Modern humans and Neanderthals They interact 100,000 years before what was thought, according to researchers who used computerized tomographies and 3D mapping to study the bones of a child who They believe it was the result of crosses between the two different groups.
El Niño, described in a recent study published in the magazine L’Asthropologiewas buried in a cave in Israel About 140,000 years ago. Because ancient DNA was not extracted from fossilized remains, it is impossible to confirm the origins of the child, but scientists say that Microscopic details in the bones indicate that the child had features of both groups.
When the bones were excavated for the first time in the cave Skhul In northern Israel in 1931, archaeologists recognized that the child did not belong to Homo Sapiens, which had reached the region since Africanor to the Neanderthals, who came from Europe. They concluded that it was an indigenous separate species in the area.
But the new 3D mapping allowed researchers to study small details of the skull that had previously been difficult to see or decipher. The researchers were able to examine distinctive features such as the construction of the inner ear and the footprint of the blood vessels that irrigated the brain.
When comparing the known characteristics of both Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals, the researchers concluded that the child was the result of a crossing.
Previously, the oldest known example among the groups was about 40,000 years ago in Central Europe, explained Israel Hershkovitz, the main researcher of the study and professor of Archeology and Human Evolution at the University of Tel Aviv.
A new look at old relationships
New research helps shed light on when the two groups began to interact and offers clues about their relationships.
“What we are saying now is that there was an extensive relationship between Homo Sapiens and the Neanderthals that began about 140,000 years ago,” and the two groups “managed to live next to each other without evidence of hostile encounters,” said Hershkovitz.
The crossing and shared cultural practices, including burials and the construction of tools, challenge the notion of Homo Sapiens as “intolerant” to other human groups due to their eventual dominance, said Hershkovitz.
Without DNA, it will be impossible to prove that the child was a hybrid human, said Pascal Gagneux, an evolutionary biologist who studies human origins at the University of California in San Diego, who did not participate in the investigation. Even so, he said, the details revealed by the mapping, including the internal structure of some bones and several characteristics, support the hybrid hypothesis.
Looking inside an old skull
The researchers took thousands of isolated scannings and the child’s jaw and then created a 3D virtual model of the fossil.
The model allowed them to analyze small details that are impossible to see in fossilized bones, including delicate parts inside the skull. The blood vessels, for example, leave a small mark inside a skull.
While some of the slots are visible to the naked eye, 3D scans allowed investigators to see blood vessels as “tributaries of a river,” said Hershkovitz.
The patterns are different between the two groups, because the Neanderthals and the Homo sapiens have different forms of brain that require different blood supply.
The virtual mapping created a more precise reconstruction of the child’s skull of what could be built from the bones and plaster when the remains were originally excavated. The new reconstruction is much more elongated, which is more typical of Neanderthals, Gagneux said.
However, detailed reconstruction does not answer many of the questions surrounding the discovery, Gagneux said. Were the child’s parents also mestizos? Or was a Neanderthal and the other Homo sapiens? Why did the child, or someone else, was buried in the cave?
Thomas Levy, a professor of cyber metrocation at the University of California in San Diego, said he was impressed by the use of 3D models in the study. The advances in scientific visualization allow more precise measurements and comparisons of the specimens, said Levy, who did not participate in the research.
Technology also offers archaeologists a new opportunity to review the conclusions of excavated objects many years ago.
Living in harmony
The Skhul cave is one of the three caves in the region representing some of the oldest intentional burials known in the world, dating back more than 100,000 years ago, in the middle of the Paleolithic. Multiple sets of remains were found on each site, and some are still being thoroughly excavated with small drills, which could provide more clues in the future.
In ancient times, Israel was a land bridge and a point of interaction between Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens.
Because Homo Sapiens eventually replaced Neanderthals in the region and worldwide, many people speculate that their interactions were violent and hostile, and that Homo Sapiens was eventually responsible for the “total elimination” of the Neanderthals, Hershkovitz said.
“What Skhul is telling us is that Homo Sapiens is not a vicious and aggressive creature, but one that managed to live in peace” with other groups, he said. “Our aggressive behavior, which continues today in our long history, is a recent phenomenon that has cultural and non -biological roots.”