Philippa Kaur

The jawbone of a Neanderthal known as Thorin, who is thought to have been part of an isolated populationXavier Muth
Genetic analysis of a Neanderthal fossil found in France reveals that it was from a previously unknown lineage, a remnant of an ancient population that had remained in extreme isolation for more than 50,000 years. This finding sheds new light on the final phase of the species’ existence.
The fossil, dubbed Thorin after a character in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, was discovered in 2015 at the Grotte Mandrin in the Rhône Valley in southern France when Ludovic Slimak of the Centre for Anthropobiology and Genomics of Toulouse uncovered some teeth in the cave’s soil. The skeleton was painstakingly excavated over the next nine years to reveal 31 teeth, the jawbone, part of the skull and thousands of other bone fragments.
Advertisement
This was an incredible discovery in itself, as remains of Neanderthals – who lived in Eurasia from around 400,000 years ago until they went extinct around 40,000 years ago – are exceedingly rate.
Even more surprising was that Thorin’s genome could be obtained from a fragment of one of his teeth, as DNA isn’t typically preserved in warm climates. This revealed that the fossil was from a male, but opened up a mystery that took years to solve.
By comparing his genome with those of other Neanderthals, Slimak and his colleagues estimated Thorin lived around 105,000 years ago. However, archaeological evidence and analysis of the isotopes in his bones unequivocally showed that Thorin lived no more than 50,000 years ago – making him a “late Neanderthal” from the final phase of the species’ existence.
“For a very long time we [geneticists] were convinced that Thorin really was an early Neanderthal, just because his genetic lineage was so distantly related to contemporary Neanderthals in the same region,” says team member Tharsika Vimala of the University of Copenhagen. “On the other side, the archaeologists were convinced that he was a late Neanderthal. It took years of work from both sides to get to the answer.”
Eventually, the researchers realised that they must have discovered a hitherto unknown lineage of Neanderthals. Thorin was part of a small group who lived between 42,000 and 50,000 years ago. The group seems to have been a remnant of a far more ancient Neanderthal population that diverged from the main Neanderthal population around 105,000 years ago, and had then stayed genetically isolated for more than 50,000 years.
The bones of Thorin during excavation at Grotte Mandrin in FranceLudovic Slimak
Thorin’s DNA showed no evidence of interbreeding between his lineage and that of the main Neanderthal population, despite living in close proximity. “Thorin was completely divergent from any other Neanderthals,” says Slimak.
This isolation could have made the group particularly vulnerable. “Long term isolation or inbreeding can be detrimental to a population’s survival as it can reduce the genetic diversity over time, which in turn can have negative effects on our adaptability to changing environments,” says Vimala.

Slimak, Vimala and their colleagues then re-analysed the genome of another Neanderthal that had lived around 43,000 years ago at Les Cottés, France. They found traces of a “ghost population” in its DNA from a breeding event some 15,000 to 20,000 years previously, with another unknown Neanderthal group.
“This means that there must have been not only two populations among late Neanderthals, but very likely three,” says Slimak. Previously it had been thought that at the time before their extinction, the Neanderthals were all part of one genetically similar population.
“The evidence from Grotte Mandrin is fascinating as it gives some intriguing insights into these late Neanderthal populations and their dynamics,” says Emma Pomeroy at the University of Cambridge.

Topics:Neanderthals/fossils More

Easter Island’s famous moai statuesTero Hakala/Shutterstock
DNA analysis of ancient remains from Easter Island shows that the population was in fact increasing when Europeans arrived, rather than collapsing as reported by some historical accounts.
The results also show that there were interactions between the residents of the island and those of South America long before the arrival of Europeans. Both the island and its people are also known as Rapa Nui.
Advertisement
Located in the Pacific Ocean 3500 kilometres from South America, Rapa Nui is one of the most remote inhabited islands on Earth. Polynesian people began settling there around AD 1200, when its 164 square kilometres were covered in palm forests.
By the time Europeans arrived in 1722, the vegetation had been largely destroyed by a combination of rats and overharvesting. The history of the island has often been portrayed as an example of unsustainable ecological exploitation and population growth followed by collapse.
In the latest study, J. Víctor Moreno-Mayar at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and his colleagues looked at 15 sets of human remains kept at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, France, collected by expeditions in 1877 and 1935.
The researchers worked closely with representatives of the Rapa Nui community. One of their aims was to confirm that the individuals at the museum were, in fact, from the island, as there is an effort being led by modern residents to repatriate the remains.
The results show that the 15 people, who all died over the past 500 years, did originate on Rapa Nui.
A population undergoing a bottleneck from a collapse in numbers will have signals in their DNA showing a drop in genetic diversity, says Moreno-Mayer.
“We are using statistical methods that can reconstruct the genetic diversity in the Rapa Nui population throughout the last few thousand years,” he says. “And interestingly enough, we do not find any evidence of a dramatic population decline around 1600s as expected from the collapse theory.”
Instead, the results suggest that the Rapa Nui population increased steadily until the 1860s, when slave traders kidnapped hundreds of islanders and a smallpox outbreak killed many more.

