Cienciaes.com: Neanderthals, Denisovans and sapiens. We spoke with Marco de la Rasilla Vives.

2020-10-19 13:47:08

50,000 years ago, Europe was essentially Neanderthal, that is, its inhabitants were stocky, with a long, broad skull, short stature, and stocky build. They were not the only hominids that inhabited the planet at that time, modern humans, homo sapiens, with a more rounded skull and a more stylized body than the Neanderthals, began to expand from Africa in the Middle East. And further north lived the Denisovans, so called because their remains were found in a cave in Denisova, in Siberia, although their few remains do not allow a clear description of their physiognomy. Thus, three different hominids, at least, that we do not know whether to call species or subspecies, shared their existence for a period throughout an extensive region and, according to the latest data, the encounters were not always belligerent, they also mixed and they had offspring between them.

The life of those times has a second part in the present moments. Although the vast majority of the remains of ancient hominids have disappeared, in some privileged places there remain stone tools, bones, ADN and other legacies that scholars try to recover, preserve and interpret in their eagerness to reconstruct lost pages of prehistory. One of those researchers is our guest on Talking to Scientists, Marco de la Rasilla Vivesprofessor of prehistory in the department of history of the Oviedo University

Marco has led a life fundamentally linked to that of the prehistoric human beings who inhabited Europe during the Upper Paleolithic and Middle Paleolithic, between 100,000 and 12,000 years ago. Since his beginnings at the Complutense University, he has participated in the archaeological excavations of different prehistoric sites, including Chufín, El Castillo, Vineyard CoatEl Juyo, Ambrona, Cueto of the MineLlonin and the cider. The most recent work in which she has participated has been published in Science magazine and talks about the evolutionary history of Neanderthals and Denisovans through the study of ADN of the Y chromosome.

In multitude of caves of what is now the Principality of Asturias, scientists including Marco de la Rasilla have found remains that allow us to reconstruct specific events in the life of those ancient settlers during the last 50,000 years. Among these sites, the Sidrón cave stands out, a place where more than 2,500 Neanderthal remains and 400 lithic pieces that have been dated to 49,000 years old were recovered. The remains belong to 13 individuals, including adults, adolescents and children. The skeletal remains show clear evidence of cannibalism and it has been possible to extract samples of ADN that have allowed us to know the genetic sequence of Neanderthals.

The encounter between the different hominids had dramatic consequences for the Neanderthals and Denisovans, who have disappeared, despite the information extracted from the ADN It shows that there was hybridization and we all retain part of their genetic inheritance.

I invite you to listen to Marco de la Rasilla Vivestenured professor of Prehistory and researcher of the Area of ​​Prehistory of the Oviedo University