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Genome analysis can tell a lot not only about eye and skin color, but also about lifestyle. By studying the DNA of late Neanderthals across Europe, scientists have created a picture of them as a single metapopulation. The discovery of the Thorin skeleton shook these notions. Before us is a representative of a small group that lived near relatives, but did not come into contact.
Neanderthals inhabited Eurasia at the same time as sapiens and died out about 40 years ago. Scientists have proposed several concepts for their disappearance, which mainly relate to external factors, from climate change, volcanic eruptions to inversion of the planet's magnetic field. The internal causes that contributed to the extinction have been studied very little. Although paleogenetics and osteology provide some hints.
It turned out that Siberian and late European Neanderthals formed small groups that interacted weakly with each other. They are characterized by the minimum effective volume of the population, showing the average number of individuals that ensure development, and traces of inbreeding, that is, closely related crossing. To what extent this is a general characteristic of the appearance remained unclear.
Until now, the greatest discrepancy between Neanderthal genomes was found between the Altaic representatives who lived 120 years ago in Denisova Cave, and Europeans from the Vindia Cave in Croatia, 40 years old. Recent scientific works have shown that 105 thousand years ago, the population grew, giving rise to three lines of Neanderthals: in Siberia, in the Caucasus and in Europe. However, scientists did not see any signs of different populations.
In 2015, parts of the best-preserved Neanderthal skeleton were discovered in the Mandrin rock shelter in southern France. It was named "Thorin" after the hero of the saga by John R. Tolkien.
The cave is notable for the fact that its upper layers of sediment contain evidence of the presence of the last Neanderthals and modern humans between 65 and 41 thousand years ago. Scientists extracted more than 60 stone and 70 bone fragments of fauna. There are traces of hearths, hominid remains in all layers.
For almost 10 years, several fragments of the "Torin" skeleton were extracted, excavations are slowly continuing. The main thing is that the jaws and teeth are partially preserved. From them, the researchers determined that this is a typical adult Neanderthal, but with an unusual dental anomaly: he has two fourth molars. This has never been seen in Pleistocene people. Such an anomaly is extremely rare among modern residents.
To determine the age, a complex of methods was used, including uranium-lead. The most reliable estimates are 52-42 thousand years ago.
Genetic analysis showed that the line to which "Thorin" belonged separated from the Neanderthal ancestral population 105 years ago. A test of gene transfer between the main population and modern humans revealed the isolation of the Torina community for 50 years. They were one of the last Neanderthals in this part of Europe.
"So we have two Neanderthal populations, 10 days' journey apart, that completely ignored each other. This is difficult to imagine for sapiens, in this regard Neanderthals were different," explained the discoverer of "Torina", paleoanthropologist Ludovic Slimak from the University of Paul Sabatier (France). The article, where he is the first author, came out in the magazine Cell Genomics.
This discovery raised new questions about the causes of Neanderthal extinction. It is known that isolation is not beneficial for the development of the species. It is not clear how local this population was, what are the roots of its material culture (the authors of the study called it Post-Neronian II).
The closest genetically to "Torin" is a Neanderthal from Gibraltar. It must be whether they were one branch. "This means that there was a hitherto unknown population of Mediterranean Neanderthals who inhabited the territory from the western tip of Europe to the Rhone Valley in France," suggested Slymak.
Coincidentally, the researchers made another discovery — in addition to "Torin", they discovered another Neanderthal line originating from Le Cote in southwestern France. So Europe was home to at least two, or even three, populations of the last Neanderthals.
