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If we want to enter tens of thousands of years ago in the genetics of our ancestors, the only path we have is to study the bone remains in search of the low genetic material remaining in them. Or at least that used to be the case.
46,000 years ago. Because a new study has achieved Back 46,000 years in the past by analyzing sedimentary challenges in a Cantabrian cave. The genetic material found showed a common genetic ancestry among the inhabitants of the cave and populations settled in southern France in the same era.
The mirror and his red lady. The history of the study of the archaeological site of the cave of El Mirón, located in Cantabria, begins with excavations initiated in 1996. Archaeological prospects would give one of its main fruits in 2010, with the discovery of the red lady of El Mirón.
It was a partial skeleton that belonged to a woman from between 35 and 40 years deceased about 19,000 years ago. The appellation is due to the fact that the bone remains were found covered with a red ocher paint whose origin would not have been in the direct environment of the cave.
Sedadna. One of the most striking details of the study is in its methodology. The new analysis of the remains of the site did not focus on the bone remains of the red lady, even on other types of bones. Instead they noticed the mud.
The Sedadna methodology focuses on the sedimentary remains of DNA that still keep genetic information about the ancient inhabitants of the cave, humans or animals. These remains, Explain the study responsible for the study They allow us to ride ourselves very prior to that of the Red Lady, up to 46,000 years ago, in the Musteriense era, when the Neanderthals still inhabited Europe.
From Fournol to Cantabria. However, the most relevant period in the new study is the Solutrense, the period in which the last maximum glacier occurred, approximately between 25,000 and 21,000 years ago. The sedadna extracted in the strata of this era allowed genetically to link the human populations that inhabited the cave in this era with other human groups.
Specifically with the one known as Fournol lineagea group that we link with some deposits in Spain and in France. The new study allows us to better trace the genealogies of the human groups that inhabited the Peninsular North in Paleolithic. A genealogy that also covers the ancestry of the Villabruna lineage, which would have reached the region in bass Magdaleniensefrom the Balkans and northern Italy.
The details of the study were published In an article In the magazine Nature Communications.
Great carnivores. Another study key is in animals that inhabited the cave and, therefore, that they could be found in these times among the Iberian fauna. The team found traces belonging to carnivores such as leopard and hyenas, as well as the Dole, Wild Dog Asian or Indian Wild Dog (Cuon Alpinus), A canid now present in Southeast Asia. They also found DNA belonging to ungulates such as mammoths and rhinos, in addition to deer.
Image | University of New Mexico
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