Redheads and fair skin . So were some of the Neanderthals who cohabited Eurasia with our ancestors, according to a study published today in the journal Science and based on DNA rescued in bone remains from the 43,000-year-old Sidrón caves in Asturias and from the Italian site Monti Lessini . The research has been carried out by an international team in which the Spanish Carles Lalueza-Fox , an expert in ancient DNA, and other Spanish, German, American and Italian researchers participate.
The key lies in a gene called MC1R , which decides hair and skin color in humans and other mammals.
José Antonio Peñas, illustrator for MUY, designed this cover for issue 317 (October 2007). The “Neanderthal” was characterized as blonde because, according to Peñas,“This species evolved in Europe, so they had more ballots to be light-skinned; and the hair and eyes, like the skin, are lighter because their color depends on the concentration of melanin …”. The new scientific study proves him right.
you. This color gene affects the production of two pigments: pheomelanin (reddish-yellow) and eumelanin (brown-black). The two Neanderthals studied show a mutation in MC1R that Lalueza and his colleagues have found would be responsible for the reddish tone of hair in modern humans. Of course, although the effect is the same, the mutation in both species is different, which implies that the red hair color and the light complexion arose by two different evolutionary paths. And, possibly, among the Neanderthal population there were also individuals blond, brown, etc., that is, avariability of physical traitssimilar to that of current Europeans.
Although it had not been proven, scientists had long suspected that Neanderthals had fair skin. The reason is that the dark complexion that benefits the people of Africa so much did not offer any evolutionary advantage to our European ancestors at high latitudes. What’s more, on the Eurasian continent, with skies almost always covered in clouds, theclear skinfacilitated thevitamin D synthesis, so necessary for the proper development of bones.
Lalueza-Fox participated a few months ago in another interesting study based on DNA extracted from Neanderthals from the Sidrón cave, which indicated that these humans shared with us agene involved in speech, theFOX-7. The paleogeneticist assures that both findings are “paradoxical”. “Studies show us Neanderthals very similar to modern Europeans, with fair skin, hair color and similar linguistic abilities, yet there is still no evidence that they interbred withhomo sapiens“, he emphasizes.
TheNeanderthal Genome Project, launched in 2006, will help shed light on our similarities to this extinct human species.
