When our species, Homo sapiens, emerged, the world was home to 8-9 other human species. However, they gradually went extinct in a mysterious manner.
According to SciTech Daily, the remains of a Neanderthal man found in a cave in France have revealed evidence regarding the disappearance of this ancient human species.
Neanderthals are considered the closest relatives to our species, Homo sapiens, within the genus Homo, which had about 8-9 species around 300,000 years ago, at the time of our emergence.
Despite their good health, large brains, and remarkable advancements in tool-making, hunting, and social organization, they mysteriously vanished.
A member of an isolated community of Neanderthals was found in a cave in France – (Illustration AI: ANH THƯ).
Now, through the study of the Neanderthal man in France, a research team from the Globe Institute at the University of Copenhagen (Denmark) supports one of the major hypotheses regarding this extinction.
Associate Professor Martin Sikora, the lead author, explains: “The newly discovered Neanderthal genome has different origins from other later Neanderthals previously studied, supporting the view that their social organization was different from ours.”
Specifically, the genome of the man, identified to have lived around 40,000 years ago, shows no close genetic relation to known Neanderthal communities in the region.
This indicates that this man belonged to a lineage of Neanderthals from a distant place, remaining genetically isolated for many generations, meaning his community lived in great isolation.
According to Associate Professor Sikora, many genomes of this species previously showed similar traces of inbreeding, which would lead to a lack of genetic diversity.
Thus, scientists believe they lived in small groups for many generations, and this may have been a behavioral trait of the species.
“We know that inbreeding reduces genetic diversity in a population, which can be detrimental to their survival if it persists over time,” Associate Professor Sikora analyzed.
It seems that Neanderthals were quite different from our ancestors in terms of mate-seeking behavior.
Previous anthropological evidence shows that Homo sapiens had a long-standing habit of marriage exchange between distant communities.
Our ancestors even interbred with Neanderthals, suggesting a relationship where a Homo sapiens actively moved to live with a different species community.
In other words, compared to this ancient species, the so-called “wise humans” have always had a greater likelihood of connecting with other groups.
This provided a survival advantage for the population.
It is also possible that other human species followed a similar path to that of the isolated community of the other-species man in France, as previous studies indicated that other species did not develop socially as well as Homo sapiens.
Nevertheless, the ancient Neanderthals or Denisovans still exist among us, or more accurately, their DNA is passed down through interspecies “marriages” that occurred tens of thousands of years ago.
The new study has just been published in the scientific journal Cell Genomics.
