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scientificamerican.com

When a Neandertal Met a Denisovan,

What Happened Was Only Human
Richard Conniff
5-6 minutos

Scientists describe the hybrid child of two starkly different human

groups

Richard (Bert) Roberts, Vladimir Ulianov and Maxim Kozlikin

(clockwise from top) in the East Chamber of Denisova Cave,
Russia. Credit: IAET SB RAS, Sergei Zelensky

In a remarkable twist in the story line of early human evolution,

scientists have announced the discovery of “Denisova 11”—a

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female who was at least 13 years old, lived more than 50,000 years
ago and was a child of mixed parentage. Her parents were not just
of different races, but two different and now-extinct early human
types. Their exact taxonomic designations—whether they were
separate species or subspecies—is still a matter of scientific
debate. But the bottom line for Denisova 11 is that mom was a
Neandertal and dad a Denisovan.

The research, published Wednesday in Nature, is the work of a

team led by pioneering paleogeneticist Svante Pääbo at Max
Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany. He and
his co-authors published the first description of the Denisovans in
2010, based on genetic evidence from one of the 2,000 or so bone
fragments found in Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains, where
Siberia borders Mongolia and China. The new discovery is based
on another bone fragment from that lot, a 2.5-centimeter-long
fragment of what was a femur or humerus, from which the
researchers extracted six DNA samples and then cloned them for
detailed analysis.

Molecular dating indicates that Denisovans, who are so far known

only from Denisova Cave, and Neandertals, known mainly from
sites in Europe, diverged from each other almost 400,000 years
ago. They coexisted, probably in relatively small populations
scattered across the vast Eurasian landmass, until both became
extinct some 30,000 to 40,000 years ago.

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View of the valley from above the Denisova Cave archaeological

site, Russia. Credit: Bence Viola, Max Planck Institute for
Evolutionary Anthropology

But the genetic evidence from Denisova 11 and other recent studies
suggests that, on the occasions when they met, Denisovans and
Neandertals commonly mated with each other—and with modern
humans. Denisova 11’s father carried a small amount of Neandertal
ancestry, the study notes, from “possibly as far back as 300 to 600
generations before his lifetime.”

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Sharon Browning, a statistical geneticist at the University of

Washington who was not involved in the research, praises the new
study. “I’m really kind of blown away by it,” she says. “Just to catch
the offspring of these two different groups is really remarkable.”

“It looks absolutely solid,” adds University of Utah population

geneticist Alan Rogers, who also was not part of the work. “I think
these guys, as usual, have done a great job.” Asked if Denisova 11
might have simply been the offspring of a mixed Neandertal–
Denisovan population—rather than of a mother and father of two
such starkly separate backgrounds—Rogers says, “I felt that their
analysis made sense. I was convinced by that. It’s not surprising
that the two species would mate, if they were together at the same
place and time,” he adds. “But I don’t think we knew before now
that they were together at the same place and time—and if they
were, it raises the question of why they were so different.” That is,
why didn’t they evolve into a single species?

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Excavation works in the East Chamber of Denisova Cave,

Russia. Credit: Bence Viola, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary
Anthropology

“It’s a really interesting question,” says Harvard University geneticist

David Reich, who did not take part in Pääbo’s study. “At Denisova
Cave we are clearly looking at an area where these two groups
washed across one another, within walking distance of the cave.
But there must have been a lot of isolation, as well as mixture.” The
hybrid offspring from such divergent populations, Reich says, may
have experienced biological problems. Or they may have faced
cultural bias, Pääbo notes, if people of mixed backgrounds were
“not very well accepted in the cultures of that time.”

Even so, both Neandertals and Denisovans have persisted in the

modern human genome. A small percentage of Neandertal
ancestry is common in all modern human populations outside
Africa; some Denisovan lineage is also common among people
from east Asia and Oceania. Earlier this year a study led by
Browning indicated the modern Denisovan inheritance derives from
at least two separate populations, suggesting they were once
dispersed far beyond the Denisova Cave. Pääbo says the next step
for his laboratory will be extracting DNA from sediment in the
Denisova Cave floors to determine “just when Neandertals were
there, when Denisovans were there and when both were there
together.”

The dream that scientists could document such interactions in the

prehistory of humankind “used to seem impossible,” Reich says.
“But now we are getting to witness the dream.”

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Richard Conniff

Richard Conniff is an award-winning science writer for magazines

and a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times. His books
include House of Lost Worlds (Yale University Press, 2016) and
The Species Seekers (W. W. Norton, 2010).

Credit: Nick Higgins

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