The study also identified stretches of DNA in the ancient Rapa Nui genomes that have an Indigenous American origin. Their analysis suggests that the mixing of these populations occurred around the 1300s.
“Our interpretation is that the ancestors of Rapa Nui first peopled the island and shortly after made a return journey to the Americas,” says Moreno-Mayer.
Previous studies have also cast doubt on the story of a population collapse. Carl Lipo at Binghamton University in New York says it was “terrific” to learn that a completely independent line of evidence points to the same conclusions his team reached in a paper published earlier this year, using radiocarbon and archaeological evidence.
He says the study confirms that the island was populated with people who lived resiliently and successfully until the arrival of Europeans.

Topics:DNA/history More

Australopithecus family in a grassy forestHistoric Collection / Alamy
This is an extract from Our Human Story, our newsletter about the revolution in archaeology. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every month.
It’s a truism in human evolution that we came down from the trees and out into more open country like grassy savannahs. The open grasslands are supposed to be more favourable habitats for hominins like us. In contrast, dense tropical forests have been thought of as “hostile, unfavourable frontiers” that were “too hostile for humans throughout much of prehistory” (according to a 2022… More

Researchers survey archaeological features in Wandel Dal valley, GreenlandFuuja Larsen
Some 4500 years ago, as the Great Pyramid of Giza was being erected and the Indus Valley civilisation hit its peak, a group of Arctic peoples migrated to a region of northern Greenland now known as Inutoqqat Nunaat, or the “land of the ancient people”.
They were the northernmost culture on Earth at the time, living just 800 kilometres from the North Pole, but little else has been known about their diet, customs and strategies for survival in this polar climate. Now, that is starting to change. More

The trolley problem is a classic dilemma in moral philosophyStefan Lenz/Getty Images
Animals, Robots, GodsWebb Keane (Allen Lane)
No society we know of ever lived without morals. Roughly the same ethical ideas arise, again and again, over time and in different societies. Where do these notions of right and wrong come from? Might there be an ideal way to live?
In Animals, Robots, Gods: Adventures in the moral imagination, anthropologist Webb Keane at the University of Michigan argues that morality doesn’t arise from universal principles but from the human imagination. For him, moral ideas are sparked in… More

The action in Creation Lake is based in Guyenne in south-west FrancePhotononstop/Alamy
Creation LakeRachel Kushner (Jonathan Cape (UK, 5 September); Scribner (US, 3 September))
Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner is a thriller, a spy caper, a comedy and also a poetic take on human history all the way back to the time our species, Homo sapiens, shared Earth with the Neanderthals. It is a sensationally enjoyable novel and has deservedly made the Booker prize longlist.
The story is narrated by our anti-hero, Sadie Smith (not her real name). She is a US undercover operative working for shady employers… More

The interior of the monument in Spain known as the Menga dolmenMiguel Ángel Blanco de la Rubia
Neolithic people seem to have understood sophisticated concepts in science, such as physics and geology, using this knowledge to construct a megalithic monument in southern Spain.
Called the Menga dolmen, it is among the earliest of such structures, dating to between 3600 and 3800 BC. Its roofed enclosure was constructed from 32 large stones, some of which are the biggest used in this sort of monument. The heaviest one weighs in excess of 130 tonnes, more than three times as much as the heaviest stone at Stonehenge in the UK, which was erected more than 1000 years later.
“[In the Neolithic Period], it must have been very powerful to experience this building made with these enormous stones,” says Leonardo García Sanjuán at the University of Seville in Spain. “It still stirs you. It still causes an impression even today.”Advertisement

