Late Neandertals of Belgium and France
In just over a decade, paleogenomics has become a key tool, complementing archaeology in reconstructing the evolutionary history of one of our closest evolutionary relatives, the Neandertals. Archaeological, osteological and genetic evidence suggests that Neandertals primarily lived in small groups, but less is known about whether these groups were part of isolated communities or belonged to larger, well-connected populations. The dense concentration of broadly contemporaneous Neandertal sites in Belgium's Meuse Basin4 provides a rare opportunity to study regional populations at high resolution. Here, we generated genetic data from 27 Neandertal skeletal remains from ten archaeological sites in Belgium and France, including a new high-coverage genome from a 45,000-year-old Neandertal from Goyet. We show that most of these individuals are more closely related to one another than they are to other contemporaneous late Neandertals in Europe. Further, some individuals carry DNA from a Neandertal lineage predating the split of late Neandertals. Although these Neandertals overlapped temporally with early modern humans in Europe, we find no evidence of a recent gene-flow from modern humans to late Neandertals. Unlike the Neandertals in the Altai, these Neandertals in North-Western Europe do not show the genetic signature of mating among close relatives, suggesting that they lived in larger or more well-connected groups.
In just over a decade, paleogenomics has become a key tool, complementing archaeology in reconstructing the evolutionary history of one of our closest evolutionary relatives, the Neandertals. Archaeological, osteological and genetic evidence suggests that Neandertals primarily lived in small groups, but less is known about whether these groups were part of isolated communities or belonged to larger, well-connected populations. The dense concentration of broadly contemporaneous Neandertal sites in Belgium's Meuse Basin4 provides a rare opportunity to study regional populations at high resolution. Here, we generated genetic data from 27 Neandertal skeletal remains from ten archaeological sites in Belgium and France, including a new high-coverage genome from a 45,000-year-old Neandertal from Goyet. We show that most of these individuals are more closely related to one another than they are to other contemporaneous late Neandertals in Europe. Further, some individuals carry DNA from a Neandertal lineage predating the split of late Neandertals. Although these Neandertals overlapped temporally with early modern humans in Europe, we find no evidence of a recent gene-flow from modern humans to late Neandertals. Unlike the Neandertals in the Altai, these Neandertals in North-Western Europe do not show the genetic signature of mating among close relatives, suggesting that they lived in larger or more well-connected groups.
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology