Anthropology

The clues were buried in the dirt.

Anagha Srikanth | May 17, 2021

What’s a little dirt? Thanks to new technology, it could be the key to understanding the genetic makeup and evolution of the Neanderthals.

"You can imagine them sitting in the cave making tools, butchering animals. Maybe they cut themselves or their babies pooped," said Benjamin Vernot, lead researcher of the latest study out of Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (MPI-EVA) whose "perspective may have been colored by his own baby’s cries during a Zoom call," according to a press release. "All that DNA accumulates in the dirt floors."

Researchers at MPI-EVA developed the technology back in 2017, allowing them to identify Neanderthal DNA from genetic material left behind in caves. The latest findings revealed that about 100,000 years ago, the occupants of the cave were replaced by a different group of Neanderthals.

"This pattern—dispersal over perhaps long distances and population replacement or admixture—is one that we find almost everywhere we look," in humans or other mammals, Beth Shapiro, a molecular biologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, told Science Magazine in the release.

More:
https://thehill.com/changing-america/enrichment/arts-culture/553916-fantastic-new-technology-finds-secrets-of-human-life