García Sanjuán and his colleagues have now performed detailed geological and archaeological analyses of the stones to infer what knowledge Menga’s builders would have needed to construct the monument, which is in the city of Antequera.
Paradoxically, they found that the rocks are a type of relatively fragile sandstone. While this means a greater risk of breaking, the team discovered that this was compensated for by shaping the stones so they locked into a very stable overall structure.
Neolithic people would have needed some way to make the blocks fit very tightly together, says Garcia Sanjuán. “It’s like Tetris,” he says. “If you look at the precision involved and how well each stone locks with each other, you have to think that they had an idea of angles, however rudimentary.”
The researchers also found that the 130-tonne stone, which was placed horizontally on top to form part of the roof, had been shaped so that its surface rises in the centre and declines towards the edges. This distributes force in a similar way to an arch, improving the roof’s strength, says García Sanjuán. “To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that the principle of the arch has been documented in human history.”
Menga – whose purpose is unknown – is also aligned to produce distinct patterns of light in the interior during the summer solstice and has stones that are protected from water damage by several layers of carefully beaten clay, which adds to evidence supporting the builders’ knowledge around architecture and engineering.
“They knew about geology and the properties of the rocks they were using,” says García Sanjuán. “When you put all this together – you know, engineering, physics, geology, geometry, astronomy – it is something we can call science.”

There are Neolithic structures in France that rival Menga in size, but how they were built is less well understood, says García Sanjuán. “As it stands today, Menga is unique in Iberia and in western Europe.”
“What’s surprising about this is the level of sophistication,” says Susan Greaney at the University of Exeter, UK. “The architectural understanding of how the weight distribution works, I’ve not seen that anywhere else before.” But she adds that this is perhaps less a demonstration of an understanding of science than of architecture and engineering.

Article amended on 27 August 2024The headline and second paragraph of this article have been changed to correctly refer to the monument that was constructed.Topics:archaeology More

The interior of the monument in Spain known as the Menga dolmenMiguel Ángel Blanco de la Rubia
Neolithic people seem to have understood sophisticated concepts in science, such as physics and geology, using this knowledge to construct a megalithic monument in southern Spain.
Called the Menga dolmen, it is among the earliest European megaliths, dating to between 3600 and 3800 BC. Its roofed enclosure was constructed from 32 large stones, some of which are the biggest used in such structures. The heaviest one weighs in excess of 130 tonnes, more than three times as much as the heaviest stone at Stonehenge in the UK, which was erected more than 1000 years later.
“[In the Neolithic Period], it must have been very powerful to experience this building made with these enormous stones,” says Leonardo García Sanjuán at the University of Seville in Spain. “It still stirs you. It still causes an impression even today.”Advertisement

García Sanjuán and his colleagues have now performed detailed geological and archaeological analyses of the stones to infer what knowledge Menga’s builders would have needed to construct the monument, which is in the city of Antequera.
Paradoxically, they found that the rocks are a type of relatively fragile sandstone. While this means a greater risk of breaking, the team discovered that this was compensated for by shaping the stones so they locked into a very stable overall structure.
Neolithic people would have needed some way to make the blocks fit very tightly together, says Garcia Sanjuán. “It’s like Tetris,” he says. “If you look at the precision involved and how well each stone locks with each other, you have to think that they had an idea of angles, however rudimentary.”
The researchers also found that the 130-tonne stone, which was placed horizontally on top to form part of the roof, had been shaped so that its surface rises in the centre and declines towards the edges. This distributes force in a similar way to an arch, improving the roof’s strength, says García Sanjuán. “To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that the principle of the arch has been documented in human history.”
Menga – whose purpose is unknown – is also aligned to produce distinct patterns of light in the interior during the summer solstice and has stones that are protected from water damage by several layers of carefully beaten clay, which adds to evidence supporting the builders’ knowledge around architecture and engineering.
“They knew about geology and the properties of the rocks they were using,” says García Sanjuán. “When you put all this together – you know, engineering, physics, geology, geometry, astronomy – it is something we can call science.”

There are Neolithic structures in France that rival Menga in size, but how they were built is less well understood, says García Sanjuán. “As it stands today, Menga is unique in Iberia and in western Europe.”
“What’s surprising about this is the level of sophistication,” says Susan Greaney at the University of Exeter, UK. “The architectural understanding of how the weight distribution works, I’ve not seen that anywhere else before.” But she adds that this is perhaps less a demonstration of an understanding of science than of architecture and engineering.

Topics:archaeology More