# Population Genetics > Paleogenetics > Paleolithic & Mesolithic >  Genetic Analysis of "Proto-Neanderthals" from Sima de los Huesos

## Angela

See: http://archaeology.org/news/4260-160...al-nuclear-dna

"_LEIPZIG, GERMANY—An international team of researchers has analyzed nuclear DNA obtained from 430,000-year-old bones from the Sima de los Huesos, or “Pit of Bones” in northern Spain. Recent analysis of mitochondrial DNA from the bones indicated that these Middle Pleistocene hominins were distantly related to the Denisovans, who lived in Asia, despite their Neanderthal-derived features. But the information gleaned from the short fragments of nuclear DNA suggests that the Sima de los Huesos hominins were more closely related to Neanderthals than Denisovans after all. “We have hoped for many years that advances in molecular analysis techniques would one day aid our investigation of this unique assembly of fossils,” Juan-Luis Arsuaga of the Complutense University in Madrid said in a press release.  The findings also suggest that Denisovans and Neanderthals had already diverged by the Middle Pleistocene. Neanderthals living in the Late Pleistocene may have acquired their mitochondrial DNA through gene flow from Africa. “These results provide important anchor points in the timeline of human evolution. They are consistent with a rather early divergence of 550,000 to 750,000 years ago of the modern human lineage from archaic humans,” added Svante Paabo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology."_ 

This is the link to the paper:
http://www.nature.com/articles/natur...www.nature.com

There is speculation that this pushes the divergence or split between the line leading to Neanderthals and that leading to humans to between 550,000 and 765,000 years ago, too far back to have been Homo Heidelbergensis. That would perhaps point to Homo antecessor, from whom we have bones dated to 900,000 years ago. However, remains from this hominid have not been found in Africa or the Middle East.

As was stated above, there is some speculation that people from Africa migrated to Eurasia and bred with Neanderthals, migrants who brought with them new stone-tool technologies.

Razib Khan has opined:
http://www.unz.com/gnxp/human-evolut...ngle/#comments

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## bicicleur

these new findings seem to cast more doubts than to bring new certainties

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## LeBrok

I welcome the progress, and at least partial sequencing of such old genome. It will be interesting to know if divergence between Neanderthals and Denisovans happened at same time as with humans, or they have split from their own branch. Though surely rather early on.

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## bicicleur

if I understand well, they pasted tiny bits of DNA together to create the full string

Svante Paabo certainly knows what he is doing, but the authors seem very prudent in their wordings and conclusions

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## Sile

> if I understand well, they pasted tiny bits of DNA together to create the full string
> 
> Svante Paabo certainly knows what he is doing, but the authors seem very prudent in their wordings and conclusions


he also states in the max planke doco, that denisovans roamed from siberia and all the way south to Indonesia

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## Carlos

_I hang it here so as not to open a new thread._

23 de Septiembre de 2020 16:28h
*

Successfully tested a new system for discovering caves with rock art*



San Sebastián, Sep 23 (EFE) .- An innovative system, designed by researchers from the universities of the Basque Country (UPV / EHU) and Cantabria, which has already been successfully tested in the Basque Country, will help the discovery of new caves with art cave thanks to a geographic information model that allows identifying the areas most prone to this type of finds.

The new system, which has been used between 2018 and 2020 in different surveys carried out in the Basque Country in collaboration with the caving groups Burnia, Haitzulo and GEMA, has already achieved positive results, such as the discovery of a new set of Palaeolithic art in the cave of San Pedro de Busturia (Bizkaia), where in 2019 different images of discs from the Upper Paleolithic were found.

https://www.eldiario.es/cultura/prob...1_6241173.html

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