54,000 years ago. There was a father, his teenage daughter, and two seconddegree relatives (a young man and an adult – it is not known yet if they were the teenager’s cousins or uncles). Additionally, the remains of nine other Neanderthals were found in the same cave. This is the highest number found in a single study.

Researchers analyzed the DNA present in the bones to better understand how Neanderthals lived. This is how they found, for example, that it was common for women to move to other groups and raise families with them while men spent their entire lives in the groups they were born into. Much more is yet to be discovered.

“I think our insights make Neanderthals more relatable, and in some sense more human. They were people that lived and died in small family groups, likely in a harsh environment. Yet they managed to persevere for hundreds of thousands of years,”said the population geneticist, Benjamin Peter, co-author of the study, in an interview with Nature.

Glossary

DNA: molecule that carries an organism’s genetic information, such as eye color and height.

MEET OTHER HUMAN SPECIES

Homo habilis – Lived between 2.5 million and 1.5 million years ago.

Homo erectus – Lived between 1.8 million years and 100,000 years ago.

Homo floresiensis – Lived between 18,000 and 13,000 years ago.

Questions

1) How many species of humans were there?

a) At least 21

b) Only one

c) At least 30

d) At least 800

2) What do you think the Neanderthals’ routine was like?

Sources: Correio Braziliense, Superinteressante, O Globo, Terra, Folha de S. Paulo, Unesp, Yahoo, UFMG and Infoescola

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