14 DAY TRIAL // Neanderthals' ancestors evolved in Europe 350,000 years ago and by 130,000 years ago, genuine Neanderthals were already present. Almost 28,000 years ago they were gone, wiped out by modern men or by intermingling with them.
Neanderthal remains have been found from Spain to Middle East (Israel) and Central Asia (Uzbekistan). Now, a new area must be added onto their range: China, appearing that our evolutionary cousin migrated much further than previously believed.
Fossils discovered on the Altai mountains, some 2,000 km (1,250 mi) further away into southern Siberia, just above the northwestern tip of modern China, at the border between China, Russia and Mongolia, have been proven to belong to the Neanderthals.
The fossils are not recently discovered, but the team led by geneticist Svante Paabo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology analyzed them now for mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences. The team compared the DNA sequences from two sites: Teshik Tash in Uzbekistan and Okladnikov Cave (Altai Mountains) with those coming from European specimens. The new research settled the debate whether the bones belonged to Neanderthals or modern humans.
It clearly appeared that 40,000 years old adult fossils from Okladnikov genetically fitted with the European Neanderthals.
"The fact that no deep mtDNA divergence is seen ... shows that they were not separated for a long time," enhancing a theory that Neanderthals migrated most of the Russian plains during a warm interglacial period about 125,000 years ago.
Mitochondria are tiny organelles present in the cells that burn food, turning it into energy. They have a distinct DNA from the nuclear one and because there are so many mitochondria in the cell, scientists are more likely to recover this one from fossils.
Moreover, mtDNA is transmitted only from the mother to the offspring, thus its variations from generation to generation are only the result of mutation, without a mix between the mother and father's DNA, like in the nuclear DNA.
The presence of Neanderthals in Siberia "raises the possibility that they man have been present even farther to the east, in Mongolia and China," wrote the researchers.