Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 108, Issue 1, Pages 250-253Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1011553108
Keywords
patrilocality; kinship; demography; human evolution
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Funding
- Ministry of Science and Innovation of Spain [BFU2009-06974, CGL2009-09013]
- Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas
- Principado de Asturias Severo Ochoa Program
- Consejeria de Cultura of the Principado de Asturias
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The remains of 12 Neandertal individuals have been found at the El Sidron site (Asturias, Spain), consisting of six adults, three adolescents, two juveniles, and one infant. Archaeological, paleontological, and geological evidence indicates that these individuals represent all or part of a contemporaneous social group of Neandertals, who died at around the same time and later were buried together as a result of a collapse of an underground karst. We sequenced phylogenetically informative positions of mtDNA hypervariable regions 1 and 2 from each of the remains. Our results show that the 12 individuals stem from three different maternal lineages, accounting for seven, four, and one individual(s), respectively. Using a Y-chromosome assay to confirm the morphological determination of sex for each individual, we found that, although the three adult males carried the same mtDNA lineage, each of the three adult females carried different mtDNA lineages. These findings provide evidence to indicate that Neandertal groups not only were small and characterized by low genetic diversity but also were likely to have practiced patrilocal mating behavior.
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