11/7/97: Neanderthal a dead end. Our genetic 'Eve' is consistant with Aquatic Ape Theory

July 11, 1997
LONDON (AP) -- DNA from a Neanderthal skeleton is giving powerful backing to the theory that all humanity descended from an "African Eve" about 100,000 to 200,000 years ago -- and that Neanderthals were an evolutionary dead end.

Genetic differences indicate the Neanderthals were a different species than the early humans who swept them aside in Europe and western Asia -- although they appear to have split from a common ancestor a half-million years ago, according to German and U.S. scientists.

The DNA test "clearly lends support to this idea about our ancestry: that we have all come out of Africa quite recently in history," said Svante Paabo, who worked on the research at the Zoological Institute at the University of Munich.

The findings were published in Cell, a journal based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and outlined Thursday at a news conference in London. Paabo said his results were independently confirmed at Pennsylvania State University.

The Munich team took a small sample -- 0.4 grams -- from the upper arm bone of a skeleton found in 1857 in the Neander Valley near Duesseldorf -- the first Neanderthal skeleton ever found.

Comparing 378 base pairs of the Neanderthal's mitochondrial DNA to that of modern humans, the researchers found an average of 27 differences between modern and Neanderthal DNA -- far more than the typical variation of eight among modern humans.

Mitochondria, the structures within human cells that help produce energy, have their own genes. These genes are passed down the female line with only the occasional mutation.

Paabo cautioned that the study of more Neanderthal DNA samples might turn up some mixing, and thus confirm the possibility of some interbreeding between Neanderthals and our Cro-Magnon ancestors.

Even if Neanderthals were not our ancestors, they were tantalizingly similar. They walked erect, used tools and there is evidence that they coexisted and learned some skills from Cro-Magnon people.

One striking difference is that Neanderthals were bigger than modern humans and had larger brains.

"Any superiority that modern humans had was probably a very slight one at the time and that's why it took so long for the Neanderthals to be replaced," said Chris Stringer, a researcher at London's Natural History Museum.

"Of course this is only one specimen ... but it fits so very well with the view of one side of the argument about Neanderthals -- that they are very distinct, that they are not our ancestor -- that I think it goes a very long way toward resolving the Neanderthal problem," Stringer said.