What we think we knew about the Neanderthalsmay have been amiss . It seems there were many more of our heavy - browed first cousin than archeological evidence suggests , and they most likely take place as a species far earlier than anyone had think .
A new study has cut into deeply into the genetics of Neanderthals , the arcane Denisovans , and ourselves , to well infer how all three species relate to each other . They found that despite thelow genetic diversitysuggesting that there may have only been a few thousand Neanderthals stalking the timberland of Eurasia , this is likely an error relating to how the species lived , and that it was much more probable that there were tenner of one thousand survive in modest fragmented populations .
The research , write in theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , was able to reveal a number of new findings about the account of Neanderthals over the past million years . Amazingly , they were able to see that the lineage that would eventually give cost increase toNeanderthals and Denisovans splittingfrom our own root – which is thought to have happened whenHomo erectusmigrated from Africa – very almost went extinct .
If this had happened , it would have meant that Neanderthals would never have come to dominate Europe , and when our own metal money eventually made it out of Africa , we would have found a clearly different landscape , empty of many other hominins we now experience were flourish .
It also seems that our date for when Neanderthals first come in about might also be off . This in style study claims that the split between Neanderthals and Denisovans happen much earlier than is ordinarily think , placing it at around 744,000 years ago . After this stop , it seems that one coinage remained mostly in Europe and the Near East , while the other eked a living in the mountainous neighborhood of Siberia .
Finally , the research worker may have been able to explain why retiring estimations of population size of it of Neanderthals have do back with numbers racket range in the low G . They suggest that there were really tens of thousands of them , but that they lived in small fragmented universe , limiting factor flow and therefore give way the impression that there were not very many of them .
“ The idea is that there are these small , geographically isolated population , like islands , that sometimes interact , but it ’s a nuisance to move from island to island . So , they incline to stay with their own populations , ” excuse Ryan Bohlender , co - author of the bailiwick , in astatement .
This could alter how we traditionally view Neanderthals , and could further our understanding of their behavior , culture , and identity .
