DNA from Neanderthal bones found in a cave in Russia have revealed the first known family of Neanderthals – a father, his teenage daughter, and others who were probably cousins.
A 2020 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A detailed how Neanderthals trekked 3,000 kilometers (1,865 miles) to reach Siberia’s Altai Mountain range. The Neanderthals were not wandering aimlessly, hunting and gathering, but had developed “a distinctive toolkit used to kill and butcher bison and horses”.
Neanderthal fossils were first identified in 2007 in the Chagyrskaya Cave in the foothills of the Altai Mountains in Central and East Asia, where Russia, China, Mongolia and Kazakhstan converge. The 3.5 meter (11.5 feet) deep cave held the bones of butchered bison, which indicated that Neanderthals lived in the cave sometime between 59,000 and 49,000 years ago. Evidence has been found in the cave of tool production and use almost 5,000 years before modern humans arrived in the region.
